Nothing ever changes..

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Written in 1980...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9pWs_Fa5h0[/youtube]

I remember the song well.

This is my first visit to WP for around six months. Nothing changes. The atheists and creationists are still fighting; as are those with a political inclination. Same old, same old. Pretty boring really. Wake me up in around 100 years if there is anything new happening.

TallyMan's here?

yay, TallyMan! surely you have some time to kill! there's still plenty of creationists to annoy!

...and yet everything is always changing...




Also glad to see TallyMan again.

Bonjour MissConstrue and Anna-banana

To quote the words of the governor of California: "I'm back!". Can't quite get the terminator accent right though without getting a sore throat.

So there are still some creationists around eh? I guess the American education system is still in the dark ages. The brain washing is very strong there, rather like those fundamentalist Muslim countries; it will take generations before people catch up with scientific knowledge and reality - if they ever do.

I read a psychology article recently about those with religious beliefs; apparently they turn a blind eye to all evidence that contradicts their beliefs. The conclusion was that people prefer to accept comfortable beliefs rather than face seemingly "cold" reality. People just can't handle the truth and prefer comforting fiction instead. Put a group of people together with the same mistaken belief system and they all support each other in the big lie, patting each other on the back saying how right they are and that anyone who disagrees must be wrong. Sigh.

Easy to see how it happens. Someone is born into a community that follows a particular religion / belief system and they attend the particular church / mosque / temple and pray to God / Jesus / Allah and the propaganda is soon absorbed into the psyche. Their particular belief system must be the correct one because all their neighbours and townsfolk share the same belief.

How few break out of the "sheeple" mould and look for themselves? I mean really look? Not many.

Bonjour Claire. Not sure how long I'll be around - I'm very busy at the moment.

I am not surprised. The article is probably applying confirmation bias to religious beliefs. And yeah, we all have confirmation bias towards our beliefs. I wouldn't be surprised if religious people are worse given the nature of religious beliefs.

Yep, that group-think tendency is interesting and probably sort of true. Once these people leave their groups, they start having issues simply because they can't shrug off all objections.

A good case study are the Hutterite colonies. You might have to google that. They can be very insular and the ones I have encountered have been very meek and shy in public. Even the big strong men.

Some of their youth leave, but most go back. They just dont have the basis of worldly knowledge or community outside the colony, despite living within a few miles of regular towns, and coming to town fairly often.

They are certainly an interesting group of people though. If there are moral Christians, it is they. They are pacifists. At the same time, they are very pragmatic about the material world. Unlike the Amish, they are quick to adopt machinery, even computers. They are excellent farmers.

I do not know of them ever being involved in scandals, and their children all learn to read, write and calculate. Most are bilingual.

Another way they are successful is in being one of the only European groups to practice successful communal living. An irony is that they lived in south Russia and were chased out by the soviets who simply should have adopted their methods.

Oh well, Russia's loss is Canada's gain.

Rip van Tally Man topic

Long time no see. Is it really that bad? I still love PPR. These same old questions have been around for thousands of years. For me, they are still interesting.

If you count by Fibonacci numbers, the 100 years will come in less than a page.