I posted this on another thread, and decided it deserves its own...Thoughts?
An unfortunate artifact of evolution is that belief can, and often does trump fact. Survival is at the core
of what belief is about. In the biological sense, belief is an
extension of our psyche beyond our five senses and what can be directly
observed by them, (as is intuition, however intuition is based on
abstracted information by those senses, belief is not). Animals that are
potential prey do not reason. They react to perceived danger. They choose to believe
a certain danger exists, based on limited input, (such as the sound of
the trees or plants around them moving = a predator that wants to eat
them), as opposed to reason whether the danger is real or not. This
allows them a better chance of survival, and preserves the species over
time.
Humans have evolved a conscience and the ability to reason,
however in the evolutionary sense, this is a recently developed ability.
Our most primal instincts are to survive first. If we look at
this from the perspective of Maslow's hierarchy of human needs, survival
is the most basic, being a physiological need. This is followed by the
needs for safety, love, esteem, and finally, self-actualization.
Accepting facts is the centerpiece of what self-actualization is all
about. Most humans never even get to this level, since rarely are all of
the lower level human needs met sufficiently. To expect humans to
care about facts at the risk of their survival is precisely why humans
react to cognitive dissonance by digging in deeper, and even more
resolved to ignore facts when we push them on this. The reality is,
their belief, (however misguided and dangerous it might be), is regarded
as a safety net to protect them. When facts are presented that cause
them cognitive dissonance, they become fearful that their belief system,
(their safety net), is at risk of failing. Their first instinct is to
rebuild that net, at all costs. Even the most intelligent people are at
risk of this self-delusion, because of its relationship with basic
primal survival needs.
All ideologies, (religious, political, etc.), are very suspect to this type of logical fallacy.
d4g
