1 Vote
Ability to Deactivate Logic is Bizarre
Perhaps it is psychological, a fear of Hell or something.
Most definitely … what better system of preventing “unconversion” than years of brainwashing that it will damn you to an eternal hell of suffering. When I opted to ditch religion as a kid, that was the most worrisome part to me … what if heaven was real and I was damned and never saw my parents again. But I just kept reasoning with myself and eventually was able to cast all that aside as pure rubbish – then the world got brighter, colors more vibrant etc. etc.
I have a friend like that – a Arizona Biblical die hard, but also an excellent electronics engineer who understands a lot of science and the mathematics that go with it.
Unfortunately I keep coming across too many people [friends included] that go to the extreme you mentioned. And they’re part of the Intelligence Community. Makes it real hard to accept their logical analysis sometimes knowing they can completely shut-it-off on demand to believe the Earth is 6000 years old and that dinosaurs are a trick of the devil.
RE: Ability to Deactivate Logic is Bizarre by Occams
And they’re part of the Intelligence Community
How right you are. I worked in the intelligence community for about 10 years in two of the central three letter agencies. Most of them are hard line conservative Christians, and so positive that they are right about everything.
They should be addressing questions that can’t be answered, but they are full of answers that can’t be questioned.
I never met a Democrat in that group – at least one who admitted it.
They were also generally gun happy, which to me seems strange for an ardent Christian.
I truly hope there is no afterlife. I just want to switch off permanently. Any eternity would become hell after a while.
RE: Ability to Deactivate Logic is Bizarre by scottb
When I opted to ditch religion as a kid, that was the most worrisome part to me … what if heaven was real and I was damned and never saw my parents again.
For me, it was “how will my family react?” I never gave much thought to the afterlife and hell and such, anyway.
My family was always pretty liberal, religiously (though most of them are pretty conservative, politically), so I knew it wouldn’t be any sort of battle, but it’s still a hard situation to face, to say, “I’ve decided that these foundational beliefs of yours are simply wrong”.
They’re aware that I self-identify as an atheist, and that I have pretty strongly negative opinions on the value of religion, but I seldom push the issue with them. If someone asks, I won’t hide my opinions, but I’m not actively campaigning for my mother to leave the church, for example.
Unfortunately I keep coming across too many people [friends included] that go to the extreme you mentioned.
I’m pretty lucky in that most of the people with whom I interact aren’t this sort of crazy.
And they’re part of the Intelligence Community.
I, too, used to work in the intelligence business, but the Cold War was still on back then. It’s a little troubling to hear this, because I think it’s easy for intelligence to be very badly colored by prejudice.
The fact that a sizable chunk of our intelligence efforts are currently directed at targets in Muslim countries means the quality suffers if it’s gathered by fundamentalist Christians. (Even forgetting about the fact that their ability to judge evidence is demonstrably wrong in rejecting evolution and Big Bang cosmology.)