Yup, but thanks to a study done on fanatics, it was found that these people have underperforming metacognition centers in their brains; they are unable to recognize anomalies and contradictions in their beliefs, even when confronted with direct evidence.

@birdingnut I read somewhere that the longer we hold beliefs based on no evidence, the stronger we believe them even in comparison to beliefs we hold based on evidence that continues to pile up.

Maybe this explains why the flat earthers are so zealous about the earth being flat, and the rest of us simply acknowledge the evidence that the earth is round and move on with our lives.

@greyeyed123 I dunno. Or maybe my metacognitive brain centers are more intact than other fanatics, but I have slight OCD, a fanatical personality (think Sheldon in Big Bang), and I used to also be a fervent Christian..mostly based on my own ability to control the environment, and that my every prayer or even wish would magically happen.

I somehow knew it was me making things happen, while also rationalizing that it was divine intervention, despite evidence to the contrary...e., that things I wanted happened, whether or not they were "godly" or even a wise choice for me.

I somehow put up with all the cognitive dissonance, but I kept distancing myself from Christian organizations.

@birdingnut I can't say I was ever very religious, but in the '90s I was very much into UFOs/Aliens/ abduction conspiracies. I remember reading about alien stories in South America, and they bore virtually no resemblance to the ones in North America. I concluded that they must be false simply because they were unfamiliar. The stories and details I was familiar with, I regarded as true...because I had been familiar with them longer. They evidence seemed strong, as long as you already believed it. It took a long time to realize this, but mostly I lost interest because if a fraction of the stories were true, over time there would be better evidence than what we were getting. And we weren't getting any.

@greyeyed123 I not only read about UFOs since I was little in the 1950s, but my dad saw one in Texas when he was hunting jackrabbits as a boy..very close up. He said it was small, like a drone, following the power line, with a wire neck attached to the power line. I saw plenty of UFOs, alone, in groups, with my friends, with my family, with a large crowd of people I knew at a church camp weekend, in the US, in Haiti, one even followed our car in 1973 for 300 miles, stalling it once when it hovered directly over the car.

@birdingnut I get where you are coming from, but I am no longer convinced. My dad saw one also, when he was a teenager. But the guy he saw it with was known to take drugs, sometimes LSD. He bumped into the guy a few months ago, and he doesn't remember the incident at all. I'm old enough to have seen a few strange things in the sky, but I can't say I know what they were, or if it was just my perception. In the '90s, we just had the crappy video cameras, and there seemed to be hundreds of videos. Now everyone has a high definition camera in their phone, and youtube to post in on, and they seem to have dried up. These kinds of things are troubling to me if what I thought the phenomena were in the '90s is actually what they were.

@greyeyed123 Yeah..the sky was thick with UFOs until the mid 1970s, when I stopped seeing them. I didn't see any until 2005, when I was on a star gazing date and saw a low orbit vehicle, about the size of a small house, obviously made by humans because it was blue, with yellow frame edging on the portal-like windows. The inside was lit up, and it tumbled slowly through space; I could see the windows rotating around the module. I then knew the government was a total liar. I knew that anyway, but this was proof.

Oh me too! I saw video of them! Wizards and witches too! Oh, and munchkins! I believe in all that sh¡t! There is no God though!

@Coffeeman Ya done seen them there monkeys too?

@PondartIncbendog There HAS to be god; he has a twitter account and I'm friends with him on Facebook..hilarious posts, LOL!

@birdingnut Ok, I'll agree. A Flying monkey god?

@PondartIncbendog His avatar is a comical old man with white hair and long white beard.

100%!

I love that song. They always play it at the beginning of Freethought Radio. FFRF.

Great song!

@bradnyijuan I love free though radio!

But no mention of Santa!! Don’t most agnostics believe in Santa?

Right on!