Quote:
Originally Posted by Flash Walken
...Being completely assured of your position that something exists without any tangible evidence to prove or disprove is the result of a mental deficiency.
It doesn't make the person a bad person, necessarily, but that's what it is.
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I understand what you are saying, but I take great umbrage with the classification. The failure to apply canons of evidence, or the mistaken interpretation of correlation does not stem from a "mental deficiency". As a matter of fact, we intuitively make these sorts of errors quite regularly and primarily subconsciously in day-to-day life. The appeal to religious experience as a measure of ones certainty is a product of one's ability to construct a cohesive narrative of cause and effect to make sense of his or her own life. This is not a deficiency. If anything, it is a well honed, well developed survival instinct.