Dichard Rawkins wrote:
Immortalist <reanimater_2000@yahoo.com> wrote in message
<1157398883.470925.10230@h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>
In considering the causal argument as a whole, one contradiction
immediately stands out. The first premise of this argument states that
everything must have a cause, and the conclusion asserts the existence
of an uncaused supernatural being. But if everything must have a cause,
how did god become exempt?
That's the way believers operate. They make special exceptions only for their
god, no matter how absurd or unoriginal. They will critique other religions as
"terrorist-friendly", wrong, illogical, nonsensical, evil, etc., freely
pointing out the flaws in these other religions, but ignoring the glaring
flaws, errors and immorality of their own religious beliefs. Even the word
"love" has a special exception just for God in Christian mythology, so that
when a Christian says their "god is love", it doesn't actually mean anything
(though believers like to pretend with each other that they alone "get it").
In fact, Christians really go overboard in this obsession with pretending that
their god is somehow "special", somehow the one exception.
Everything you have described seems to be what all humans do when
"aroused" by conflicting notions. Tell an Atheist that the news just
found proof of God and his ears will perk up and he might get all
excited just like when the Atheist tells the Christian that there is no
God.
So I don't see a difference between these Christians and Atheists when
dealing with your points. Here is a broader description of the arousal
you just felt upon reading these awsome werds of mine.
Cognitive Dissonance Theory
"Inconsistency among related beliefs . . .produces motivation to do
whatever is easiest in order to regain cognitive consistency or
consonance among beliefs."
Jones and Gerard, Foundations of Social Psychology,1967, John Wiley and
Sons, at p. 42.
During the late 1950's Leon Festinger developed the cognitive
dissonance theory to explain attitude formation and change. According
to the theory, there is a tendency to seek consistency among their
cognitions (i.e., ideas, beliefs, opinions).
Cognitive dissonance is the state
of tension one feels after making
a decision, taking an action, or
being exposed to some information
that is (contrary) to a prior attitude
-(Zimbardo et al., 1999, p. 752).
The state of tension is
psychologically unpleasant,
so something must change to
reduce the dissonance --
usually the prior attitude.
For example, a person may believe smoking is bad for her health, but
when she starts smoking she finds herself with inconsistent cognitions
("Smoking is unhealthy" and "I smoke") creating an unpleasant state of
dissonance, so she changes her prior attitude ("Smoking is not really
as bad for you as they make it seem"). Festinger also theorized that,
if a person could sufficiently attribute their behavior to an external
influence, his dissonance would be lower and thus there would be a
lesser attitude change. For a great example of this, see Supporting
Studies.
Cognitive dissonance explains well the process of effort justification.
If a person puts for a great deal of effort (i.e., energy, time,
money), he wants to feel like it was worth it. For example, if someone
pays a high price for a new car and finds the car uncomfortable, he may
experience dissonance and so to reduce it, he alters his attitude about
the car to be more positive. One well-known study that supported this,
showed that if someone puts forth a lot of effort to get into a group,
the dissonance of potentially working hard for nothing causes them to
reduce that dissonance by liking the group more (Aronson, 1969).
Cognitive dissonance is by no means a full-proof theory for predicting
attitude change. People do not always change their attitudes when there
is dissonance. For one thing, people differ in how much inconsistency
they can tolerate. Another thing is that two cognitions that seem
inconsistent to one person may not be to another. Still, despite some
mixed results, many studies have supported the idea that dissonance
does underlie many of our attitude shifts.
http://www.sfb504.uni-mannheim.de/glossary/cogdis.htm
http://chiron.valdosta.edu/mawhatley/9710/cogdiss.htm
http://www.apa.org/books/4318830s.html
The Social Animal - Elliot Aronson - 8th Edition 1999
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0716733129/
Dissonance as a Consequence of Making a Decision
Suppose you are about to make a decision-about the purchase of a new
car, for example. This involves a significant amount of money, so it
is, by definition, an important decision. After looking around, you are
torn between getting a van and purchasing a compact model. There are
various advantages and disadvantages to each: The van would be
convenient; you can haul things in it, sleep in it during long trips,
and it has plenty of power, but it gets atrocious mileage and is not
easy to park. The compact model is less roomy, and you are concerned
about its safety, but it is less expensive to buy and operate, it is
more fun to drive, and you've heard it has a pretty good repair record.
