{"id":652,"date":"2009-02-12T09:47:00","date_gmt":"2009-02-12T09:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/2009\/02\/12\/an-odd-thought\/"},"modified":"2009-02-12T09:47:00","modified_gmt":"2009-02-12T09:47:00","slug":"an-odd-thought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/2009\/02\/12\/an-odd-thought\/","title":{"rendered":"An odd thought"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/dtbrents.wordpress.com\/category\/why-does-god\u2019s-creation-include-death-suffering\/\">Here is a website<\/a> I just stumbled across. It sets out, in a few paragraphs, exactly what many millions of Evangelical Christians believe. Many of them are smart. Many are at least reasonably well-educated. Yet what they believe is, in truth, at least as insane as any of the beliefs you are likely to find down your local mental asylum.<\/p>\n<p>How are such utterly ridiculous beliefs able to install themselves so successfully in the heads of so many smart, educated people?<\/p>\n<p>Consider just how potent the mechanisms involved must be!<\/p>\n<p>Surely we should all acknowledge religion has this extraordinary power, and, once we&#8217;ve properly acknowledged it, shouldn&#8217;t every religious person then be asking themselves: &#8220;Isn&#8217;t it entirely possible that I too believe some pretty nutty things, and that the reason I struggle to recognize that they are nutty is that these same mechanisms are operating on me?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Or do you find this thought is one your mind seems strangely unwilling to entertain for very long?<\/p>\n<p>POSTSCRIPT: I imagine many religious folk will respond: &#8220;But many atheists believe in the powers of psychics and astrologers to foretell the future, etc. Which is also ridiculous.&#8221; Which is true. But does it undermine the moral I&#8217;m drawing above?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here is a website I just stumbled across. It sets out, in a few paragraphs, exactly what many millions of Evangelical Christians believe. Many of them are smart. Many are at least reasonably well-educated. Yet what they believe is, in truth, at least as insane as any of the beliefs you are likely to find [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-intellectual-black-holes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/believingbullshit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}