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Permalink Reply by Micah Johnson on May 6, 2011 at 3:46pm

I wouldn't say it's common sense. It only seems that way to a scientifically literate person because they are so completely familiar to those concepts that it seems absurd that anyone could possibly think anything else. I would argue that on the bare basics, it seems common-sensical to think that the world is flat, firmly rooted, with the sun, moon and stars circling us because that is what it certainly SEEMS like on the surface. If you had never known any science, you would not intuitively grasp that we are in fact circling the sun along with the other 'wandering' planets. It takes some thinking outside of the box and connecting several seemingly disparate conclusions to come to that fact. If faith and religion were  completely absent, intelligent people could probably figure it out fairly quickly, but it's far from common sense. Celestial mechanics are far from the day-to-day events that guide our common-sense.

 

However, in this modern age where all this knowledge has already been accumulated and requires little effort beyond attention to grasp, why do people still hold onto long-outmoded concepts when it is so clear to the rest of us? Simple faith. It does not matter how much evidence you put before a person who does not VALUE evidence. Scientific proof is meaningless to a person whose mental processes have settled into a mode of uncritical blind faith. Once the candle of their mind has melted into a formless lump and the flame has sizzled out, the wax hardens and it becomes very difficult to reshape it into something useful again.

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Permalink Reply by paul babcock on May 6, 2011 at 4:45pm

Dude, Idk. But I know that plenty of them sure do believe the fairy tale. I work with people, who almost all seem to believe in god so literally that they all think that his existence is proven by the existence of nature and its processes.

It rains; therefore god must exist, otherwise how could it come to happen so.

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Permalink Reply by Cascadian Rationalist on May 6, 2011 at 11:53pm

That.... makes me want to cry. :-/

And this:

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Permalink Reply by Robert McLean on May 7, 2011 at 2:24am

Religion offers an easy to digest answer to those that worry about becoming worm food after shuffling off this mortal coil. If you don't actually die, it's OK. The thought of wallowing around in a dismembered state in "heaven" really isn't that attractve. They tell us it's forever and ever etc. After 2000 years of the nonsense, it must be time for the religiously deluded to come up with a new sell. Perhaps they could give the soul a new body. At least hands, so while 'we" float about, we could actually do something. Along with the godly thing they all seem to love, the soul as sold is a failure. Total nonsense.

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Permalink Reply by Richard Healy on May 7, 2011 at 5:30am

That makes me think of this:

 

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