Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Cognitive dissonance

We all have our mindsets or opinions about various subjects and we all live within certain paradigms.
With 7 billion people on earth there are going to be that many opinions about any one subject,accepting of course that everyone thinks, that is.
Forgetting the maths, there are certain ones among us that seem to think along the same lines and within a certain paradigm. The blogs I read like 'Steve Sailer', 'West Hunter' and 'View from the Right' and the many opinions expressed in those blogs and their comments seem to be very much in tune.
I think most of the readers of these blogs live in the paradigm of Theodosius Dobzhansky who stated that nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution'
However there are many people that live with cognitive dissonance. I have a friend that is a Christian but is at the same time very opposed to the teaching in her church about creationism. She believes in evolution and gets all hit up about her minister telling the congregation that evolution is false. At least the creationists are honest and don't suffer from spiritual schizophrenia. Dr. Francis Collins must suffer from this malaise.
Most within this group accept Dobzhansky's statement.

One of the hallmarks of the group is that they accept evolution and that therefore are race realists and accept that there are different races or subspecies of man having different behaviours, physical and cognitive characteristics. If there are different physical differences after being separated from each other for up to sixty thousand years and also those that left Africa came into contact with Neanderthals who left Africa 400000 years ago and bred with them, it would be quite reasonable that there were differences in cognitive ability as well. However many accept evolution but will not accept that there any different human races. Any difference in brain capacity is caused by the environment. Here is more cognitive dissonance.

Further the group seems to be at one as far as atheism is concerned going by most comments. As one can't be religious and accept evolution this is understandable.

Homophobia amongst the group is not so well supported or maybe many are uncomfortable with homosexuality because of 'being born that way'.. I'm not sure about this.

Most of the group are very much against multiculturalism and the invasion of western countries by Muslim's and believe that they are intent in taking over Europe and Britain. Unfortunately so few of the the west's population really understand Islam's intent, and what they really believe. Here is further cognitive dissonance,people believing that there are moderate Muslims and not accepting Islam's intent even though they see the evidence with their own eyes in their own towns.
Most of the group are conservative but not necessarily republican.
There are very popular Science blogs that are atheistic but support multiculturalism. Here the main one is Pharyngula. Yep I've just checked comments on the blog and they seem to reject IQ tests as a measurement of Intelligence. All people with high IQ are not necessarily going to make a lot of money or be successful in life but at least they have a chance but people with low IQ's just are not going to be very successful.Just as if you are are heavy and tall you could become a good rugby player but not necessarily but if you are tiny you just don't even have a chance.

Global warming v global warming denialists . I don't know where the group stands on this but as soon as the science is sorted out and accepted I am sure they will be on the side of science. I don't think this has anything to do with the issues above.

So those in this group don't have much cognitive dissonance,but should be vigilant to make sure. But its good to be right! on all the most important issues. How big is this group?It needs to reach critical mass.