Antony Flew, a theist!?

[william]

have you all heard that the renound Atheist Antony Flew has changed sides? no he still rejects devine revalation, but has aparrently had the courage to admit that the inteligent design argument has validity. Atleast thats the rumor. I have yet to investigate. imagine, after years of beingone of atheisms most stanch debators! it surly would take a most "rational" "free thinker" to look at the evidence and admit that after all these years, he was wrong.

[solidsquid]

From the interviews I've read, some things were blown out of proportion and it's still not completely certain exactly what Flew is purporting to believe. Some reported he converted to Christianity, which he said he didn't. Others claim he has become a deist, some a pantheist. Lots of conflicting information.

[william]

Yea I read that his supposed Christian conversion back in 2001 was only a rumor and he refuted it. but this time he is supposely given an interveiw in Philosofia Christi and said" it now seems to me that the findings of more than fifty years of DNA research have provided materials for a new and powerful argument to design."
from what Ive read this guy is not some flake that doesnt know his science. I sent for a copie of an interveiw he did about it but it still hasnt come.

[solidsquid]

Don't send off for it man, here it is - Flew interview with Philosophia Christi

A comment of Flew's acceptance of ID: Flew's Flawed Science by Victor J. Stenger

Also Richard Carrier has had ongoing exchanges with Flew about his situation: Antony Flew Considers God...Sort Of

And there's stuff like this that assumes Flew is now a Christian: One 'Flew' Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Greg Stier

[william]

thanks! it figures my printer is about out of ink! I will have to read it all later, Im going to work soon.
So why do you suppose he didnt have that cognative dissonance thing. After years of arguing against the existance of God. Can you see(even though you dont agree with him) that it would take great courage to admit publcly that his veiws have changed. I will read what his coleges have said, but I dont emagine its very kind.

[solidsquid]

He did have dissonance, however the route he chose to reduce the dissonance was one most don't take. He chose to change his own views instead of rationalizing them away. I can explain more later after I get out of my methodology class.

[william]

solidsquid said:

He did have dissonance, however the route he chose to reduce the dissonance was one most don't take. He chose to change his own views instead of rationalizing them away. I can explain more later after I get out of my methodology class.

looking forward to it!

[william]

wow I just finnished reading the Flew interveiw, Its almost to good to be true, from my perspective. You know I love the part where he says the supreme court screwed up on the establishment clause!

[william]

Stenger says brontosors from bacteria, but wasnt Flews point, how did we get bacteria? I would love to hear those two debate.

[solidsquid]

Sorry, I haven't forgotten about what I was going to post. Just a bit busy with data analysis for a research proposal, a paper about British women's suffrage, readings about Gestalt and Field theory and half a book to read about fascist Italy....whew. End of the semester always gets busy.

[william]

solidsquid said:

Sorry, I haven't forgotten about what I was going to post. Just a bit busy with data analysis for a research proposal, a paper about British women's suffrage, readings about Gestalt and Field theory and half a book to read about fascist Italy....whew. End of the semester always gets busy.

thats alright, Ill be around when you find time. School is deffinatly the priority. I wish I could go to collage, eh , they would expect me to learn how to spell. Ill just keep reading on my own.

[solidsquid]

Cognitive Dissonance Theory

Cognitive dissonance is a state of imbalance between cognitions. For the purpose of this theory, cognitions are defined as being an attitude, emotion, belief or value, or even a mixture of these cognitions. In brief, the theory of cognitive dissonance holds that the human mind tends to adopt thoughts or beliefs so as to minimise the amount of dissonance (conflict) between cognitions.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance

Cognitive dissonance will happen when someone also may have a behavior that runs contrary to their beliefs as well. When dissonance arises, there must be some action to reduce it.

Aronson et al. lists three basic ways this is done:

1) By changing our behavior to bring it in line with the dissonant cognition.

2) By attempting to justify our behavior through changing one of the dissonant cognitions.

3) By attempting to justify our behavior by adding new cognitions. (167)[1]

These action are seen at work when people, for instance, justify smoking even though they know it's bad for you or those who justify eating fattening foods when they know they shouldn't.

People also will often avoid arguments in which a contrary argument is presented that may be more sensible.

Such things as cheating on a test will involve justification of the behavior even though we know it is prohibited to do so.

There is also justification of effort:

Activities and behaviors are open to a variety of interpretations; if we are motivated to see the best in people and things, we will tend to interpret these ambiguities in a positive way. We call this justification of effort -- the tendency for individuals to increase their liking for something they have worked hard to attain. (174)[1]

All this has been shown in many experiments which Pinker sums up:

In social psychology experiments, people consistently overrate their own skill, honesty, generosity, and autonomy. They overestimate their contribution to a joint effort, chalk up their successes to skill and their failures to luck, and always feel that the other side has gotten the better deal in a compromise. (265)[2]

In some cases people can even come to believe their own lies as shown through Daryl Bem's self perception theory.

