Belief is easy, doubt is hard.

[deacon blues]

From a Psychology Today article: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog ... falsehoods
"One reason ______ supporters believe him comes from a basic fact about the brain: it takes more mental effort to reject an idea as false than to accept it as true. In other words, it’s easier to believe than to not."

"While these imaging results are complicated to interpret, the electrical patterns also showed something that was fairly straightforward. Overall, there was greater brain activation that persisted for longer during states of disbelief. Greater brain activation requires more cognitive resources, of which there is a limited supply. What these findings show is that the mental process of believing is simply less work for the brain, and therefore often favored. The default state of the human brain is to accept what we are told, because doubt takes effort. Belief, on the other hand, comes easily."

"For Christian fundamentalists, being taught to suppress critical thinking begins at a very early age. It is the combination of the brain’s vulnerability to believing unsupported facts and aggressive indoctrination that create the perfect storm for gullibility. Due to the brain’s neuroplasticity, or ability to be sculpted by lived experiences, evangelicals literally become hardwired to believe far-fetched statements."

"This wiring begins when they are first taught to accept Biblical stories not as metaphors for living life practically and purposefully, but as objective truth. Mystical explanations for natural events train young minds to not demand evidence for beliefs. As a result, the neural pathways that promote healthy skepticism and rational thought are not properly developed. This inevitably leads to a greater susceptibility to lying and gaslighting by manipulative politicians, and greater suggestibility in general."

[alas]

This is interesting. When you think about it, you know it is true. Just how hard was it for us to start questioning the church? How old were we before we dared buy a car that our father didn’t approve of that brand? Or as my sister said, “I knew I had finally grown up when I could buy the brand of toilet paper that I liked, instead of the one that was cheapest.”

And I think it starts before lessons in Sunday school. When we are two and Mom says don’t touch that! Hot!” And we touch it anyway and we get hurt. Then mom says, “ummm, good.” And we taste it and it is good. As children we have to trust and believe our parents, or instinct tells us we could die. Our experience tells us we could get hurt. So we believe what our parents say.

Or, if our parents are lying abusive jerks, we grow up distrusting the world and looking over our shoulder and assuming people lie. Then we are cynical and second guessing and over thinking everything. I know from my own life and working with abused as children clients that living like that takes one heck of a lot of energy. This is why children of alcoholics feel crazy, is that they don’t believe anyone about anything, and life is just too hard.

Even in grade school, same thing. Believe the teacher and you do well. Think you are smarter than the teacher, even if you are, you are headed for trouble. Life is just easier and safer when you believe what others tell you. That is how we learn about reality. Someone tells us this object is a shoe. So we use that word and get along in our world where people agree that thing is a shoe. So, *everything* about life teaches us to believe what people tell us.

As we grow, we often run into people and things we get hurt for believing, so we learn not to trust everyone. But how do we know who to believe and who not to? Man, if I could have answered that for my clients, I could have gotten rich easy instead of struggling through trying to teach then who they could and could not trust.

So, we grow up really wanting to believe and trust people. So, why wouldn’t we apply that to religion. Here is the preacher or teacher giving the lesson, and we are programmed to believe. It is going to take a lot to dump the programming and apply critical thinking. We are going against an authority figure. We are gonna get burned. We literally have to fight our instincts to doubt what someone tells us.

[Gatorbait]

Interesting DB, and good post, and I concur.

Can't speak for the rest of you, but one of my favorite sayings that came from Henry Eyring's grandpa, passed on to his dad Henry, and to him.

"In our church we are not required to believe anything that is not true."

To me, that's why there is NOM and Dialogue, and all the rest of outliers. People chose to think, and doing so found out that many of the things that they were taught on their mother's lap, so to speak, were not true at all, starting with the Mormon church being the only true church. There is no such thing.

[moksha]

If you had family and a church reinforcing a strong testimony of Santa, you would be able to spend two years proclaiming to the good people of Des Moines Iowa the saving power of Ho Ho Ho.

[Conman52]

Great post. Just makes my case all the better when Nelson called all us Nomies "Lazy learners" I was pissed about that back then as I am today because as many of us during our faith crisis I studied my ass off trying to find a way to make it true !!! Yes it's much much much easier to just believe than to challenge the status qou . Lazy learner my ass !!

[Cnsl1]

A couple of things to consider.

First, brain activity also relates to our expertise and experience with that behavior/idea/ thought. As an example, expert chess players show less brain activity playing a game than do novices

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a ... 3214002395

But, also activate more areas overall.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn ... the-brain/

Could it be that the evangelicals activated less area because they were very familiar and experienced in those ideas? I think yes. One could argue that they've already been there wrestled with that idea, and now don't give it as much thought.

While the article sure seems to explain what we're seeing play out in society, we need to keep our critical eyes open.

The original article is much better and not as slanted as psych today summary:

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/artic ... ne.0007272

[moksha]

"For Christian fundamentalists, being taught to suppress critical thinking begins at a very early age. It is the combination of the brain’s vulnerability to believing unsupported facts and aggressive indoctrination that create the perfect storm for gullibility. Due to the brain’s neuroplasticity, or ability to be sculpted by lived experiences, evangelicals literally become hardwired to believe far-fetched statements."

Here is a live example of this in the wild. Notice the crazy look in the eyes and the nonsense spouting. Some are too far gone for help and end up advocating murderous intentions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaItLW8 ... yevyIgxLGp