(October 10, 2011 at 5:15 pm)Welsh cake Wrote: Yes, sadly there are people who deny real-world atrocities and disasters out there. They've shut themselves off in their own little worlds. Several of my colleagues at work simply cannot cope if they hear any story or news item where there was any loss of life, whatever the cause, from 9/11 to world wars they "shut down" and blot out the information, rather than confront reality head-on. Decent respectable people would acknowledge what happened and pay respects to those who are no longer with us, or at least be a little constructive and help victims' families affected by said events. Interesting mindsets these individuals have.
(October 10, 2011 at 4:36 pm)Faith No More Wrote: I think this helps explain why religion is so prevalent and why people think it's 'so obvious' that god exists.Indeed, it seems most humans are, according to proponents of neurotheology, 'hardwired for religion' within this aspect of their genetic makeup. It may have something to do with the evolution of the brain in that, irrationality and people's preferences for superstitious beliefs were necessary to help keep the majority's emotions in check. Religious beliefs seem to keep their egocentricity appeased, or at least give it an outlet, in a reality where we're without inherent purpose and crushingly insignificant in the face of the cosmos, otherwise without these, we as a species would almost certainly destroy ourselves.
I'm wondering if this bias toward optimism and rejecting negative information outright might be what's behind some of the Holocaust Deniers. These people completely deny that the Holocaust ever happened, and that it's just some sort of propaganda. Some of them are on the right-wing nut bandwagon, but some of them are just ordinary people without any real issues one way or another.
I'm running into other groups of people who say that the US never used the atomic bomb, or didn't use it on Japan, and that the United States has never been attacked, or was never attacked before 9/11. Come again? Santa Barbara was shelled during World War 2, some of the battles in the wars between the United States and Mexico were fought on US soil - "Remember the Alamo", there were German submarines in New York Harbor during World War 2. Some of it is a sort of misguided patriotism - "Our country is THE BEST and THE GREATEST, and NOBODY would dare attack us." These things get in the way of that belief. Sometimes it's augmented with God having blessed (The United States of America) and that's why it's been safe from attack. Proving that latter part of it wrong would question the whole God thing.