My guess is that, before you make the decision, you will seek as much
information as you can. Chances are you will read Consumer Reports to
find out what this expert, unbiased source has to say. Perhaps you'll
confer with friends who own a van or a compact car. You'll probably
visit the automobile dealers to test-drive the vehicles to see how each
one feels. All of this predecision behavior is perfectly rational. Let
us assume you make a decision- you buy the compact car. What happens
next? Your behavior will begin to change: No longer will you seek
objective information about all makes of cars. Chances are you may
begin to spend more time talking with the owners of small cars. You
will begin to talk about the number of miles to the gallon as though it
were the most important thing in the world. My guess is that you will
not be prone to spend much time thinking about the fact that you can't
sleep in your compact. Similarly, your mind will skim lightly over the
fact that driving your new car can be particularly hazardous in a
collision and that the brakes are not very responsive, although your
failure to attend to these shortcomings could conceivably cost you your
life.
How does this sort of thing come about? Following a
decision-especially a difficult one, or one that involves a
significant amount of time, effort, or money-people almost always
experience dissonance. This is so because the chosen alternative is
seldom entirely positive and the rejected alternatives are seldom
entirely negative. In this example, your cognition that you bought a
compact is dissonant with your cognition about any deficiencies the car
may have. Similarly, all the positive aspects of the other cars that
you considered buying but did not purchase are dissonant with your
cognition that you did not buy one of them. A good way to reduce such
dissonance is to seek out exclusively positive information about the
car you chose and avoid negative information about it. One source of
safe information is advertisements; it is a safe bet that an ad will
not run down its own product. Accordingly, one might predict that a
person who had recently purchased a new car will begin to read
advertisements selectively, reading more ads about his or her car after
the purchase than people who have not recently purchased the same
model. Moreover, owners of new cars will tend to steer clear of ads for
other makes of cars. This is exactly what Danuta Ehrlich and her
colleagues found in a well-known survey of advertising readership. In
short, Ehrlich's data suggest that, after making decisions, people try
to gain reassurance that their decisions were wise by seeking
information that is certain to be reassuring.
People do not always need help from Madison Avenue to gain reassurance;
they can do a pretty good job of reassuring themselves. An experiment
by Jack Brehm demonstrates how this can come about. Posing as a
marketing researcher, Brehm showed several women eight different
appliances (a toaster, an electric coffee maker, a sandwich grill, and
the like) and asked that they rate them in terms of how attractive each
appliance was. As a reward, each woman was told she could have one of
the appliances as a gift-and she was given a choice between two of
the products she had rated as being equally attractive. After she chose
one, it was wrapped up and given to her. Several minutes later, she was
asked to rate the products again. It was found that after receiving the
appliance of her choice, each woman rated the attractiveness of that
appliance somewhat higher and decreased the rating of the appliance she
had a chance to own but rejected. Again, making a decision produces
dissonance: Cognitions about any negative aspects of the preferred
object are dissonant with having chosen it, and cognitions about the
positive aspects of the unchosen object are dissonant with not having
chosen it. To reduce dissonance, people cognitively spread apart the
alternatives. That is, after making their decision, the women in
Brehm's study emphasized the positive attributes of the appliance they
decided to own while deemphasizing its negative attributes; for the
appliance they decided not to own, they emphasized its negative
attributes and deemphasized its positive attributes.
The tendency to justify one's choices is not limited to consumer
decisions. In fact, research has demonstrated that similar processes
can even affect our romantic relationships and our willingness to
consider becoming involved with alternative partners. In a study
conducted by Dennis Johnson and Caryl Rusbult, college students were
asked to evaluate the probable success of a new computer dating service
on campus. Subjects were shown pictures of individuals of the opposite
sex, who they believed were applicants to the dating service. Subjects
were then asked to rate the attractiveness of these applicants, as well
as how much they believed they would enjoy a potential date with him or
her-a possibility that was presented in a realistic manner. The
results of this study were remarkably similar to Brehm's findings about
appliances: The more heavily committed the students were to their
current romantic partners, the more negative were their ratings of the
attractiveness of alternative partners presented in the study. In a
subsequent experiment, Jeffry Simpson and his colleagues also found
that those in committed relationships saw opposite-sex persons as less
physically and sexually attractive than did those who weren't in
committed relationships. In addition, Simpson and his co-workers showed
that this effect holds only for "available others"; when presented with
individuals who were somewhat older or who were of the same sex, people
in committed relationships did not derogate their attractiveness. In
short, no threat, no dissonance; no dissonance, no derogation.
