Quote Originally Posted by thebigspendur View Post
The world is full of people who once they believe in something that becomes the ultimate truth to them and that's the end of the story. I not just talking about religion here. Its basically the same with everything. Go to a major University, that bastion of free thought and investigation and no matter the discipline you will find one prevailing view and if some new faculty joins the group and he doesn't subscribe to the view of the rest he is either ridiculed or eventually kicked out.

I think its just a human trait just like the propensity to kill each other.
I'm not trying to start an argument at all here. But as a former devout Christian. And to prove devout. I drove the church bus to pick up the children for service and anyone else needing a ride for Sunday and Wednesday night services. I drove it on Thursdays for the kids service. I was active in the church and believed the earth was 6,000 years old and the Bible was the word of god. I thought that was the ultimate truth.
But that didn't hold up to anything scrutiny and I abandoned that for what I consider to be reason.
I know many other Atheists who followed more of less the same path. I think most people who will change, if, educated to something else that makes more sense or proves to be a better philosophy or idea.
As far as the propensity to kill being ingrained in human nature I think Howard Zinn had an interesting theory. Murder through war is the domain of those in leadership. They have to go to great lengths to demonized their object of war in order to get citizens to go out and murder some other group they, otherwise, don't have a beef with. Think about all the propaganda about the japanese to lower their status of humanity so GI's and the nation wouldn't mind killing them in droves. But without that sort of effort it's difficult to get the average human to kill.
Again I'm just trying to throw out an alternate view on what thebigspendur posited.