59 thoughts on “How Can Truth Prevail?”

  3. Mung: I’m more interested in how morality and truth are related. So many people here at TSZ think the two are related, but seem incapable of explaining why.

    There is nothing immoral about making false statements.

    Do you agree or disagree and why?

    Well, a lot would depend on how we specify the case, right? Are we talking about lying (deliberately making a statement known to be false)? Or bullshitting (deliberately making a statement without regard to whether it is true or false)? Or making a claim that one sincerely believes is true, although it is not?

    In the latter case, there would be distinctions between culpable and inculpable ignorance — and culpability probably involves various dimensions as well. In what Charles Mills calls “the epistemology of ignorance,” White ignorance of the history of Black culture, art, religion, literature etc is part of how White dominance in American culture is reproduced across generations.

    The epistemology of ignorance is probably a version of what’s called “motivated ignorance”, where ignorance is driven by an active denial of knowledge because knowledge would lead to unwanted psychic conflict. (A good example of motivated ignorance is the person who loves eating meat and therefore actively avoids learning about animal suffering in factory farms.)

    Motivated ignorance is surely culpable, but the culpability would need to be evaluated with some care and finesse, since moralizing would be counter-productive. (Badgering a meat-eater about their consumption habits and making them feel guilty will lead to them becoming defensive, not changing their behavior.)

    Then again, not all ignorance is motivated or culpable — there are lots of cases where someone says something that’s false, just because that’s what they’ve always been taught, and they don’t have access to information that contradicts it, and they have no reasons to question what they’ve been told. In cases like that it’s hard for me to see how they are doing something immoral by making a false claim.

  4. Mung: This may be true. It may be false. Gregory thinks it is true. It must be true.

    If you’d just speak openly, there’d be no need to “play both sides” like you now do, Mung. It’s on you to clear things up, as usual, to quit your sealioning and talk straight. But since you’re apparently still a closet IDist, who can’t let go of the Discovery Institute’s “fake” theory used as weaponized theistic science apologetics (which you seem to LOVE as a jaded evangelical protestant proselytizing tool), you refuse to speak openly. This makes your views irrelevant, Mung, though predictable. Once an IDist, now can’t let that “precious” go?

    Following Brian Miller regarding “truth” is bound to shrink & compromise your thinking, Mung. You haven’t looked the man in the eyes & seen the “fake” “ID apologetics” he is pushing as “strictly science”. It doesn’t seem you’ve looked in the mirror recently in this regard either, posturing “Mung”.

  5. In short, computer programmer Mung with no training in science has confused “ID theory” with “truth”. The rabbit hole falls out from under one’s feet going that route. It’s a Seattle seduction, one that apparently Mung is going to wrap up and spread to his relatives under the Christmas tree.

  6. Gregory: In short, computer programmer Mung with no training in science has confused “ID theory” with “truth”.

    Silly Gregory. As if my training in science, of your lack of training in science, have anything to do with discerning truth.

    What I do know is that Gregory regularly issues forth statements which have no basis in fact. And when informed that his statements have no factual basis, does he reconsider? No, he does not.

    I pity you, Gregory. You seem to revel in your ignorance.

  7. Mung,
    You used to blurt out some decent humour from time to time. Now that you’re so upset about the US election, apparently, it’s just fumes of disaffection coming from you. That you elevate apologist Brian Miller as your “how truth can prevail” model indicates the low bar you’ve set for yourself. Seriously, Mung, you now seem a worse IDist than you were before, if that is possible!

    The Dunning-Kruger scale claimed Mung long ago. He’s now striving to fall into the Sal Cordova and Joe Gallien ranks, it seems. And then he’ll sealion a little, and ultimately blame it on someone else’s “ignorance” with “no basis in fact” compared to his brilliant IDism based only on double-talking buffoonery. It’s cultish behaviour, but that’s apparently Mung’s debt to the artificial “geniuses” at the Discovery Institute.

  8. Poor Gregory. It appears he can dish it out but he can’t take it. Such a snowflake.

    Gregory, if you want to contact me privately, start with an apology. Your comments, which could only arise from ignorance, are an affront.

    OMagain: You send them money.

    Grammatical nonsense. But I am thinking of making a substantial donation in Gregory’s name. 🙂

  9. Mung,
    The pity party still continues raging on the programmed far right wing, eh Mung?

    It seems the “can’t take it” Mung refers to means facing IDism. No, that’s not really a problem the way the DI “dishes it out”. IDism is for marginal evangelical Protestants who haven’t elevated their thinking beyond superficial conceptualisms like “intelligent design theory”, and for duplicitous sell-out Roman Catholics like Behe who hide their pride of fame and notoriety (paid well by the DI, right Mung?) behind “I’m a simple biochemist” when questions that threaten the “coherency” (something Mung the programmer lacks a sound basis in, with his drive-by cynical IDist & right-wing political apologetics here) of the “Movement” and the so-called “strictly science” arise, which are above Behe’s philosophistic pay grade. Behe’s an emperor wearing clothes to IDists, Mung included, while to the vast majority of religious and non-religious, Behe’s a tiny tempest-in-a-teapot dictator without clothes.

    [There’s no need to even mention Brian Miller, whose low-brow “brilliance” stunned Mung enough to post this thread, as Miller is there to give you his testimony as a “theistic scientist”. Mung likes that ideology, so it makes sense that Mung would support the weaponized theistic science apologetics that is known as “ID theory”, right?]

    Wrap it up as yet another year-end Ka-Ching for Mung, out of pocket to the Discovery Institute’s “geniuses” & “Intelligence missionaries”. = P https://youtu.be/iEe3hBXZEyI

Leave a Reply