The real problem is when the adults truly believe the fairy tales that they tell their kids. That's when correcting the child's beliefs becomes more difficult.
This line of thought always leads me to the conclusion that our species needs a few hundred more years to evolve mentally before we can make significant inroads against this problem. We're talking about interfering with how people raise their children, a very touchy subject.
Mental evolution is imho just wishful thinking... Look how far everything in technology and philosophy and sciences etc. has developped so far, but the general human mindset has not changed a bit since the very beginning. It's all about tradition and education. And education always is coercion persuasion to some extent. Of course some memetic framework helps.
But now we're aware that mental health exists and can be measured, and (for the most part) we're interested in having good mental health. We can even tell, in a general sense, what it looks like.
This is because of education. As a species, we possess much more knowledge than we did a hundred years ago, and we've used that knowledge to change not only our environment but also to change ourselves.
That is evolution. Just because we sometimes choose the direction in which we wish to evolve (toward better mental health, for instance) doesn't mean that is isn't still evolution.
You mentioned Freud for a moment there. I just wanted to mention that Freud wrote a book way back in 1927 called 'The Future of an Illusion". I read this book about a month ago and would definitely recommend it to anyone interested in religion and psychology. It is considered to be Freud's "indictment" of religion. Throughout his adult life, Freud often referred to himself as a "godless Jew" which I can't help but find amusing. This is not the only book he wrote on religion but it is the only one I have read and can recommend. Also, its fairly short and you don't have to be well versed in psychology at all to understand it.
we were talking about different issues. What I was referring to was the evolution/development towards the "adulthood of humankind", where most of the people would have grown out of their petty wants and basic animal sentiments that seem to determine the course of almost all human action and interaction and act responsibly for the benefit of society and humankind as a whole.
Of course the knoledge even in the so called social fields has multiplied, but still this knowledge has not permeated our society and does not influence human conduct at all.
In evolutionary terms: some advanced traits occur in the population but they are not prevalent and sure as hell they are not dominant or advantageous over more primal behavior. Sex, fear and sapidity are the dominating forces dictating the masses' behavior (imo that has nothing to do with intelligence, even the most intelligent people act stupid in masses).
What mental health concerns I pretty much agree even if I do not know of a generally accepted definition of good mental health, I think of it more as of a threshold.
(I just hope OneHitKill doesn't see this comment. He hates armchair "psychologists".)
The willful ignorance that is the right wing is going to stick around for a long time, and there isn't much anyone can do about it.
On the other hand, when you can employ logic but deny it anyway, there's something wrong. And willful ignorance may be a sign of deeper problems. Since the "normal" (yeah, I know) preference of humans is for more knowledge, and since more knowledge is beneficial not only for individuals but for our species, the deliberate denial or avoidance of knowledge might be considered to be a danger to the individual and to society requiring treatment.
The only way to fix it is to hope irrational people don't reproduce.(that was a joke, don't kill the idiot down the street)
What amazes me most is the inability for these people to just learn and adapt in this area. I was raised Roman Catholic and went to a Catholic school from K-8th grade. Before I even left that place I had already adapted the standard dogma a bit to help myself reconcile the beliefs with the reality of the outside world. Before I received my Confirmation somewhere around sophomore year of high school I was already an Agnostic as my knowledge of the outside world and the realization of the silliness of my parish's teachings grew. I don't really remember when exactly, but it was not long after that I was a full blown Atheist.
I'm not suggesting everyone should be going the full godless route that I went, but it shouldn't take much critical thought to realize that even if your specific deity is real the holy books are at least a perversion of the true deity's message/identity. I think you really have to continuously lie to yourself to take most of these stories literally. Take what you have learned of the outside world and do what you have always done. Just say god must have done it! Evolution? God did it! Abiogenesis? God did it! So on and so forth.
Note: the views portrayed in this comment are not necessarily the views of the author.
chief among them,
Let a woman learn in silence with all submissiveness. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent. - 1 Tim 2
