American Samizdat

Wednesday, March 09, 2005. *
The Cost of Anti-Rationality
What happens when rational thinking is disvalued in popular culture? You get people willing to swallow grade-A horse manure by the shovel-full all day long - providing the shoveller claims an invisible monster that lives in the sky told them to beg for more. $180 million USD was recently redistributed from the faithful to the clergy in a Ponzi scheme carried out in Florida (and elsewhere). If the people who got bilked had a background in rational thinking they would not have been robbed. Rational thinking tells you what Ponzi schemes are and that they don't work, ever. Rational thinking tells you that just because someone talks nonsense doesn't mean they know something you don't - that religion is a game of smoke and mirrors that doesn't do anybody any good that can't occur (sans fraud and force) in a secular fashion. How much does it cost to be more flexible as to whether 'A' really does equal 'A,' to 'keep an open mind' about religion? Maybe it's okay that if people decide to be stupid they get to suffer for it. But I'd like to think it's better to not be stupid and not to suffer.
posted by Trevor Blake at 8:48 AM
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