In sum, whether we are talking about appliances or romantic partners,
once a firm commitment has been made, people tend to focus on the
positive aspects of their choices and to downplay the attractive
qualities of the unchosen alternatives.
Some Historical Examples of the Consequences of Decisions. Although
some of the material discussed above is benign enough, it is impossible
to overstate the potential dangers posed by our susceptibility to these
tendencies. When I mentioned that ignoring potential danger in order to
reduce dissonance could conceivably lead to a person's death, I meant
that literally. Suppose a madman has taken over your country and has
decided to eradicate all members of your religious group. But you don't
know that for sure. What you do know is that your country is being
occupied, that the leader of the occupation forces does not like your
religious group, and that occasionally members of your faith are forced
to move from their homes and are kept in detention camps. What do you
do? You could try to flee from your country; you could try to pass as a
member of a different religious group; or you could sit tight and hope
for the best. Each of these options is extremely dangerous: It is
difficult to escape or to pass and go undetected; and if you are caught
trying to flee or disguising your identity, the penalty is immediate
execution. On the other hand, deciding to sit tight could be a
disastrous decision if it turns out that your religious group is being
systematically annihilated. Let us suppose you decide not to take
action. That is, you commit yourself to sit tight-turning your back
on opportunities to try either to escape or to pass. Such an important
decision naturally produces a great deal of dissonance. In order to
reduce dissonance, you convince yourself that you made a wise
decision-that is, you convince yourself that, although people of your
religious sect are made to move and are being treated unfairly, they
are not being killed unless they break the law. This position is not
difficult to maintain because there is no unambiguous evidence to the
contrary.
Suppose that, months later, a respected man from your town tells you
that while hiding in the forest, he witnessed soldiers butchering all
the men, women, and children who had recently been deported from the
town. I would predict that you would try to dismiss this information as
untrue-that you would attempt to convince yourself that the reporter
was lying or hallucinating. If you had listened to the man who tried to
warn you, you might have escaped. Instead, you and your family are
slaughtered.
Fantastic? Impossible? How could anyone not take the respected man
seriously? The events described above are an accurate account of what
happened in 1944 to the Jews in Sighet, Hungary.
The processes of cognitive distortion and selective exposure to
information may have been an important factor in the escalation of the
war in Vietnam. In a thought-provoking analysis of the Pentagon Papers,
Ralph White suggested that dissonance blinded our leaders to
information incompatible with the decisions they had already made. As
White put it, "There was a tendency, when actions were out of line with
ideas, for decision makers to align their ideas with their actions."To
take just one of many examples, the decision to continue to escalate
the bombing of North Vietnam was made at the price of ignoring crucial
evidence from the CIA and other sources that made it clear that bombing
would not break the will of the North Vietnamese people but, quite the
contrary, would only strengthen their resolve:
It is instructive, for instance, to compare [Secretary of Defense
Robert] McNamara's highly factual evidence-oriented summary of the case
against bombing in 1966 (pages 555-63 of the Pentagon Papers) with the
Joint Chief's memorandum that disputed his conclusion and called the
bombing one of our two trump cards, while it apparently ignored all of
the facts that showed the opposite. Yet it was the Joint Chiefs who
prevailed.
White surmises that the reason they prevailed was that their advice was
consonant with decisions already made and with certain key assumptions
then operating that later proved to be erroneous.
