Comments on: Michael Shermer talks patternicity and agenticity

By: Erich Vieth

Erich Vieth — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 07:20:25 +0000

Why do people believe so readily in conspiracy theories? Because we crave Agency. According a recent Salon.com article by Thomas Rogers, believing in agency helps us to dispel the fear of our powerlessness in the face of the vast unknown. He goes further to suggest that the same instinct drives believe in conspiracy theories and gods.

What makes us susceptible to conspiracy theories? We want to believe theories that contradict the idea that young, iconic people died senselessly. If a story takes away the accidental from their death, it gives them agency. After the JFK assassination, it was unbearable to many people that they could live in a country where a lone gunman could kill a president. In those circumstances, it’s not surprising that an overarching conspiracy theory emerges. It suggests that somebody is in control, rather than that we’re at the mercy of our neighbors and to some extent of ourselves (as was the case with Marilyn Monroe and Princess Diana). It’s the urge to make sense of a particularly traumatic moment.

In some ways, it’s not that different from the impulse to believe in God. It is deep down a leap of faith, but it doesn’t present itself as a leap of faith.

http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2010/02/03/david_aaronovitch_conspiracy_theories?source=newsletter

By: Erich Vieth

Erich Vieth — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 06:57:38 +0000

Michael Shermer at Scientific American: “I’m a skeptic not because I do not want to believe but because I want to know. I believe that the truth is out there. But how can we tell the difference between what we would like to be true and what is actually true? The answer is science.”

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=what-skepticism-reveals

By: Danny

Danny — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 06:45:07 +0000

I knew it! Since belief in supernatural is all just wish-fulfillment and a hard-wired psychological phenomenon, then why be so hard on those poor theists?

One may say, being theist isn’t so bad as long as they keep it to themselves and don’t meddle in politics and public policy. But the theist’s desire to over exert their brand of truth is also evolutionarily hard-wired.

But then, one may say the skeptics desire combat the evils and irrationality of theism is also evolutionarily hard-wired.

Even my thoughts about this post and what I’m writing is just the natural byproduct of the electronic blips in my brain which are completely uncontrolled by me, since there is no scientific evidence for volition.

I’m a hard naturalist/antisupernaturalist and I say we all leave each other alone (which of course, I’m saying because it’s hard-wired that I do so). How is anyone to win over anyone by reason when we are naturally and evolutionarily predisposed to our own beliefs?

Observable Nature is supreme, who can resist her will?

By: grumpypilgrim

grumpypilgrim — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 05:54:23 +0000

Agenticity has at least one reasonable evolutionary explanation. Imagine you are a prehistoric human sleeping somewhere in the African wilderness. Amid the darkness of night you hear a twig snap. Your neighbor ignores the sound and continues sleeping, but you suspect that the noise was caused by an unseen agent — for example, a hungry leopard — and so you reach for your spear to protect yourself. The result: your neighbor is more likely than you to become cat food. Thus, evolution favors humans, like you, who can imagine unseen agents. Indeed, not only would evolution favor nervous, superstitious humans, but ones who are *fearful*, perhaps even terrified, of unseen agents. Now, toss in some frightening nightmares about meteorological (i.e., agricultural) calamities, or dead enemies coming back to kill you, or perhaps a deranged neighbor who rants about seeing invisible evildoers, and you have the ingredients for a religion.