Why are people so crazy?
Lately, I've been arguing with one of my teachers. She's a somewhat fanatical Christian, and she helps run a club at my school for Christian athletes (No, I don't know why athletes, it doesn't make any sense to me either) that has a rather silly T-shirt. On the back of the T-shirt, it says: "Less than 4% of our generation knows Christ." Now, I know this is a horribly inaccurate figure, so I bring it up to her by noting that bearing false witness is, according to her holy book, a sin, and that I believe that also applies to T-shirts. Then, she did something I was expecting: she tried to defend the statistic. I pointed out that Christians were a major world religion, and she tried to change the topic by talking about China and the Middle East. I pointed out that the Americas and Europe and Africa have many Christians, but she still talked about China and the Middle East! I even looked up the CIA World Factbook to see what it said, and it gave the figure as being a third of the world's population. She continued to defend it! Her rationale was that the CIA would lie to keep us happy and that they would fudge it by 30% and NOT expect everyone to notice.
So, from this, I have only one conclusion: She is deluding herself into believing it. The human mind's ability to believe almost anything is remarkable. And this is the reason for the title of the post. Why are people crazy enough to believe that statistic? I find no reason for it at all. But, it seems, others do. I leave anyone who happens to read this to discuss it in the comments; my personal opinion is that it is because of the indoctrination during childhood to believe without evidence or in the face of evidence in the infallibility of the holy book/prophet/God/Jesus/L. Ron Hubbard etc. and that they have been trained so that no amount of reason can break through their delusions.
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7 comments:
Welcome to the world of being in a state of absolute awe at the state of delusion of 80-95% of the worlds population...
I'll happily back that number up if you need.
Pretty much every day, my jaw drops at peoples uncrackable beliefs and how they affect our society for the worse.
BTw, I've had a not very well read blog for 2 years. I dont need the word verifier, you may not need t for a while.
I think I'll keep it, otherwise I'll forget how to turn it on if I start needing it...
Oh, and backup of the number isn't needed, CIA World Factbook says about 11.8% are non-religious and 2.3% are atheists (separate category for some reason) so it should be in that range.
Is that a WoW character?
The picture? It's a Space Marine from Warhammer 40,000... if you've ever played Starcraft the Terran Marines are a ripoff of Space Marines and not nearly as cool.
Have you thought about making yourself an equivalent t-shirt?
"43% of statistics are made up."
"Less than 4% of our generation knows Christ.[Citation Needed]"
Maybe some mild ridicule will do what logic and discussion can't.
Or perhaps there a student paper you can write an article for?
It's a shame that a teacher is happy to ignore a student who takes the initiative to do a bit of research. She should have at least shown you where she sourced the statistic from.
I could try that, but I wear my dance class uniform (something that will be posted about soon) to school since there isn't a changing room for guys and it takes too long to run to the bathroom and change, so I wouldn't be able to wear it. And as far as I know, there isn't a student paper.
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