Writers and readers of the Skeptical Inquirer and of the broader skeptical community spend a great deal of their time critiquing ideas they know to be false—superstitious, supernatural, fundamentalist, metaphysical or religious, conspiratorial, magical, impossible, and irrational. In doing so, however, skeptics may unwittingly advance a view of the mind as a rational agent shining the light of evidence upon the dark shadow of superstition so as to send it scurrying to the closet of once-coveted oddities. Sadly, this is rarely the case, since each human mind stubbornly insists upon an unreason unique to itself but with qualities common to all. In fact, that is why the scientific method constitutes such a precious exercise in discovering often shocking truths that minds alone were typically not able to unearth and which, for many minds, seem to conflict with personal or cultural values.
I argue that the scientific evidence about the functioning of our mentalities suggests that they have so many illusionary qualities of their own that unreason is more fundamental to the human constitution than reason (this does not mean that reason is not important or that we are not capable of reasoning). Humans’ need for meaning often competes successfully against a need to secure tangible evidence for and against views that comfort them.
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March April 2016
 
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