Reed wrote:



But that doesn't rule out the ability
of science to indirectly defeat supernatural claims. For example,
strong evidence that the image on the Shroud of Turin is a 14th century
manmade hoax, created with commonly found pigments, INDIRECTLY defeats
the supernatural claim that the Shroud's image was supernaturally
caused by God over 2000 years ago. The fact that Shroud proponents
irrationally refuse to accept the resutls of science, is their problem
- but it doesn't mean that the supernatural Shroud claim is not
rationally defeatable. After all, there are people with PhDs who refuse
to accept sound evidence that HIV causes AIDS or that the holocaust
happened. This problem has nothing to do with natural versus
supernatural.


Pax:
Maybe this sort of thing indicates that we don't really understand such
subjective irrationalism as well as we could, if we were to do more
research into it.  It seems to me that the refusal to accept certain
scientific theories based on solid evidence is not random, but is in
some way systematically related to a person's underlying belief system.

And like you said, it's not a phenomenon limited to people who believe
in the  supernatural.  Like with your citing of the "HIV causes AIDS"
or "Holocaust denial" examples.  It's a matter of the human cognitive
process, and how opinions are formed, and sometimes clung to, in spite
of later evidence that contradicts those established opinions.  Perhaps
if we understood the psychology of rational (and irrational) thought
better, we could improve our educational system to some degree, in
order to decrease the amount of irrational thought in the world.  It's
just an idea.

Pax
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