Escalation is self-perpetuating. Once a small commitment is made, it
sets the stage for ever-increasing commitments. The behavior needs to
be justified, so attitudes are changed; this change in attitudes
influences future decisions and behavior. The flavor of this kind of
cognitive escalation is nicely captured in an analysis of the Pentagon
Papers by the news magazine Time:
Yet the bureaucracy, the Pentagon Papers indicate, always demanded new
options; each option was to apply more force. Each tightening of the
screw created a position that must be defended; once committed, the
military pressure must be maintained.
The process underlying escalation has been explored, on a more
individual level, under controlled experimental conditions. Suppose you
would like to enlist someone's aid in a massive undertaking, but you
know the job you have in mind for the person is so difficult, and will
require so much time and effort, that the person will surely decline.
What should you do? One possibility is to get the person involved in a
much smaller aspect of the job, one so easy that he or she wouldn't
dream of turning it down. This action serves to commit the individual
to "the cause." Once people are thus committed, the likelihood of their
complying with the larger request increases. This phenomenon was
demonstrated by Jonathan Freedman and Scott Fraser. They attempted to
induce several homeowners to put up a huge sign in their front yards
reading "Drive Carefully." Because of the ugliness and obtrusiveness of
this sign, most residents refused to put it up; only 17 percent
complied. A different group of residents, however, were first "softened
up" by an experimenter who got them to sign a petition favoring safe
driving. Because signing a petition is an easy thing to do, virtually
all who were asked agreed to sign. A few weeks later, a different
experimenter went to each resident with the obtrusive, ugly sign
reading "Drive Carefully." More than 55 percent of these residents
allowed the sign to be put up on their property. Thus, when individuals
commit themselves in a small way, the likelihood that they will commit
themselves further in that direction is increased. This process of
using small favors to encourage people to accede to larger requests had
been dubbed the foot-in-the-door technique. It is effective because
having done the smaller favor sets up pressure toward agreeing to do
the larger favor; in effect, it provides justification in advance for
complying with the large request.
Similar results were obtained by Patricia Pliner and her associates.
These investigators found that 46 percent of their sample were willing
to make a small donation to the Cancer Society when they were
approached directly. A similar group of people were asked 1 day earlier
to wear a lapel pin publicizing the fund-raising drive. When approached
the next day, approximately twice as many of these people were willing
to make a contribution.
Think back to Stanley Milgram's classic experiments on obedience
discussed in Chapter 2. Suppose that, at the very beginning of the
experiment, Milgram had instructed his subjects to deliver a shock of
450 volts. Do you think many people would have obeyed? Probably not. My
guess is that, in a sense, the mild shocks near the beginning of the
experiment served as a foot-in-the-door induction to Milgram's
subjects. Because the increases in shock level are gradual, the subject
is engaged in a series of self-justifications. If you are the subject,
once you have justified step one, that justification makes it easier to
go to step two; once you justify step two, it is easier to go to step
three; and so on. By the time you get to 450 volts, well, heck, that's
not much different from 435 volts, is it? In other words, once
individuals start down that slippery slope of self-justification, it
becomes increasingly difficult to draw a line in the sand-because in
effect, they end up asking themselves, "Why draw it here if I didn't
draw it 15 volts ago?"
The Importance of Irrevocability
One of the important characteristics of the examples presented above is
the relative irrevocability of the decision. This needs some
explaining: Occasionally, we make tentative decisions. For example, if
you had indicated you might buy an expensive house near San Francisco,
but the decision was not finalized, chances are you would not expend
any effort trying to convince yourself of the wisdom of the decision.
Once you had put your money down, however, and you knew you couldn't
easily get it back, you would probably start minimizing the importance
of the dampness in the basement, the cracks in the foundation, or the
fact that the house happened to be built on the San Andreas Fault.
Similarly, once a European Jew had decided not to pass and had allowed
himself to be identified as a Jew, the decision was irrevocable; he
could not easily pretend to be a Gentile. By the same token, once
Pentagon officials intensified the bombing of North Vietnam, they could
not undo it. And once a homeowner had signed the petition, a commitment
to safe driving was established.
Some direct evidence for the importance of irrevocability comes from a
clever study of the cognitive gyrations of gamblers at a race track.
