476. Irrational Beliefs As A Symptom Of A Brain Dysfunction
I claim: A person with a brain developed to the full adult evolutionary potential of human cognition is able to be apistic and free from irrational beliefs.
Gullibility to irrational beliefs is an unavoidable temporary state during childhood, as long as the brain has not yet fully developed. Without any further detrimental influences or factors, people grow out of such beliefs as a consequence of the maturation of the brain. When irrational beliefs cannot be influenced by rational reasoning or by contradicting experiences, this indicates, that this person's brain is not working at full human mental capacity. Something is dysfunctional or deviant.
I have been attributing this dysfunction to either immaturity of the brain, very low intelligence or to a delusional mental illness. In the latter case, the delusion is maintained by some urge and need overriding rationality and it works as a shortcut around the inhibitions of the frontal lobe. I was also considering weak rationality, but only recently I found out, that the concept of weak rational thinking has a name. It is called dysrationalia and described in this article:
http://www.magazine.utoronto.ca/feature/why-people-are-irrational-kurt-kleiner/
It seems that religious beliefs are like fever. Fevers are frequent, because there are many different illnesses, of which fever is an observable symptom.
Irrational beliefs are so widespread, because they are observable symptoms of very different forms of dysfunction of the brain.
I claim: A person with a brain developed to the full adult evolutionary potential of human cognition is able to be apistic and free from irrational beliefs.
Gullibility to irrational beliefs is an unavoidable temporary state during childhood, as long as the brain has not yet fully developed. Without any further detrimental influences or factors, people grow out of such beliefs as a consequence of the maturation of the brain. When irrational beliefs cannot be influenced by rational reasoning or by contradicting experiences, this indicates, that this person's brain is not working at full human mental capacity. Something is dysfunctional or deviant.
I have been attributing this dysfunction to either immaturity of the brain, very low intelligence or to a delusional mental illness. In the latter case, the delusion is maintained by some urge and need overriding rationality and it works as a shortcut around the inhibitions of the frontal lobe. I was also considering weak rationality, but only recently I found out, that the concept of weak rational thinking has a name. It is called dysrationalia and described in this article:
http://www.magazine.utoronto.ca/feature/why-people-are-irrational-kurt-kleiner/
It seems that religious beliefs are like fever. Fevers are frequent, because there are many different illnesses, of which fever is an observable symptom.
Irrational beliefs are so widespread, because they are observable symptoms of very different forms of dysfunction of the brain.
