found this interesting piece about a cognitive study of religious beliefs. “people do not adhere to concepts of invisible ghosts or ancestors or spirits because they suspend ordinary cognitive resources, but rather because they use these cognitive resources in a context for which they were not designed in the first place.” though no questions are ultimately answered (if you are frustrated by the seeming lack of any logic in religious zealotry your frustrations will not be eased, the author actually suspects religious belief was an evolutionary trait) but interesting none the less. i hold out hope that the pharmaceutical industry eventually recognize what a huge untapped sector for treatment the devoutly religious are, classifying fundamentalism as a mental illness, and get to work drugging them into oblivion. i can see the felliniesque commercials now… one other quote from the piece: “experimental tests show that people’s actual religious concepts often diverge from what they believe they believe.”