The race track is an ideal place to scrutinize irrevocability because
once you've placed your bet, you can't go back and tell the nice man
behind the window you've changed your mind. Robert Knox and James
Inkster simply intercepted people who were on their way to place $2
bets. They had already decided on their horses and were about to place
their bets when the investigators asked them how certain they were that
their horses would win. Because they were on their way to the $2
window, their decisions were not irrevocable. The investigators
collared other bettors just as they were leaving the $2 window, after
having placed their bets, and asked them how certain they were that
their horses would win. Typically, people who had just placed their
bets gave their horses a much better chance of winning than did those
who were about to place their bets. But, of course, nothing had changed
except the finality of the decision. Similar results were obtained in a
survey of Canadian voters. Those voters interviewed immediately after
voting were more certain their candidates would win and liked their
candidates more than those voters interviewed immediately before they
had cast their votes. In short, when a decision is irrevocable, more
dissonance is aroused; to reduce this dissonance, people become more
certain they are right after there is nothing they can do about it.
While the irrevocability of a decision always increases dissonance and
the motivation to reduce it, there are circumstances in which
irrevocability is unnecessary. Let me explain with an example. Suppose
you enter an automobile showroom intent on buying a new car. You've
already priced the car you want at several dealers; you know you can
purchase it for about $9,300. Lo and behold, the salesman tells you he
can sell you one for 18,942. Excited by the bargain, you agree to the
deal and write out a check for the down payment. While the salesman
takes your check to the sales manager to consummate the deal, you rub
your hands in glee as you imagine yourself driving home in your shiny
new car. But alas, 10 minutes later, the salesman returns with a
forlorn look on his face; it seems he made a calculation error, and the
sales manager caught it. The price of the car is actually $9,384. You
can get it cheaper elsewhere; moreover, the decision to buy is not
irrevocable. And yet, far more people in this situation will go ahead
with the deal than if the original asking price had been $9,384-even
though the reason for purchasing the car from this dealer (the bargain
price) no longer exists. Indeed, Robert Cialdini, a social psychologist
who temporarily joined the sales force of an automobile dealer,
discovered that the strategy described above is a common and successful
ploy called lowballing, or throwing the customer a lowball.
What is going on in this situation? There are at least three important
things to notice. First, while the customer's decision to buy is
certainly reversible, there is a commitment emphasized by the act of
signing a check for a down payment. Second, this commitment triggered
the anticipation of a pleasant or interesting experience: driving out
with a new car. To have the anticipated event thwarted (by not going
ahead with the deal) would have produced dissonance and disappointment.
Third, although the final price is substantially higher than the
customer thought it would be, it is only slightly higher than the price
somewhere else. Under these circumstances, the customer in effect says,
"Oh, what the hell. I'm already here; I've already filled out the
forms-why wait?" Clearly, such a ploy would not be effective if the
consequences were somewhat higher as in matters of life and death.
The Decision to Behave Immorally. How can an honest person become
corrupt? Conversely, how can we get a person to be more honest? One way
is through the dissonance that results from making a difficult
decision. Suppose you are a college student enrolled in a biology
course. Your grade will hinge on the final exam you are now taking. The
key question on the exam involves some material you know fairly
well-but, because of anxiety, you draw a blank. You are sitting there
in a nervous sweat. You look up, and lo and behold, you happen to be
sitting behind a woman who is the smartest person in the class (who
also happens, fortunately, to be the person with the most legible
handwriting in the class). You glance down and notice she is just
completing her answer to the crucial question. You know you could
easily read her answer if you chose to. What do you do? Your conscience
tells you it's wrong to cheat-and yet, if you don't cheat, you are
certain to get a poor grade. You wrestle with your conscience.
Regardless of whether you decide to cheat or not to cheat, you are
doomed to experience dissonance. If you cheat, your cognition "I am a
decent moral person" is dissonant with your cognition "I have just
committed an immoral act." If you decide to resist temptation, your
cognition "I want to get a good grade" is dissonant with your cognition
"I could have acted in a way that would have ensured a good grade, but
I chose not to."
