What makes us believe beyond reason?

Let's do the 'irrational belief dance'

I’ve just been engaged in an extended discussion with Creationists on the Catalyst website.  I say “discussion” instead of “debate”, because there is no way to debate a true believer.

People believe many things for many reasons.  I’d like to boil it down to one in particular:

Our brains naturally take shortcuts.

Although we all believe that what we see, hear, touch, smell, and taste are good representations of the world, they’re not.  Over the next few posts, I’m going to explore how our brains are wired for taking shortcuts we normally wouldn’t notice in:

• Perception;
• Seeing patterns;
• Estimating; and
• Memory and recall

Advertisement