What my decade long foray into the creation-evolution debate taught me about the human condition (and how it applies today) – Part 6: Information Literacy

This is the 6th post in the What my decade-long foray into the creation-evolution debate taught me about the human condition (and how it applies today) series.

Truth, misinformation, and literacy

This is a tough topic to cover succinctly.  In fact, as I’ve been working on this, I realize it will need to be split into two parts - this post addressing literacy in general, and the second post covering subject literacy.

The topic of literacy is hugely important right now.  Right now, American society in particular is being inundated with misinformation, unlike anything I’ve seen previously.  The same sort of situation I witnessed happening in the relatively insignificant sideline battles of the creation-evolution debate a decade ago is now playing prime-time in front of the entire country (and world) and involves real consequences to people, spanning battles involving political power and public health.  Misinformation is certainly not new (there are warnings about misinformation - mostly involving false prophets - in the Bible), but the wild west of the internet and social media platforms provide avenues for misinformation distribution which have never heretofore existed.  Charlatans can garner sizable audiences today, like never before in human history.

Consider, for example, the ongoing drama surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccination efforts.  We’re talking about the involvement of major power-players attempting to manipulate politics, sway public opinion, and generate revenue from impassioned believers.  Do you remember America’s Frontline Doctors and their dramatic press conference in Washington D.C. a year ago?  It was a very well-done production, and on the surface looked perfectly believable.  This is where things get complicated, as anyone listening or watching has to process what is being declared, depending on their literacy skills, while at the same time being influenced by some of the things I wrote about in the previous posts on psychology and authority.  Could it be that these apparent medical professionals are speaking the truth, and some of the things people have been sharing on social media concerning government conspiracies and cover-ups are actually true?  How can we really know?  Who should we believe?  

The creation-evolution debate is a microcosm demonstrating the spread of misinformation and the problem of literacy

The creation-evolution debate involves quite a bit of misinformation, and both deliberate and unintentional distortion of the truth.  The creation-evolution debate provides a window into how people come to believe what they do, and how they come to conclude that certain things are true, and other things are false.  This post, like previous ones, delves further into matters which contribute to the formation of  individual beliefs, and how people end up rejecting and accepting certain ideas, regardless of the strength of supporting evidence.

When I reflect on what I learned concerning how people end up believing what they do about the creation-evolution issue, how people go about accepting and rejecting information they encounter, it becomes really difficult to know the relative contributions of factors like deference to authority, extent of psychological biases, the personal need for simple explanations, and proficiency in literacy, among other things.  One thing that is as clear today as ever has been is that misinformation is everywhere, and it is big business, and those who promote misinformation are successful largely due to deficiencies in literacy.  Most people think of literacy as the ability to read and write.  I’m using the other definition of literacy, meaning competence or knowledge in a specified area.  What I learned from my time studying the creation-evolution debate is that deficiencies in information literacy, Bible literacy, and science literacy contribute to, and perpetuate the debate.

I want to keep the focus on how what I learned from the creation-evolution debate applies to a number of other issues today.  It is absolutely clear to me (and hopefully to the reader) that issues with information and subject literacy (Bible literacy and science literacy) contribute significantly to debate on current issues, like what constitutes truth and facts on the COVID-19 pandemic, the safety and use of vaccinations, and the validity of the 2020 presidential election results.  

Complexity of the human condition thwarts efforts to solve the issue of misinformation

There’s no silver bullet solution - no single answer to the problem of people believing misinformation.  One can choose to be optimistic and imagine all of these deficiencies can be corrected through educational efforts, with an emphasis on known facts and literacy, but I don’t personally feel that it is realistic to expect things to change very much.  High levels of literacy might help some people avoid adopting beliefs and positions further away from the truth, but in general, people are influenced more by their emotions and appeals to their emotions, than they are to facts and reasoned thinking.  I recall an article written by Brian Alters and Craig Nelson (two prominent evolution educators) expressing concern regarding how little progress has been made to improve acceptance of evolutionary theory.  There is an ongoing conversation among science educators about both evolution understanding and evolution acceptance - click the link above to see a few of the articles written on these topics. The quick and easy solution - better education - is not working as envisioned.  Even with observed increases in knowledge about evolution, there is not a corresponding increase in evolution acceptance.  In my opinion, this is because personal beliefs involve much more than verifiable factual information and reasoned thinking - they involve emotions and perceived risks, and these factors influence beliefs and personal positions much more than do facts (information).  

This is not to say that we should halt educational efforts to inform the public about important issues. There are many people who become persuaded when they are made aware of new information from a reliable and trustworthy source.  It seems however, that there are just as many people who cannot be persuaded to bring their beliefs in closer alignment with facts, and known truths.  For many of the people who are convinced that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, or that there is greater harm from getting a COVID-19 vaccination than not, there really isn’t any amount of education, or “good” information to change their beliefs and positions.  It’s just the way it is, and opportunistic charlatans will always be there to take advantage of the emotionally and psychologically vulnerable.  Still, educators hold out hope that intentional instruction in information literacy skills can help many people distinguish between good and bad information sources.  Similarly, intentional efforts taken by church leaders to help Christians understand the history and interpretation of the Bible, and Christian and Jewish history, aid greatly in helping people distinguish between truths derived from God’s written word, and ideas derived from the limited perspectives of modern humans reading ancient texts.

