James Maconochie

“No religion has ever demanded as much of the individual as such, and it might be said that. radical individualism is the very form of religious integrism [fundamentalism]. The modern religion of selfabnegation, of all-out operationality - the worst one of all since it recoups all the energy of irreligion, all the energy released by the eclipsing of traditional religions. This is the greatest irreligious conversion in history. By comparison with this voluntary holocaust, this escalation of sacrifice, the so-called return of religion which we pretend to fear - these occasional upsurges of religiosity or traditional integrism - is negligible. It merely conceals the fundamental integrism of this consensual society, the terroristic fundamentalism of this new sacrificial religion of performance. It masks the fact that society as a whole is moving towards religious metastasis. Religious effects are taken too seriously in their religious dimension and not seriously enough as effects, that is, as masking the true process. This is a screen tumour, a fixation abscess which, by focusing it, allows the evil to be exorcized at little cost, sparing the need to analyse the whole society, to analyse 'democratic' society, which is virtually converted to integrism and revisionism, to security and protectionism and, at the same time, to the techniques of crude promotion and intimidation.
This 'post-modern' individualism arises not out of a problematic of liberty and liberation, but out of a liberalization of slave networks and circuits, that is, an individual diffraction of the programmed ensembles, a metamorphosis of the macro-structures into innumerable particles which bear within them all the stigmata of the networks and circuits - each one forming its own micro-network and micro-circuit, each one reviving for itself, in its micro-universe, the now useless totalitarianism of the whole.”
― Jean Baudrillard, The Illusion of the End

“Once I have forgotten what I appeared to know, then I can desirously love that which I cannot think.”
― Simon Critchley, Mysticism

“The origin of science is in the desire to know causes; and the origin of all false science and imposture is in the desire to accept false causes rather than none; or, which is the same thing, in the unwillingness to acknowledge our own ignorance.”
― William Hazlitt, New Writings by William Hazlitt: Second Series

“The personality elements of the funnel of misbelief

Personality—broadly understood as individual differences—plays a role in explaining why some of us are more susceptible to misbelief than others.

It is extremely difficult to do personality research on misbelievers, since they instinctively mistrust the motives of the researchers. However, some common traits have been observed.

Being more prone to misremembering, falling into the trap of false recall and false recognition, feeds misbelief.

Seeing patterns where none exist is linked to misbelief.

Overtrusting our intuitions is linked to misbelief.

Decision-making biases such as the conjunction fallacy, illusory correlations, and the hindsight bias are more pronounced in misbelievers.

Narcissism plays a role in misbelief.

Personality cannot be easily changed, but knowing which traits correlate with misbelief can help us to identify risky points.”
― Dan Ariely, Misbelief: What Makes Rational People Believe Irrational Things