Being an atheist absolutely does not rule out being gullible & easily misled. This is shown by the number of atheists who take on irrational & unevidenced beliefs on the far-left, far-right, spiritual, postmodern, pseudoscientific & Jungian-archetype-mixed-with-bible-stories. https://twitter.com/scarce_sense/status/985448699084992518 …
I talked about this at the Post-Truth Initiative at the University of Sydney. Society is a mess of conflicting narratives that people find meaningful - religious and secular, ideological, political, spiritual, whatever. It makes us feel good to inscribe ourselves into a narrative
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Whether it's 'Make America Great Again' or Social Justice narratives, Islamic narratives about a Caliphate or Christian redemption ones, nationalism, Marxism etc. We make metanarratives to provide meaning, purpose and morality but its essential to step outside them & face facts.
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How do we quantify the patterns in stories? I guess I ascribe to different types of truths. I can't explain how these narratives fit my experience as a clinician and how my young disabled clients are able to get them instantly in a way "facts" are unable to reach them.
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I've just had a thread about that. Evo psych is good here. We did not evolve to seek truth. We evolved to seek comfort, common understandings, tell stories. It's how we understand the world by default. Society functions better when we try to overcome it in seeking truth.
End of conversation
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