Denying Ignorance...

It's amazing. People come here and we all hope that they subscribe to the whole 'deny ignorance' mantra. We hope that people will take any new thread as a basis for comunity discussion and thought. We all want to work towards brining all of society towards whatvever the truth may be.

But this just doesn't happen.

I look at threads, with wild, crazy (sounding) ideas thrown about as if they were reality. OP's who come here swearing blind about something, or a seasoned poster coming here with something they;ve heard or been told an detailing it for the ATS membership.

You know what I see? Not debate, not a search for truth, and certainly no denying of ignorance.

I see people jumping in to post how this is defintly the truth, 100%, it all aligns with what they belive, or what they were told/divined/indoctorinated with. They will take a thread from the OP and expound upon how it reaffirms what they;ve been saying all along, how it helps prove their own beliefs.

You know what I don;t see? Reasoned evidence, provable facts. Nothing. People just pop up and say 'Well that makes perfect sense in my world view, blah blah blah.'

A perfect example is a recnet thread by Mike Singh with some rubbish (my personal opinion) about an email he got about a guy whos' noticed ships flying round a stargate/portal/thing in space etc. It wasn't until page 2 ( i believe) that people started pointing out the colosal holes in the whole thing, but before then there was a bunch of people turning up, shoehorning this crap into their bleif and taking the opportunity to post their wild unsubstanciated theories or beleifs with this stuff added.

And it happens all over ATS. For every serious considerate 'researcher of the truth' (yeah, silly name, but you know what I mean), we have 20 people who pop up to espouse utter nonsense and try and back up their hilariously rubbish claims by trying to hammer in this new 'evidence' from any given thread into their world view and belief and then try to talk about it as if it is both logical and provable.

I'm not having a go at people across the board here, I just wonder why we have to muddy the water of ATS with people who talk about utter crap, that they cannot back up with any evidence whatsoever and that they keep trying to shove down our throats whenever possible by jimmying in some 'info' from a new thread into what they think, without ever wondering if the 'info' is even vaguely correct or can be backed up.

With the number of people who calim to 'know the thruth' or 'commune with aliens' or 'the spirit matrix that links us all', you;'d think thay could make their point of view clear and understandable and indeed believeable, without having to resort to attempting to claim that some new rubbish someone else posts proves what they believe.

I suppose what I'm getting at is that we seem to be losing the crticial analysis that you would expect from ATS in a sea of idiots who jumpt to agree with what the OP has posted without any analysis of it whatsoeverm often blatently because they can twist it to be part of their own agenda rather than them even agreeing with any given OP.

I suppose my point in this rant is when did we stop denying ignorance and start coddeling everyones pet beliefs that have no justifable standing and fall apart with any serious discussion or research?

When did ATS stop denying ignorance and start accepting it as the norm? Why do we have such a lack of critcal analysis these days when people can get away with posting complete rubbish and let threads run on for pages, even after they;ve been shot down by the inteligent populace of ATS?

I apologise for the infalmitory nature of the way I've written this, but I'm a tad worse for wear...