Some Thoughts on “The Family”, and How the Doctrine of Determinism is Used By Christian Extremists

My intuition is that many of those folks, at least the smarter ones, don't actually take those things literally. But they are afraid to break ranks. It's a naked emperor situation. More about groupishness/ loyalty than it is about belief. You show your loyalty to the tribe by saying you believe absurd notions. This seems to be a common behavior in our species. I'm an outlier, which gets called low "agreeableness" in the Big Five personality tests. Agreeableness meaning whether you will go along with your crowd, not whether you are friendly.

As a lifelong atheist in the South, I've been at plenty of events where there is some kind of group prayer, and by keeping my head up and my eyes open, I find out who else isn't praying. It's not always who you'd guess. ?

But this groupish dynamic shows up in all sorts of ways, not just among politicians or around religion. I have been on organizational boards where the decisions made absolutely no sense, until I realized who the "teams" were. This is why I would not make it as a politician-- because that's just not how my mind works. I figure if we're on the same team, we want to tell each other the truth, but that's not how it's done.