You’re correct. I did think that the Muslim story was the truth. There were times when I was forced to face a mismatch between my beliefs and reality (evolution is an obvious one), but as you can imagine, I was a pro at rationalising things away. And when rationalisations didn’t suffice, I simply put it down to my ignorance and didn’t bother pursuing it. And to consolidate all my irrational behaviour, I had enormous social proof that this was the right thing to do.
I should have made it clear that I had no respect whatsoever for ‘evidence’. I laugh thinking about it now, but I would openly use/deny evidence whenever it was convenient for me. I would interpret and reinterpret the Quran so that it made sense to me. Talk about cognitive dissonance.
So what exactly was the thing that at the beginning made you watch Dawkins et al. on youtube? Was it something like “Oh, these people have weird (and obviously wrong) beliefs, but they seem so sure and talk about many things… let’s watch how far they can get before they get hit with an evidence they can’t process?”
Essentially, what motivated you to spend your time watching someone you believed was wrong?
Why thank you.
You’re correct. I did think that the Muslim story was the truth. There were times when I was forced to face a mismatch between my beliefs and reality (evolution is an obvious one), but as you can imagine, I was a pro at rationalising things away. And when rationalisations didn’t suffice, I simply put it down to my ignorance and didn’t bother pursuing it. And to consolidate all my irrational behaviour, I had enormous social proof that this was the right thing to do.
I should have made it clear that I had no respect whatsoever for ‘evidence’. I laugh thinking about it now, but I would openly use/deny evidence whenever it was convenient for me. I would interpret and reinterpret the Quran so that it made sense to me. Talk about cognitive dissonance.
So what exactly was the thing that at the beginning made you watch Dawkins et al. on youtube? Was it something like “Oh, these people have weird (and obviously wrong) beliefs, but they seem so sure and talk about many things… let’s watch how far they can get before they get hit with an evidence they can’t process?”
Essentially, what motivated you to spend your time watching someone you believed was wrong?