{"id":22452,"date":"2014-05-21T08:13:13","date_gmt":"2014-05-21T12:13:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=22452"},"modified":"2014-05-21T08:13:13","modified_gmt":"2014-05-21T12:13:13","slug":"blinding-belief-and-skepticism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/05\/blinding-belief-and-skepticism.html","title":{"rendered":"Blinding Belief and Skepticism"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p><a href=\"http:\/\/io9.com\/can-skepticism-blind-you-to-the-truth-1548544855\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">IO9 had an article<\/a> about the way prior assumptions and beliefs affect our perception. If you are prone to believe that the world is filled with miracles, you may believe you have experienced them. But conversely, if you are persuaded in advance that there is no such thing as the supernatural, that too can distort your perception \u2013 in ways that can be scientifically studied!<\/p>\n<p>In theory, many people \u2013 whether Christians, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.atheistrev.com\/2014\/03\/how-do-you-know-it-isn-real.html\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">atheists<\/a>, or something else \u2013 try to remain open to changing their mind in light of new evidence. \u00a0In practice, it doesn\u2019t always work out that way. And sometimes people will <a href=\"http:\/\/debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com\/2014\/03\/identifying-barriers-to-unbelief.html\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">advocate or attack underlying assumptions<\/a> precisely because that can either bring the entire house of cards crumbling down, or keep one from looking at it too closely because of confidence in the foundation upon which it is constructed.<\/p>\n<p>All of this to say that our views and our perceptions are a tangled mess, and not things that give us undistorted access to reality.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ll close by linking to <a href=\"http:\/\/whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com\/2014\/03\/07\/good-news-belief-in-god-and-the-supernatural-appears-to-wane\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">a post of Jerry Coyne\u2019s<\/a> from a while back. It included the chart below, which puts Darwin\u2019s theory of evolution (in terms of percentage of people who \u201cbelieve in\u201d it) right between ghosts and the virgin birth. Make of that what you will.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone  wp-image-23542\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/files\/2014\/05\/waning-belief-in-the-supernatural.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"569\" height=\"528\"><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone  wp-image-23548\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/files\/2014\/05\/Bertrand-Russell-liberal-outlook.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"576\" height=\"576\"><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>IO9 had an article about the way prior assumptions and beliefs affect our perception. If you are prone to believe that the world is filled with miracles, you may believe you have experienced them. But conversely, if you are persuaded in advance that there is no such thing as the supernatural, that too can distort [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":23542,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80],"tags":[1086,11379],"class_list":["post-22452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-religion","tag-belief","tag-skepticism"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Blinding Belief and Skepticism<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"IO9 had an article about the way prior assumptions and beliefs affect our perception. If you are prone to believe that the world is filled with miracles,\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/05\/blinding-belief-and-skepticism.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Blinding Belief and Skepticism\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"IO9 had an article about the way prior assumptions and beliefs affect our perception. If you are prone to believe that the world is filled with miracles,\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/05\/blinding-belief-and-skepticism.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion Prof: The Blog of James F. 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