They literally repeatedly stood up in class and shouted that there’s “no proof of evolution” and got very angry. They did this because their child-aged minds couldn’t reconcile their faith in their literal interpretation of their holy book and scientific evidence. They reaction was to maliciously attack science as a whole. That is malicious ignorance.
No, it isn’t. There is no ignorance in what you described above. They’re not ignorant of the aforementioned “scientific evidence”—they’re aware of, and deliberately rejecting that evidence, because accepting it would interfere with their pre-existing assumptions, and they don’t want to confront that (very common human phenomenon in general, by the way, confirmation bias is a hell of a drug that very few people successfully work to even begin to avoid, let alone completely avoid).
Actually, this isn’t malice either. Malice is, by definition, a willful commission of harm, typically upon at least one other person (you could argue that in a way, self-harm is ‘malicious’, but colloquially, only harm directed at others is ever really considered “malicious”). When you break it down, getting defensive over having your biases be challenged by evidence is an act of (albeit misguided) self-preservation. It’s a fear reaction to their own psyches. Those friends didn’t get angry with the intent to harm themselves, or others, they were trying to bail their own brains out of having to deal with a contradiction/dissonance!
No, it isn’t. There is no ignorance in what you described above. They’re not ignorant of the aforementioned “scientific evidence”—they’re aware of, and deliberately rejecting that evidence, because accepting it would interfere with their pre-existing assumptions, and they don’t want to confront that (very common human phenomenon in general, by the way, confirmation bias is a hell of a drug that very few people successfully work to even begin to avoid, let alone completely avoid).
Actually, this isn’t malice either. Malice is, by definition, a willful commission of harm, typically upon at least one other person (you could argue that in a way, self-harm is ‘malicious’, but colloquially, only harm directed at others is ever really considered “malicious”). When you break it down, getting defensive over having your biases be challenged by evidence is an act of (albeit misguided) self-preservation. It’s a fear reaction to their own psyches. Those friends didn’t get angry with the intent to harm themselves, or others, they were trying to bail their own brains out of having to deal with a contradiction/dissonance!