Why Do Some People Believe In Obvious Falsehoods? (Earth, beliefs)

[Sunstone]

Why do people believe in things that are obviously false? For instance, why do some people believe the Holocaust never happened, or that the Theory of Evolution is utterly false, or that the earth is flat?

What role, if any, does ego play in someone holding such beliefs?

What, if anything, does the support of other like minded individuals play in someone holding a belief for which the evidence against it is overwhelming?

How do you account for the fact that some people who are very intelligent in some ways hold beliefs that are obviously false?

Are some people simply perverse and inclined to take views opposed to the views of most other people just to be contrary?

Is there a certain personality type that is more prone to accepting beliefs that are obviously false than other personality types?

[Buttercup]

I think some people believe the Holocaust didn't happen because they don't want to imagine something so horrific could be done by fellow humans. Others don't want to believe it because it looks bad for their race or nationality. Some don't want to believe it because they hate the Jews and would rather look away.

To me, whenever a person chooses to look away from obvious and proven truths....at the core of their psyche lies some insecurity. If they were to look at truth head on, it would negate something they've held dear and some don't want to change what they've known. It's too scary. Or others that consciously disbelieve truths are simply too arrogant to see reality.

[Laila]

Buttercup has made some very good points.
Another reason for blind/false belief could be due to laziness and lack of wanting to research reality.

[Laila]

hmm....I tend to have some views opposed to 'the majority', maybe I'm perverted

[evearael]

A particular statement isn't true just because a view is held by the majority.

Unless they have some extremely strong reasoning to back their claim up, I tend to loose quite a bit of respect for the person. I tend to agree with Buttercup's analysis. The sorts I've run into (that don't meet basic requirements for backing up their claim) tend to be intellectually lazy and/or priderful. In some cases, it is a matter of sheer paranoia or living out some perverse fantasy of the whole world being against them.

EDIT: Grammar... oops!

[Djamila]

Immediately after the war, I refused to believe that Bosniaks and Bosnian Croats had done anything to Bosnian Serbs. I was from a city held under siege for 3.5 years, a city whose people - Bosniaks, Bosnian Croats, Bosnian Serbs, and Bosnian Jews alike - died at the hands of Bosnian Serbs. My extended family lived in the Kozara Valley, in northern Bosnia. They were rounded up and sent to death camps by, you guessed it, Bosnian Serbs. And that was all I knew.

It was only with peace and calm conversation that you realized, although the overall nature of the war was as I experienced it, there were many specific examples that didn't fit into this view that Bosnian Serbs were always the bad guys, and the rest always the good guys. Meeting Bosniaks from Mostar, where Bosnian Croats were the aggressors, shocked me. I thought of Roman Catholics in Sarajevo, and how they fought alongside their neighbors, to defend the city from ethnic cleansing.

Meeting Bosnian Serbs from Ilidza, a suburb directly adjacent to where I was born and raised, who had been nothing short of tortured by their city's own defense forces shocked me. It especially shocked me because they were not Serbian nationalists, they were not screaming for a Greater Serbia or that Serbs are the one true race, they were just normal Sarajevans trying to survive the siege the same as the rest of us. Yet they were... treated like Japanese in America during WWII, and worse, by a city defense at least 15% composed of their own people. How is that not shocking?

But I couldn't say these things for a long time because acknowledging them took the focus away from the much larger, and much more systematic and deliberate, suffering of my own people. I felt as though acknowledging theirs was patting those who denied anything was done to mine. It's a matter of... feeling as though an injustice committed against you must be acknowledged, validated, before you're able to even consider others.

But then you realize...

The house where I grew up was owned by a old Serbian lady when I went to reclaim it. She took the house during the war, after we fled, and you know what she did - she packed all our surviving things into little boxes and kept them safe in case one of us ever returned. Family photos, some clothes, some things are all my most prized possessions now. Just to show you what I mean...

I literally would have NO image of my parents if not for her. But because of her I have several. I have my parent's wedding photo, and a photo of my mother and aunt.



So I didn't even try to reclaim the house. I just walked away. And I realized that denying things, and not acknowleding things... is stupid because we all want it.

I know in my heart that if a Serbian woman from Celebici came to me and hugged me and said she was sorry, the FIRST thing I would do is say the same back. So why not just the first? And it's worked for me thus far. The politicians, the anger, the memories - all of that. Not acknowledging others just makes it stronger, it's like building a stronger foundation for it.

So you just have to let go, and give everyone as much of a chance as you are capable of doing - because people are capable of truly great things.

[Random]

Originally Posted by Sunstone

Why do people believe in things that are obviously false? For instance, why do some people believe the Holocaust never happened, or that the Theory of Evolution is utterly false, or that the earth is flat?

What role, if any, does ego play in someone holding such beliefs?

What, if anything, does the support of other like minded individuals play in someone holding a belief for which the evidence against it is overwhelming?

How do you account for the fact that some people who are very intelligent in some ways hold beliefs that are obviously false?

Are some people simply perverse and inclined to take views opposed to the views of most other people just to be contrary?

Is there a certain personality type that is more prone to accepting beliefs that are obviously false than other personality types?

Are you thinking of anyone in particular here?

[nutshell]

Originally Posted by Sunstone

Why do people believe in things that are obviously false? For instance, why do some people believe the Holocaust never happened, or that the Theory of Evolution is utterly false, or that the earth is flat?

What role, if any, does ego play in someone holding such beliefs?

What, if anything, does the support of other like minded individuals play in someone holding a belief for which the evidence against it is overwhelming?

How do you account for the fact that some people who are very intelligent in some ways hold beliefs that are obviously false?

Are some people simply perverse and inclined to take views opposed to the views of most other people just to be contrary?

Is there a certain personality type that is more prone to accepting beliefs that are obviously false than other personality types?

One person's obvious falsehood is another person's anchor of Truth.

[Sunstone]

Originally Posted by Godlike

Are you thinking of anyone in particular here?

Should I be thinking of someone in particular? If so, who?