Tag: Psychology Of Belief

Valerie Tarico discusses how people change, and escape religious belief.

How Beliefs Resist Change

Christianity turns adherents into evangelists—a sales force that seeks to spread the “good news.”  To accomplish this requires some of the same qualities that make for good marketing campaigns, viral emails, and fads.

The born again experience doesn’t require a specific set of beliefs. It requires a specific social/emotional process, and the dogmas or explanations are secondary.

Once triggered for any reason, the feeling that something is right or real can be incredibly powerful—so powerful that when it goes head to head with logic or evidence the feeling wins. Our brains make up reasons to justify our feeling of knowing rather than following logic to its logical conclusion.

Why are religions similar to each other?  History and biology.  Religions emerge out of ancestor religions. Though the characters and details merge and morph, elements get carried through that allow us to track the lineage. But another reason for similarities among religious stories is that all of them are shaped by the human mind and our tendency to project the structure of the human mind into the world around us. Gods and magical beings have have human psyches, with quirks and limitations that are peculiar to our species.

” This article is the first in a series of six. Each takes a look at some part of our mental machinery, how it relates to our tendency toward religious belief.”