Quote:
Originally Posted by renormalised
What I can see here, Steven, is that these lunatics see science, in general, and scientists in particular as a threat to their cherished notions of what constitutes "reality". This is precisely the same attitude and reaction that the religious fanatic or misguided person undergoes. Strong, "faith" based ideologies tend to produce these sort of reactions in people. You can see this in the homepage for T'bolts where they have "a role for you" in one corner. They're trying to appeal to the personal in order to make converts to their "religion". Trying to activate the internalised sense of faith and belonging to something greater than themselves. Politicians use exactly the same tactics in order to win support. It's the oldest trick in the book and the way religions, political groups and tyrants/dictators etc get their support base. Much like the jingoistic, nationalistic campaigns to win support for war efforts. Science, because it doesn't represent any of that and comes from an entirely different PoV and paradigm, is seen as a threat to that mode of thinking. Hence, because scientists represent that "heresy", they're attacked as being the messengers of the "false prophecy".
When you appeal to that belonging to and longing for something greater, you invariably get those that are dissatisfied with the accepted way of thinking and its philosophy, joining the aberrant line of thought. In whatever way they may be dissatisfied and to whatever degree they disagree with and/or can't accept/understand the orthodox train of thought.
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Carl,
Leaving aside the more extreme elements that advocate executing Relativists or murdering Climate Scientists on the grounds of fundamentalism, sites like Tbolts exploit the human nature of resenting people that are perceived as being more intelligent.
The Tbolts forums frequently degenerate into attacking the intellectual capacities of say an Einstein or a Hawking by people who do not even have vaguest comprehension of their works. Then there is the general criticism of associating mainstream science with religion implying that scientists are unable to think for themselves.
It seems that the portrayal of scientists as imbeciles is done by individuals that are most threatened.
Like any good pseudoscience site, Tbolts associates simplicity with "truth".
EU is easier to understand than the "mathemagic" mainstream so therefore it must be right.
Regards
Steven