RE: Binary religious thinking
October 19, 2015 at 5:09 am
(This post was last modified: October 19, 2015 at 5:14 am by Alex K.)
(October 19, 2015 at 5:02 am)I_am_not_mafia Wrote: I've noticed the same thing myself. They have an inability to recognise that the world is not black and white. Particularly with morality, hence the constant harping on about objective morality and things being either good or evil.
And it's either one explanation or another.
I read once that if a religious zealot is highly educated then they'll probably be an engineer because they are used to thinking in terms of rules about what works and doesn't work.
In my field of theoretical and mathematical physics I've noticed that the more religious people are, the more they tend to feel drawn towards the formal and mathematical side of physics. I know religious people with physics phds who have managed to stay almost entirely clear of the messy natural-scientific aspects of the field by concentrating on formal developments far removed from empirical matters, or mathematical techniques. I think this is a related phenomenon. To do proper science, all the ideas in your head have to come with caveats and p values attached, and the fundamentalist mind cannot grog that.
The fool hath said in his heart, There is a God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.
Psalm 14, KJV revised edition
