ArcGIS - you are a dirty, DIRTY motherfucker.
In better news, I went to the bookstore and spent too much money. Academic books make me giddy. They're kind of like strip clubs - you get something out of them, but they never quite live up to the promise.
Also, my current intellectual pet peeve: books written by scientists and pundits that explain why religion is stoopid. I mean, who's the audience for this? Other intellectual snobs? Don't get me wrong: I hate the way that religion has butted out science in the public discourse. I much prefer the careful rationalism of science. But some PhD or journalist is *not* going to convince a God-fearing type to drop their culture war.
It seems that these tracts are missing the big question. The *interesting* question is WHY do people believe in religious doctrines. A large part of it is, I'm sure, a need for stability - religion provides answers that make sense of the world. But there are other things - like social networking and connectivity that are important to people. Religion tends to be really persistent, even if it's mutable. Part of the reason is that religion gets you in the "gut," much like a sense of nationhood. Religions role in building communities is almost certainly a part of that, and why "rationalism" has not easily dislodged it. It seems like these *social* questions - why people believe - rather than the scientific ones - why they should not believe - are the more interesting queries.
In better news, I went to the bookstore and spent too much money. Academic books make me giddy. They're kind of like strip clubs - you get something out of them, but they never quite live up to the promise.
Also, my current intellectual pet peeve: books written by scientists and pundits that explain why religion is stoopid. I mean, who's the audience for this? Other intellectual snobs? Don't get me wrong: I hate the way that religion has butted out science in the public discourse. I much prefer the careful rationalism of science. But some PhD or journalist is *not* going to convince a God-fearing type to drop their culture war.
It seems that these tracts are missing the big question. The *interesting* question is WHY do people believe in religious doctrines. A large part of it is, I'm sure, a need for stability - religion provides answers that make sense of the world. But there are other things - like social networking and connectivity that are important to people. Religion tends to be really persistent, even if it's mutable. Part of the reason is that religion gets you in the "gut," much like a sense of nationhood. Religions role in building communities is almost certainly a part of that, and why "rationalism" has not easily dislodged it. It seems like these *social* questions - why people believe - rather than the scientific ones - why they should not believe - are the more interesting queries.
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The simple fact is that religious sentiments and activites persist even when blatantly ineffective or counterfactual. It doesn't mean people are irrational, it means people are rationally achieving ends different from their stated ones (e.g., social, as you point out). When a religion stops being an effective and meaningful way of coping in the world, of predicting what kind of shit it will through at you, people change it or leave it. But when it seems to be dead on, it grows, like fundamentalisms are all over the world.
Personally, I don't get it, but it makes me ask, "Why is this so powerful for people?" Not, "Why don't people see how irrationally they're behaving?"