But people who reject science have no such ulterior motives of course. I mean, why would anyone bother arguing vaccines?
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Well, pro-vaxxers have the ulterior motive of not wanting to live in a world where millions die needlessly of smallpox. So I guess @BenKissling has us there.
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Obviously the sort of rhetorical question he alluded to was silly. There are innumerable facts of the world we could potentially argue the truth of, but don’t, because they don’t affect our lives in any meaningful way and hence we don’t care about them.
So it’s not merely about what is true(though of course it is that too), but what those truthes are taken to imply and what people do or not, if they accept them.
@BenKissling is on this website having discussions around creationism, evolution, and religion. Why those topics instead of the color of the tiles on my bathroom floor? Why isn’t this forum about that, why don’t people care about my bathroom floor? They don’t argue about it because it has no bearing on their lives, so they have no reason to care about it.
Why do creationists care about whether evolution is true or not? If it was merely about what is true or not in some purely abstract or intellectual sense, and nothing else, totally disconnected from the perceived real-world consequences of those facts, then there’d be no reason why some topics were contentious and others were not. Then why would anyone bother arguing about it?
Isn’t the creationist who denies evolutionary science also motivated to oppose it because of the perceived consequences of accepting that belief? If @BenKissling meant to imply that no science “prosyletizer’s” judgement can ever be trusted, or no kind of evidence ever truly matters, because it’s all just about some sort of end-goal, then the charge would obviously apply to creationists and other kinds of science deniers as well. They too think the subject has a relevance beyond merely being able to tick off boxes on some sort of large but inconsequential list of facts and falsehoods.
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There’s a billboard down the street from me with Darwin crossed out and it says “God Exists.”
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