Religion's affect outside of religion

[MTL]

oh yeah definitely.

I know an Engineer...and ENGINEER...an educated, clever, pragmatic man

...except he is also a born-again Baptist.

He thinks that big earthquake that hit Haiti in 2010 was a judgment,
because Haiti "sold its soul to the devil"
in exchange for its freedom.

Also, he plumes himself on being enlightened because he was raised with Catholicism
but escaped the lies of the Catholic Church in favour of the "truth" of the Baptist Church.

*sigh* I know it well. My dad has a Master's in process engineering, two Bachelor's in engineering (chemical & nuclear), and most of an EngD, and still thinks the world is 6000 years old. Southern Baptist. 

The man knows Atomic Theory. He can literally do the math on a board that shows the reason radioisotopes decay at a given rate and why they prove what they prove, but he refuses to let himself think about it. Both my Beloved and I have tried to get him to, to little avail. Compartmentalization with walls between, and fuses on any circuits which might connect A to B. 

Well if that's not compartmentalization, I don't know what is.

There are lots of Creationists who think they know the Theory of Evolution, but don't really understand it,
or refuse to learn it.

Of those that DID bother to learn it, many changed their thinking.

If your Dad, as you say, already knows Atomic Theory and still thinks the world is 6000 years old,
what else is there to say?

Proof means nothing.

The man I was talking about, the Engineer, he won't even acknowledge the relevance of the fact
that Haiti's buildings are poorly ENGINEERED...it's all masonry; no reinforcing structure.
It was like a bunch of dominoes waiting to be knocked down.

Couple that with a SHALLOW 7.0 INLAND earthquake and the inevitable happens.

Nevermind that Tokyo's skyscrapers survived a 9.0 with virtually no damage,
because the city is magnificently engineered.

And nevermind that the ceremony in which the Haitians were believed to have sold their soul to the devil
occurred in 1791....but that a similar earthquake hit Haiti in 1751,
likewise leveling the entire city,
while Haiti was still under French Colonial rule,
with the death toll only being lower because obviously the population was much lower.

and nevermind that severe earthquakes of that nature have hit the same area, roughly every 100 years:
again in 1842, and 1946.

Maddening.