Ignorance and Wilful Ignorance

Ignorance is defined by the dictionary as follows:

Ignorance [ig-ner-uhns]
The state or fact of being ignorant; lack of knowledge, learning, information, etc.

That is not, in itself, a bad thing.

Different people are ignorant about different things. Most people don't know the law as well as lawyers are, so in this aspect, most people are ignorant about the law in a general sense. We don't know everything about plumbering as well as plumbers are. We don't know engineering as well as engineers. We don't know about running businesses as well as businessmen.

And in general, the public does not understand science as well as scientists are. In fact, a physicist may be ignorant to some aspects of biology. Similarly, biologists may not know everything about cosmology as well as well cosmologists.

This is normal.

Not when we add wilfulness into the equation.

Wilful ignorance.
The state of knowingly ignoring something for no good reason.

In other words, being ignorant on purpose.

To some extent, this can be said of deniers of evolution. Many times, these cretins do not even bother to study what they reject. With the littlest understanding of the subject on hand, they criticise the theory without realizing their so-called objections are invalid/incorrect.

At some level, they could be victims of creationist propaganda where they are presented with a caricature of evolution. They reject the miscontrued version of the theory without realizing that they are merely rejecting a strawman.

Of course, this cannot be said about those who delibrately propagate the lies. They probably aren't just wilfully ignorant but outright deceitful.

Does the ends justify the means?
Is lying for god justified?

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