I was having a conversation the other night with someone who admitted that invading Iraq was pretty clearly a mistake, but who also expressed her "love" of Joe Lieberman because "he's one of the few people who hasn't changed his position on the war". The midwest is a special place.
To be fair, though, a few days ago my girlfriend and I were discussing the strange things people on the Left Coast think. An old coworker of hers, for instance, rejects dietary supplements containing synthetic vitamins because they lack the "life force" you can get from vitamins extracted from natural sources. Similarly, I was once told at work that grouping students by birthday for a field trip was insufficiently random because we'd be concentrating zodiac signs.
My point is just that I think we tend to underestimate the prevalence of absurd beliefs.
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Go to Italy and it's all about the Saints. I think it's best if everyones absurd belief is unique, that way it makes it difficult for them to band together and effect public policy.
I don't know... I tend to shy away from straight-line projections of the future like that. It should be pointed out that there was a time when people saw the situation exactly opposite: They used to assume that people from the past had a better understanding of the world than we do.
Though I certainly think that people will always be susceptible to unfounded beliefs (what the religious minded might call "faith") I'm of the opinion that forces are currently arrayed against it as evidenced by for example, the growing numbers of atheists in the world.
Difficult for them to band together and affect public policy? Um, like Evangelical Christians?
Fair enough, it turns out the Greeks belief that the past held answers was not very well founded.
I should be clear though, What I meant was that, though our knowledge of the universe will always grow with time I don't think it'll always be the case that we'll fill in what we don't know with absurd beliefs. It very well could be that eventually humanity learns to say "I don't know".
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