Hi to you too Iano.
Why someone would continually beat a view into someone to convince of something they had never heard of? Never heard of evolution; no tv, no books, nobody outside the household...see defintion of MI for a more complete list then re-evaluate. I take your statement to be a little hyperbolic. If it's not hyperbole and you've really never ever heard of evolution, yet lived in an average scientifically exposed society, then you would form a very tiny minority.
I did say "other than from my mother". Seriously she was the
only source of information wrt evolution until about the age of 16. It was never mentioned in school and I don't remember seeing anything about it in any of the books I read as a child. I was 10 before my dad bought our first B&W TV and the only thing we watched on the 2 available channels was news, sport and re-runs of Charlie Chapelin and Buster keaton. (Incidentally we were one of the first families in the village to actually have a TV so I think I was pretty typical of kids in my area in the early 60s.)
The fact is that my mother did a pretty good job of keeping me isolated from any
prejedicial outside influences. However it only served to fuel my need for knowledge. Many of my friends just accepted what they were told and grew up to become farmers or mechanics or factory workers. Nothing wrong with that but it was never enough for me.
"Uranium dating methods have shown that the earth is in fact 4500 million years old"...and said to yourself "but my mother told me it was only 4000 years old!!" Impressive it may have been, but at this point you were not yet at the level of knowledge to understand the intricacies of Uranium dating to know if it was accurate or whether the folk applying it where using it accurately. In other words, whether Uranium dating is accurate or not is not the point here.
I was around 16 and had long since begun to see problems with the biblical timescale. None of it made sense, even internally. That was why I went looking for science.
point is, you assumed it was true before you knew it to be true. That's EI at work.
No I didn't
assume anything was true. The first thing the science texts taught me was that science is based on evidence and observations (OK I may have assumed
that was true) which are then used to construct theories etc. etc.
As an example, I would read a book on local Geology then go to the places that it described and see if my observations agreed with what the text told me. In science you can't
assume that anything is true, no matter who told you it was. I try my best to question everything until I am good and sure that it works the way it is claimed to. That included my professors at college. I must have driven them nuts with my questions.
In other words, intensive EI but BEFORE you got the education which may have allowed you to evaluate for yourself.
Then just how do you propose it is possible to
get the necessary education to allow one to properly evaluate the evidence since that very education appears to equate to EI?
This just makes no sense to me at all.
Common sense, a basic understanding of scientific methodology and an inquisitive nature are all you need to sidestep any of this EI stuff that you propose. I would like to think that all students of science would have these attributes.