Has that been your experience? The kinds of beliefs that show up on alt_medicine.txt or here are amenable to argument because they aren’t religious? If someone says “Chapstick: a moment on my lips, forever in my reproductive system” then they are going to change their mind if you give them a biology lesson? Those who think vaccines are a conspiracy to give our kids autism while shoring up big pharma profits have been swayed by social pressure? There’s no need for extra lines of defense when someone has completely compartmentalized their thinking.
One of my professors at university honestly wrote that children should be regarded as mere possessions of their parents because they couldn’t agree to a social contract. Ayn Rand is philosophy rather than religion, nutcases who believe what she said are just as dangerous as any religion. Early christians were apparently committed to charity and lived in poverty themselves and then the church came along and turned that into a hierarchy dedicated to make a small number of people rich. People are very exploitable. The reason religion has been a vehicle for that exploitation is because religion is what was around.
30% of my nation wants to vote for an anti-democratic corrupt government because… they hate nebulous leftists? They’ve always voted that way and they aren’t going to stop now? I actually have no idea. They found an authority to trust and they’ll trust him 'til the end of the Earth. I think he might actually be some kind of religious wacko, but that’s not remotely the basis of his persona or success.
