Quote:
Originally Posted by Flash Walken
Right, but we're not talking about the decision making process of day to day life and the cognitive dissonance of being on a diet and buying a chocolate bar.
We were talking specifically about a certainty as it pertains to an intimate understanding of 'God'.
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But what you are failing to grasp in this is that for a vast number of theists their intimate understanding of God is inseparable from the decision making process of day to day life. In a religiously saturated environment like mine, people perceive God's activity at every point in daily life.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Flash Walken
Generally, we refer to these people as zealots. I don't think it's any kind of leap in logic to associate religious zealotry with a deficiency in the mental/reasoning makeup of an individual.
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Who is "we"? In an environment in which it is socially acceptable to communicate with an invisible being or beings, this is not even close to the same thing as zealotry. There is nothing mentally wrong with the vast majority of these kinds of people; it may be laziness or passivity, but it is unequivocally incorrect to declare that gnostic theists suffer from some sort of mental deficiency. Even if you consider it delusional behaviour, it is a flaw of perception that is really no different than our many other intuitive flaws that are the topic of
this book