On Mon, 19 Jan 2004 00:56:43 GMT, (Werner J.
Severin) wrote:

Interesting how this thread moved quickly from the contents of the message
to a discussion of the credibility of the communicator.

We don't have time to do a thorough rebuttal of every crackpot idea
that comes along, any idiot can lie faster than they can be refuted.

Social psychologists have for years known that when people are confronted
with a message that challenges their beliefs they suffer dissonance which
causes psychological discomfort.

They laughed at Galileo, they laughed at Einstein; they also laughed
at Bozo the Clown. Just because we are laughing at the messenger
doesn't mean the message is causing us any dissonance, the person
carrying the message may not have the credibility to deliver a message
we can take seriously.

Here is an example; there is a guy over in talk.origins who has been
claiming for years to have found various human bones fossilized in
coal seams, were this true it would mean that humans are tens of
millions of years older than previously believed and would upset much
of known paleontology. This same individual has various pictures of
rocks he claims are human bones, claimed to have had them examined by
an expert (who is conviently deceased) and had them tested in a lab
(which did a kidney stone analysis on them); all these claims and more
have been completely refuted or proved to be without scientific merit
over the years. Despite this he shows up every few weeks, insults
anyone who doesn't agree with him, and repeats his original claims as
if it were his first time.

In short he's your typical net loon without a shred of credibility
about any of his claims. Last year he showed up and claimed to find
dried blood on one of his specimens, in defiance of all known data
about blood existing as blood for tens of millions of years.

Why should we have treated this new claim with anything other than
the disdain that it deserved? Was it because we were worried that he
might be right, or because he is a nutcase who can't be relied upon to
tell the truth when this subject comes up?

Everyone will do this to a greater or lesser extent, if a naked guy
covered in green paint arrived at your door and claimed he was with
the Fire Department and had to immediately search your house to make
sure no fumes from a toxic spill two streets over were building up in
your house or you could be dead within the next 60 seconds; would you
take this request seriously or just call the police to take him into
custody?

--
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability
of the human mind to correlate all its contents." - H.P. Lovecraft