According to Bem's self perception theory, people often infer their attitudes from their behavior. (677)[3]

Bem's theory didn't displace dissonance theory but simply expanded one part that people's attitudes are sometimes inferred from their behavior.

Another example of dissonance theory in action is told by Vyse:

Psychologists Dan Russell and Warren Jones demonstrated the effect of selective memory on the maintenance of belief in extrasensory perception in a simple study of college students. First, two groups of students were selected, one made up of believers of ESP and the other of people who were skeptical about the existence of ESP. These groups were further divided, so that half of the believers and half the skeptics received information supporting the existence of ESP. The other half of each group received information not supporting the existence of ESP. Thus, there were four groups in all. Each student was asked to read an abstract reporting several ESP experiments. All of the abstracts were identical except that in the support-for-ESP groups, the studies showed significant ESP effects and in the no-support-for-ESP groups, they did not. Next, the emotional arousal, and finally, they were given a short test on the content of the abstracts.

The experimenters found that all of the students remembered the abstract well except ESP believers who read the unsupportive version. This group remembered significantly less of the abstract and in some cases actually reversed the conclusion, saying that the results supported rather than challenged the existence of ESP. The mechanism underlying this biased memory of contradictory information may be cogintive dissonance...(121)[4]

Cash points to some common distortions:

False consensus effect: This distortion is a tendency to overestimate how common our opinions and behaviors are, especially the undesirable ones. "Everyone's doing it!" We tend to see a consensus that is consistent with our opinion, whether or not one exists.

False uniqueness effect (FUE): The FUE is the tendency to underestimate how common one's beliefs are, especially the desirable ones.

Self-handicapping: When people create excuses for failure in order to protect their self-esteem or self-image, they're engaging in self-handicapping. (170)[5]

False uniqueness would stem from our need to be individuals, our uniqueness.

Self-handicapping can be seen in someone who studies a lot for a test but does badly. They will often attribute it to the test being hard or unfair instead of any thought that might put their intellegence in a bad light.

Shermer notes his findings of aspects of dissonance theory at work in an experiment in which participants were asked why they believed in God. He found that people are nine times more likely to attribute their belief in God to intellectual reasons than they are other people's belief in God. The others belief were interpreted as having them for emtional reasons.

One explanation for this finding is the attribution bias, or the attribution of causes of our own and others' behaviors to either a situation or a disposition.

This intellectual attribution bias applies to religion as a belief system and to God as the subject of belief. As pattern-seeking animals, the matter of the apparent good design of the universe, and the perceived action of a higher intelligence in the day-to-day contingencies of our lives, is a powerful one as an intellectual justification for belief. But we attribute other people's religious beliefs to their emotional needs and upbringing. (298)[6]

Shermer goes on to discuss the role of confirmation bias incoporated in the system:

At the core of the Easy Answer to the Hard Question is the confirmation bias, or the tendency to seek or interpret evidence favorable to already existing beliefs, and to ignore or reinterpret evidence unfavorable to already existing beliefs. (299)[6]

So I hope you can see how some of the mechanisms of dissonance theory would be at work and probably observable on messageboards like these and in everyday life.

References

1) Aronson, E., Wilson, T., & Akert, R. (2005). Social Psychology (5th ed.). Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall.

2) Pinker, S. (2002). The Blank Slate. New York: Viking.

3) Weiten, W. (2001). Psychology: Themes & Variations. (5th ed.). Stamford: Thomson Learning.

4) Vyse, S. (1997). Believing in Magic: The Psychology of Superstition. New York: Oxford U.P.

5) Cash, A. (2002). Psychology for Dummies New York: Hungry Minds.

6) Shermer, M. (2002). Why People Believe Weird Things. New York: Henry Holt and Company.

[william]

So basicly what your saying is, if someone doesnt want to believe in God, then they will ignore the evidence of his existence while exagerating the claims of materialism, in order to protect their desired disbelief. ;D
so have any studies been done on what sort of things will alter their belief?

[solidsquid]

william said:

So basicly what your saying is, if someone doesnt want to believe in God, then they will ignore the evidence of his existence while exagerating the claims of materialism, in order to protect their desired disbelief. ;D

Yes, it can work that way too.

so have any studies been done on what sort of things will alter their belief?

It seems to be too complex and varied that I don't think there are any concrete things. There's too many variables to account for to make a prediction.

[william]

solidsquid said:

Yes, it can work that work that way to.

I really like the fact that you have such intelectual integrity.

I was thinking about those studies and it really opens a pandoras box. If we are prone to believe what we want inspight of the evidence then all of Science is in jepordy of being screwwed by our preconceived notions. Even the studies that establish cognative dissonance cant really be trusted.