The reality is that aspects of psychology (biases, emotions), the adoption of viewpoints of perceived authorities, and the tendency humans have to oversimplify issues and underestimate complexity, all work in concert with various aspects of one’s literacy aptitudes to produce the positions and personal truths people hold.  

Shortcomings in information literacy obscure the truth and contribute to false beliefs

It almost seems as if there was never a more important time to be information literate.  According to the American Library Association (ALA), information literacy is defined as the ability to “recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information”

A problem we have today is the ease of access to massive volumes of information, and on top of that, summaries and interpretations of information produced by a great many of agenda-driven persons.   So many times I’ve seen people on social media exhorting others to “do research” to find the same truths they themselves are convinced of, only to learn upon further investigation that the so-called research which has convinced them is far from being valid and authoritative.  Many people are unable to distinguish between reliable and unreliable information sources.  From the comments I see posted on various internet sites, and social media platforms, it appears that many people sincerely feel that they are conducting good research and finding valid information sources, despite the fact that they are primarily using common everyday applications like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.  So much of what is disseminated on these platforms is non-traceable to verifiable and valid primary sources.  Yet, many people trust what they find with very little skepticism or critical analysis.  What many people are engaged in is a form of pseudo-research, and either they lack the awareness to know what genuine research entails, or they lack the ability to discern between reputable and suspect information sources, or they don’t care, because confirming existing beliefs is more important than a sincere search for the truth.  But one thing is for sure, the discovery of confirming “evidence”, whatever the source, produces confidence and boldness on the part of the believer, so much so, that it becomes very difficult to persuade them otherwise.

What I learned from my decade studying the creation/evolution issue is that shortcomings in literacy (competence or knowledge) function to sustain conflicts involving information and the interpretation of information.  This has been repeatedly measured and demonstrated via public surveying and testing.   

While studying the creation-evolution debate and attempting to understand how people became persuaded by bad information, I discovered the National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL), which has since morphed into the International Assessment of Adult Competencies.  The literacy assessments they conduct indicate a sizable portion of adults in the United States lack the skill to successfully navigate complex issues involving detailed information.  Here is a description of the six literacy proficiency levels, and state and county-level map views displaying summary results.  A more recent effort to provide educator resources for information literacy is the News Literacy Project.   There are even discussions related to faith-based media literacy.

These studies and reports convinced me that I needed to cover information literacy as part of the creation-evolution course I taught, as well as related topics like analytical thinking, quantitative reasoning, psychological biases and logical fallacies.  I discovered and made use of some great resources through the Foundation for Critical Thinking, including a few condensed guidebooks like The Thinker's Guide to Analytic Thinking, The Thinker's Guide on How to Detect Media Bias and Propaganda, and The Thinker’s Guide to Fallacies.

I became convinced that the biggest contribution I could make to the education of any student in any one of my courses, was an improved ability to consume information, and analyze it for validity.  In small ways, I was able to incorporate aspects of information literacy in all of my courses.

Epilogue

People have been fooled and persuaded by those motivated to fool and persuade for generations.  This goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden and the Fall of Man.  I’m also reminded of the quote in Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, related to the Duke and the Dauphin, and the Royal Nonesuch, “Hain’t we got all the fools in town on our side? And hain’t that a big enough majority in any town?”  Is this not a commentary on the commonplace gullibility of humanity?

Fast-forward to today, and we have the modern emergence of the fact-checking industry, initiated I’m sure, with noble intent, to help people identify good information from misinformation.  Interestingly enough, fact-checking now seems to be disdained by quite a few people, who characterize it as a form of “big brother” information control and manipulation in order to conform beliefs only to those “false” ideas the government or liberal media want.

Back to America’s Frontline Doctors - what a great name!  Sounds official, important and believable, doesn’t it?  On July 19, 2021, America’s Frontline Doctors filed a lawsuit with the Federal Court in the state of Alabama, against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services seeking an injunction to halt COVID-19 vaccination in the United States.  The legal filing document is available here (provided America’s Frontline Doctors website stays up, and they decide to keep the filing posted).  Most people will never get beyond a news summary of this action taken, and in many cases, what is written up in the popular media will be biased according to the entity’s brand and target audience.  It’s an interesting document - it’s well written and even provides footnotes in spots, although the vast majority of what is asserted has no supporting evidence (I don’t know enough about legal documents like this to know if assertions and allegations need to be backed up with concrete evidence during the filing step).  In their court filing document, they quote a portion of this document, but misrepresent it.  I suspect they do this because they know most people won’t bother to track the quote to its original source and read it to understand the quote in its original context.  I’m not saying that their filing is completely inaccurate - I learned some new things by reading the filing, and after having followed up with other sources to confirm what was asserted.  For example, I had no idea the observations being made by scientists as they were adjusting cycle thresholds in COVID-19 PCR testing.  Unfortunately, America’s Frontline Doctors took advantage of the public’s lack of knowledge about PCR testing to promote misinformation about COVID-19 PCR testing.

As I conclude this post, I now see new social media posts and YouTube videos asserting a specific claim from this court filing concerning COVID-19 vaccination caused deaths - a claim that is not substantiated (I say this based on my own quantitative analysis of VAERS data), and is spreading quickly among those who believe the COVID-19 vaccine is deadly “poison”.  It’s caught enough attention that Politifact and Snopes have issued their own posts on the matter.  Fact-checks which will be ignored by those who know they possess the truth.  Interestingly, when one visits the America’s Frontline Doctors webpage, one is immediately presented with an opportunity to donate to their cause.

And around and around we go!