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Maybe not.
I have been teaching for 20+ years and I can tell you that some people are just bent on sticking with their misunderstanding no matter how you explain things.

Anyway, checkout this video about the Biblical flood and the Grand Canyon. (It gets funny)
Now I hesitate to call anyone a moron but the kid with the garden hose makes me dispair. Does anyone think this could be cured with more education?
And, what is the cure for the likes of Kent Hovind? He is quick and obviously processes a massive amount of (mis)information but something is missing? I don't think the greatest teachers available could have prevented him from his course of inanity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Wa_ey3j ... creen&NR=1

Hey Tarski

After a recent three week break from the MDB, your OP is the very first thing that I read upon my return here (Go figure!) :)

In response to your question, I would say that no amount of education can help these poor deluded morons.

Happy New Year to all!

Good to be back among the learned. :)

Peace,
Ceeboo

Stupidity is different from ignorance. Education can ameliorate ignorance but doesn't always have an impact on stupidity. Too often, stupidity is a willful choice.

Ceeboo wrote:Hey Tarski

After a recent three week break from the MDB, your OP is the very first thing that I read upon my return here (Go figure!) :)

In response to your question, I would say that no amount of education can help these poor deluded morons.

Happy New Year to all!

Good to be back among the learned. :)

Peace,
Ceeboo

Nice to see you back, Ceeboo!

I hope you are wrong. It would be nice to think that the "stupid by choice" could be led back to bright shining uplands. Someone taught them to be stupid. Maybe someone could teach them not to be.

Education requires someone willing to challenge their cherished views, to re-examine anything, and be prepared to do some serious work to justify what beliefs they have.

Education would help that kid, but he has to be prepared to do all of the above, otherwise it is just a game. That is why I’m always amused at schools like BYU or Biola, where people go to reinforce cherished beliefs, instead of putting them on the line. Why think that is an education?

Quasimodo wrote:
Nice to see you back, Ceeboo!

Hey QM! Thank you, Sir. Good to be back!

Someone taught them to be stupid. Maybe someone could teach them not to be.

The MDB? :)


Peace,
Ceeboo

Does anyone think this could be cured with more education?

No. These people believe that the Bible preaches specifically against Big Bang/Evolution. The LDS Church itself does not have this problem thankfully, but some in it certainly do.

Ceeboo wrote:

Quasimodo wrote:
Nice to see you back, Ceeboo!

Hey QM! Thank you, Sir. Good to be back!

Someone taught them to be stupid. Maybe someone could teach them not to be.

The MDB? :)


Peace,
Ceeboo

One can only hope :).

It is a matter of culture. Education is about imparting culture on people. Some influences are more of a deciding factor than others when it comes to determining what pieces of a culture sticks to a person. Some culture comes from parents, some from school, some from friends, some from television, books, etc. When we learn something, we learn by association. Our brains hold onto a piece of information relative to everything else we already know. To unlearn our own culture may be physically impossible.

We get emotionally attached the reality determined by our culture and become biased towards it in really bizarre ways, sometimes. Many people cannot even comprehend opposing points of view. They cannot even make themselves read the words. I think Brian H was the most recent shining example of this. Our own culture is the lens from which we judge all experience, and in all cultures there are blind spots. I feel like I have been gradually eliminating these blind spots my whole life, and I do my best to be aware of them when they are there.

The truth is there are a great number of groups that are competing to alter every person's culture to work in their favor. Everything you see on television is engineered in some way to put forth an inaccurate portrayal of events or reality to sway your opinion. It doesn't have to be an agenda, either. People unconsciously and instinctively share their culture with everyone around them.

To answer the question; yes. Education can fix things. The Mormon Church uses education effectively to control and correlate culture across a widespread group of people. I am sure that, in many of their minds, they feel like they are fixing things, too. Obviously, the problem is that everyone has a different and often opposing idea of what "fix" actually means.

And, though it all often seems hopeless, progress is continually being made. We are just at the beginning of the technological revolution. Children born next year are going to grow up in a vastly more connected world than the previous generation. Increasing awareness is what we have been doing as a race since we huddled around our very first fires. Complexity, entropy, the collective consciousness... whatever you'd like to call it... is increasing and accelerating.

I would like to think that means human understanding will grow by leaps and bounds. Really, I have little doubt of it. In a modern culture with modern teaching methods in modern subjects, the cultures of fundamentalists will wither and decay until there is virtually nothing meaningful left to them.

The new religion will be about understanding all of the real ways in which we are all connected and working together to abandon old ideas in favor of new ones that will actually make society better and people happier. Of course, I could be reading the situation all wrong. It's not always easy to fathom the repercussions of a world with more cell phones than toothbrushes.

MrStakhanovite wrote:Education requires someone willing to challenge their cherished views, to re-examine anything, and be prepared to do some serious work to justify what beliefs they have.

Education would help that kid, but he has to be prepared to do all of the above, otherwise it is just a game. That is why I’m always amused at schools like BYU or Biola, where people go to reinforce cherished beliefs, instead of putting them on the line. Why think that is an education?

I agree in with this in theory. In practice, education sometimes, maybe often, happens by accident. I usually get gobsmacked by education when I'm least expecting it. I even accidentally got a bit of education at BYU.