Suppose that, after a difficult struggle, you decide to cheat. How do
you reduce the dissonance? Before you read on, think about it for a
moment. One way to reduce dissonance is to minimize the negative
aspects of the action you have chosen (and to maximize the positive
aspects)-much the same way the women did after choosing an appliance
in Jack Brehm's experiment. In this instance, an efficacious path of
dissonance reduction would entail a change in your attitude about
cheating. In short, you will adopt a more lenient attitude. Your
reasoning might go something like this: "Cheating isn't so bad under
some circumstances. As long as nobody gets hurt, it's really not very
immoral. Anybody would do it. Therefore, it's a part of human
nature-so how could it be bad? Since it is only human, those who get
caught cheating should not be severely punished but should be treated
with understanding."
Suppose that, after a difficult struggle, you decide not to cheat. How
would you reduce dissonance? Once again, you could change your attitude
about the morality of the act-but in the opposite direction. That is,
in order to justify giving up a good grade, you must convince yourself
that cheating is a heinous sin, that it's one of the lowest things a
person can do, and that cheaters should be found out and severely
punished.
The interesting and important thing to remember here is that two people
acting in the two different ways described above could have started out
with almost identical attitudes. Their decisions might have been a
hair's breadth apart: One came within an ace of resisting but decided
to cheat, while the other came within an ace of cheating but decided to
resist. Once they have made their decisions, however, their attitudes
toward cheating will diverge sharply as a consequence of their
decisions.
These speculations were put to the test by Judson Mills in an
experiment with sixth graders. Mills first measured their attitudes
toward cheating. He then had them participate in a competitive exam
with prizes being offered to the winners. The situation was arranged so
that it was almost impossible to win without cheating; also, it was
easy for the children to cheat, thinking they would not be detected. As
one might expect, some of the students cheated and others did not. The
next day, the sixth graders were again asked to indicate how they felt
about cheating. In general, those children who had cheated became more
lenient toward cheating, and those who resisted the temptation to cheat
adopted a harsher attitude toward cheating.
The data from Mills's experiment are provocative indeed. One thing they
suggest is that the most zealous opponents of a given position are not
those who have always been distant from that position. For example, one
might hazard a guess that the people who are most angry at the apparent
sexual freedom associated with the current generation of young people
may not be those who have never been tempted to engage in casual sexual
activity themselves. Indeed, Mills's data suggest the possibility that
the people who have the strongest need to crack down hard on this sort
of behavior are those who have been sorely tempted, who came
dangerously close to giving in to this temptation, but who finally
resisted. People who almost decide to live in glass houses are
frequently the ones who are most prone to throw stones.
Early in this chapter, I mentioned that the desire for
self-justification is an important reason why people who are strongly
committed to an attitude on an issue tend to resist any direct attempts
to change that attitude. In effect, such people are invulnerable to the
propaganda or education in question. We can now see that the same
mechanism that enables a person to cling to an attitude can induce that
individual to change an attitude. It depends on which course of action
will serve most to reduce dissonance under the circumstances. A person
who understands the theory can set up the proper conditions to induce
attitude change in other people by making them vulnerable to certain
kinds of beliefs. For example, if a modern Machiavelli were advising a
contemporary ruler, he might suggest the following strategies based on
the theory and data on the consequences of decisions:
1. If you want people to form more positive attitudes toward an object,
get them to commit themselves to own that object.
2. If you want people to soften their moral attitudes toward some
misdeed, tempt them so that they perform that deed; conversely, if you
want people to harden their moral attitudes toward a misdeed, tempt
them-but not enough to induce them to commit the deed.
The Social Animal - Elliot Aronson - 8th Edition 1999
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0716733129/
...They will say things
like "there's just something about that name!", or "Hallowed be thy name",
because a name is by definition a special exception, a way to separate one's
god from all the other otherwise indistinguishable rabble of deities. And this
"specialness", as one could call it, is a sensitive topic for Christians, so
much so that they refuse to admit or listen to the facts that their god and
their beliefs are in fact not special at all, but are rather unoriginal
variations on earlier deities and myths.
It is this conceited belief that Judaism, Christianity or Islam is somehow
special that really cries out for deflation and a severe reality check. Anybody
who thinks Christianity is unique or special deserves a good thunk on the head
to wake them up from their narcissistic slumber.
--
***Free Your Mind***
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