Fear of Forbidden Fruit

We humans have all inherited remnants of the "reptilian brain", by which I indicate the autonomic/emotional core that is found throughout the animal kingdom.

The apes that ultimately evolved into humans enjoyed survival advantages over those of their cousins who had not inherited genes for the Great NeoCortical Leap Forward. That is, in hominid evolution, those apes with the greatest cognitive advantage were able to survive, proliferate, and outnumber their rivals.

The persistence of religion, despite the far greater explanatory power of scientific knowledge, relies upon this emotional side of human nature. However, those who wish to impose their religious views on society are also well aware that the Idea of God must be instilled into children while they are still stuck in the magical-thinking stage. Let any child, even a child of average intelligence, grow to adulthood before attempting to convince them that some old book holds more "Truth" than empirical facts, and that mind will most likely have escaped religion's clutches. Only early indoctrination can keep the synagogues, mosques, and churches filled with individuals willing to put an inculcated obsession ahead of humanity.

Catch ‘em young and many of them will never outgrow magical thinking because some are not genetically endowed with the cognitive powers to overcome illogic. Religionists seem unwilling to grasp the fact that atheists have escaped religious indoctrination through the operation of critical thinking rather than that atheists are victims of scientific cultism, naturally immoral, or incapable of emotional response.

Religionists, however, are scared of scientific knowledge because, at some deep level that they are too scared to admit, science refutes the creation mythology in Genesis. Religionists are so scared of knowledge that many, such as the creationist family in "God's Christian Warriors", are home-schooling their children to ensure that they cannot bite the forbidden fruit of secular knowledge. If the facts supported religionist beliefs, then creationists would not need to attack or defend against knowledge.

Sites Elsewhere : Great NeoCortical Leap Forward : Catch ‘em young : The persistence of religion : Absolutist Fears : Reptilian Brains and Magical Thinking

Fuzzy Illogic

Fistians and pseudointellectual advocates of intelligent design creationism share the religiosity-motivated credulity that typifies LAME thinking in the Misinformation Explosion Age.

David Colquhoun addresses this problem of intellectual dishonesty and fuzzy illogic in a Guardian Unlimited article entitled the age of endarkenment.

The past 30 years or so have been an age of endarkenment. It has been a period in which truth ceased to matter very much, and dogma and irrationality became once more respectable.

Colquhoun is author of the Improbable Science blog in which he expands upon his exposition of the reasons that we should be concerned about the "New Credulity.":

This matters when people delude themselves into believing that we could be endangered at 45 minutes' notice by non-existent weapons of mass destruction.

It matters when reputable accountants delude themselves into thinking that Enron-style accounting is acceptable. It matters when people are deluded into thinking that they will be rewarded in paradise for killing themselves and others. It matters when bishops attribute floods to a deity whose evident vengefulness and malevolence leave one reeling. And it matters when science teachers start to believe that the Earth was created 6,000 years ago.

In my opinion, the root causes of this problem of fashionable ignorance lies in a number of failures:
● the failure of educational systems to teach critical thinking skills and to instil a love of learning and truth-seeking.
● the failure of the media to make it clear which competing position is valid, rather than boosting ratings by pumping up the volume on issues that supposedly have no clear right side and wrong side.
● the failure of experts to insist that expert knowledge should not be discarded simply because it is opposed by a vociferous, jeering, ignorant rabble of the religiously motivated.
● the failure of those in power – such as Giorgio Dubaya Bush – to eschew endorsement of religiously motivated ignorance.
● the failure of polite liberals to point out the deluded and deceptive content of creationist pseudoscience and unfounded attacks on scientific knowledge.
● the failure of the lay public to doubt popular bandwagons and to realize that they must be cautious about what or whom to believe in this Misinformation Explosion Age.

And, more difficult to correct:
● the failure of religious organizations to ensure that their ministers are well educated and not highly prejudiced.
● the failure of political organizations to ensure that those ministries that are tax exempt are not the religions that preach hatred, lies, and intolerance.
● the failure of search engines, websites providers, and publishers to assess the value of content (for example, search engines can determine whether a site is contaminated by spam and phishing, yet do not provide warning that content is false or unreliable.

Because peer pressure is not confined to teenagers, the public, as Madison Avenue knows, will respond to that side of an argument that is presented flashily, noisily, repeatedly, and with the appearance of certainty. The public, particularly that in America, has been deluged with messages from religion, which is treated with dare-not-criticize protection. As a result, America ranks alongside Iraq in its level of religiosity despite America's position as the standard population (IQ=100) against which IQ scores are standardized.

However, the price paid for holding religious belief sacrosanct, if you will excuse the pun, includes the confusion of students, the deterioration of educational standards, and the near demise of critical thinking, knowledge, and rationality.

People reduce their efforts to the minimum necessary to meet expectations. So, if we permit continued dumbing down of standards and lowering of educational expectations so as to protect self-esteem, intellectual standards will fall still further. So long as we present the implicit and explicit message that truth does not matter and that every opinion counts, we will maintain the ever decreasing standards.

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Religious Besottism

Sad is the person whose existence feels empty without belief in some invented Authoritarian Parent in the Sky.

It is amazing how many people are in love with God, Jesus, the Catholic Church, Allah, Jehovah, or whatever cult figure. I am not merely talking of "loving" but instead of that besotted, chemistry-driven, starry-eyed, obsessive, worshipful state that we equate with "being in love". The religiously besotted are convinced that their adoration does not go unrequited, and that they will be rewarded for their diligent obsession by spending eternity basking in the love of their chosen One.

In this admittedly demented state, those who are obsessed with their object-of-choice are immune to logic. The besotted close their minds to any dissonant information about their object-of-obsession. Thus, fundamentalist creationists refuse to acknowledge the fact of biological evolution, preferring the ignorance of misleading pseudoscience for dummies.

Typically, besotted individuals have a dreamy, glazed appearance.

(No prize for guessing whose are the adoring eyes in the image at left.)

Rather than using the term religious zealot, I am dubbing these menaces, "Religious Besotts".

Religious Besotts are dangerous people because nothing and nobody matters more to them than do their enamored delusions. While they adore their obsession-of-choice, they hate with equal passion all that they perceive as threatening to their obsession. Because their besottism usually follows politically accepted religions, they feel vindicated in their adoration and justify their moralistic and political hatreds as obedience to their deity's instructions. The religious right believe that they adopt the high moral ground when they churn out ill-conceived arguments against the-right-to-choose or the right to act according to the gay nature with which some are born.

Sadly, not only are religions permitted by states, but religions are protected and tax-exempted.

Most religious individuals are not dangerous, but collective religious besottism is a dangerous force.

Throughout history, religious besotts have felt justified in murdering others who do not share their besotted view, labelling the others as infidels, or heretics, or undesirables. Religious besotts do not consider that others have the right to live their lives according to individual preferences and conscience, but instead believe their obsession-of-choice confers upon them the right to dictate to others.

Besotts build their arguments for Deity-given-morality on quicksand because there is no good evidence that any deity-of-choice actually exists. Claims that Besotter attacks on the behaviors of others are justified by whatever Book-of-Besottism are circular and equally ill-founded. After all, these Books are just the ramblings of Ancient Besotts.

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