Denialism
Written by Daniel in Educational, Opinion at May 17, 2010
Debunking myths and urban legends is one of my favorite hobbies. I visit snopes.com just to check out their new articles on a regular basis. A few weeks ago I went to a professional legal education seminar that exposed me to the anti-genetically modified foods groups. Curiosity about this issue led me to a great TED talk about science denialism that can be found here.
Also, this week New Scientist magazine is doing a very interesting report on Denialism, which can be found here. The report focuses on climate change deniers, creationists, vaccine deniers, holocaust deniers, AIDS deniers, and 9/11 deniers. However, I would also like to add to this list Christian dominionist historical revisionism, embodied by David Barton of the organization WallBuilders. He blatantly quote-mines documents the founding fathers wrote to try to prove that America is a “Christian Nation” and needs to enact laws that evangelical Christians want. Chris Rodda of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, has an excellent 9-part youtube series debunking Barton’s claims. This issue is very complex and has been dealt with by Tom on this blog, but in any case, many of the founding fathers were Christians, some weren’t, but their personal opinions don’t really matter because they set up a secular nation, based on the text of the constitution and it’s amendments. It’s sad that this Onion article exists, but it really hammers home how misinformed many people are about the contents of the constitution. People like David Barton help perpetuate these myths.
In the concluding segment of the New Scientist piece, eminent skeptic Michael Shermer makes a great point about how we should deal with denialists.
“Those who are in possession of the facts have a duty to stand up to the deniers with a full-throated debunking repeated often and everywhere until they too go the way of the dinosaurs.”
This is why I take the time and energy to explain to be people why I am an atheist and a skeptic. Because beliefs have consequences, and the more true beliefs we hold, the better off we will be. Debunking the false claims of the various denialisms with facts is a very important task, and one we should not take lightly.
