(June 26, 2015 at 7:08 pm)Napoléon Wrote: ... A lot of people are fucking stupid and ignorant and willingly believe in bullshit even when it is so clearly vile and abhorrent.
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I don't think that is quite right. People believe a lot of stupid nonsense because they were indoctrinated into it. It is not that they all "willingly" believe anything; it is that people tend to believe what they are indoctrinated to believe.
When I was growing up, I was not given the option to be raised in a non-Christian home. And, of course, when one is an infant, one cannot decide such things anyway, even if we made some pretense and let children point to pictures of people and have them raised by whoever they pointed to.
Belief is not decided by pure act of will. You could probably not believe in god no matter how hard you tried. Likewise, many people believe in god, without it being a choice or act of will.
"A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence."
— David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, Part I.
