(January 27, 2015 at 6:27 am)robvalue Wrote: 4) They don't care whether what they say is true. Even when they make claims which are unambiguously refuted, they will either ignore such refutation or compound more lies on top to try and maintain the illusion of knowledge.I think it's more the opposite: they care very much that what they say is true. Remember that they need for the things they believe to be true. There is bound to be some wiggle room due to the ability to interpret certain details one way or another, but the foundational teachings have to be true, or the whole structure comes apart.
This is why you often get explanations that seem to defy logic or decency. It may not matter if it sounds good or horrifying; if it can hold the narrative together, it will have to do. It's also why there's such a heavy reliance on "plausibility." Stuff like "it could have happened this way" and "you can't prove otherwise" help to keep the hope up that when such matters are finally settled, they will have been correct.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
