Parodite wrote:Simple Minded wrote:I've noted creepy people often worship a creepy god or ideology.
Decent people have decent ideologies or beliefs.
Theists and atheists are broad labels. Both groups have contained some of the nicest and nastiest people I have ever met.
Indeed. It all begs the question: why can people behave very differently while eating the
same food, or behave very similar while eating very
different food for that matter?
So maybe: it never is a book, an ideology, a religion or even a cultural heritage alone that makes us behave the way we do. Kid a) plays 24/7 violent computer games but remains sane and behave like a normal kid. Kid b) grabs a gun and starts killing kids in the school yard. The risk of seeing causations where there is correlation. Etc.
"Between stimulus and response, man has the ability to choose." - Viktor Frankl
The desire to hyper-simplify the world into binary segments or just a few segments fascinates me.
Lots of people can read a few paragraphs of an book or ideology that contains 1,000s of pages and buy-in or condemn the whole package. Ignoring parts of one's religion/ideology when it is convenient to do so is a timeless practice.
I often noted that the rabid Christian, Muslim, republican, democrat, socialist, libertarian, nationalist, etc. seem to spend equal amounts of time and effort projecting not only the positive aspects of their ideology, but also the negative. They often think themselves salesmen for their cause, and I suspect their ideological opposites often are glad they are so vocal.
Lots of times I have heard people make ten points to support their ideology. Their argument would have been much stronger if they had stopped at four points. I find it easy to agree with most people to the 30-40% level, and somewhere around 80% most of them seem to drive their train off their tracks.
Could all just be difference in personal experience.