penn
the other day i was watching an interview video with penn of penn and teller. one of the topics was people profess to believe things that are batshit crazy. oh yes! absolutely! we believe in magic underpants. people coming back from the dead. flying people. space aliens. water to wine. bread to human flesh. children popping out of guy's heads. talking snakes. it's all absolutely true. that's exactly what we believe. except they don't really. i explain. some guy kills a bunch of people. goes on trial. his defense is what? a talking snake told him to do it. cause nobody on a jury of his peer really believes in talking snakes. cause if they did, they might acquit him. hey, talking snake. miracle. for some reason, god wanted them dead. and he got to be the instrument of divine and holy retribution. hallelujah! praise jebus. thank god, god didn't tell a snake to tell a crazy dude to kill my family. course this hypothetical scenario doesn't really happen. why not? the simplest explanation is that people don't really believe the batshit crazy things they say they do. but apparently the need to be irrational about something is an extremely important part of being human. even to the point where a guy is willing to kill someone who implies they're really sane and not irrational at all.