Free Thinker
Registered: Nov 1999
Posts: 14316 |
08-03-12 01:57 PM
Quote from jcl:
When looking over people's opinions on this forum, I found some strange correlations of world views that have seemingly nothing to do with each other. In fact, two belief sets are strongly internally correlated:
Set A: Belief in religion, not accepting global warming, belief in some conspiracy theories (faked birth certificates, Bin Laden still alive etc.), against Obama, against foreign aid, against homosexuality, and in favor of free weapon sales.
Set B: no religion, accepting global warming, no belief in conspiracy theories, in favor of Obama, in favor of foreign aid, accepting homosexuality, and against free weapon sales.
I can not really see why a religious person also must believe in conspiracy theories - maybe because both religion and conspiracy assume a sort of hidden reality? but this seems sort of far fetched. Also I do not see why religion is so strong anticorrelated to acceptance of global warming and to weapons control, as all three have apparently nothing to do with each other. And why are nonreligious people in favor of Obama although he's sort of religious?
Is this the basic struggle between irrationalism and rationalism? Or are there really only two different sets of world views in the US? Or are only two people posting on this forum under lots of different names?
- Interestingly, the forum administrator seems to participate by overriding thread ratings: the members on this forum are evenly distributed among A and B, but set A posts are always rated 5 stars and set B post always 1 star. I'd wager the administrator has the 'A' mindset.
the religious are taught to distrust science in their churches because science is falsifing their bible. in order to ignore science in favor of superstition you have to suspend critical thinking. that leads to a mindset of willful ignorance. the rest follows.
"Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of
spiritual things, but -- more frequently than not -- struggles against the
divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God."
father of modern Protestant christianity, Martin Luther
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