I recently discussed American foreign policy with an attorney over lunch.  Over the years, this fellow had generally shown himself to be thoughtful on many issues.  He is a meticulous lawyer, charged with parsing out bits of relevant evidence regarding the dozens of cases on which he works every day.

It eventually became clear that he fully supported the U.S. attack on Iraq, though he was agonized over how badly the “war” was going.  Why did he support the Iraq invasion?  This is where the conversation got strange:  Because of what “they” did to us (allegedly the 9/11 attacks).  It’s because of what “they” planned to do (impose Muslim culture on all Americans).  It’s because of what “they” stand for (”they hate freedom”).   Further, we simply need to make them pay.   We can’t let “them” get away with what “they” did on 9/11.  

It became clear through this conversation that, for my acquaintance, all Muslim countries are the same.  None of them can be trusted.  All of them are at least somewhat guilty for 9/11.   I challenged his over-generalizations, but my acquaintance would not back off.  For him, all Muslims are bad.  Further, it was clear to him that we couldn’t do nothing about 9/11.  Doing something (no matter what it was) is far better than doing nothing.

It has repeatedly occurred to me that without the federal government’s 6-year national license to engage in bigotry and misdirected vengefulness, the invasion of Iraq would have been extremely difficult to sell. Based upon numerous conversations I’ve had with people who supported the Iraq invasion, bigotry and misdirected vengefulness justified their support of the invasion.  For many people these things continue to justify any future U.S. military action in the Middle East.  “They” have it coming.

In “The Real Lessons of 9/11,” Gary Kamiya does a much-needed psychological analysis on those people who have supported the sustained and misdirected U.S. military violence in the Middle East.  Kamiya has really thought things through.  Kamiya’s Salon.com article is an extraordinary piece of writing.  The bottom line is that the mainstream media has not questioned the shameful emotions and ideology that justified Bush’s crusade in the minds of all too many people.  Here are a few excerpts from the article, but I highly recommend clicking on the link and reading the whole thing:

Six years ago, Islamist terrorists attacked the United States, killing almost 3,000 people. President Bush used the attacks to justify his 2003 invasion of Iraq. And he has been using 9/11 ever since to scare Americans into supporting his “war on terror.” He has incessantly linked the words “al-Qaida” and “Iraq,” a Pavlovian device to make us whimper with fear at the mere idea of withdrawing. In a recent speech about Iraq, he mentioned al-Qaida 95 times. No matter that jihadists in Iraq are not the same group that attacked the U.S., or that their numbers and effectiveness have been greatly exaggerated.

Sept. 11 is a totemic date for the Bush administration. It justifies everything, explains everything, ends all argument. It is the crime that must be eternally punished, the wound that can never heal, the moral high ground that can never be taken. Bush’s reaction to 9/11 was to declare a “war on terror,” of which the Iraq adventure was said to be the “front line.” The American establishment signed off on this war because of 9/11. To oppose Bush’s “war on terror” was to risk another terror attack and dishonor our dead.

Of course America was enraged and fearful after the attacks. But reacting to the attacks as we did, like an angry drunk in a bar, was not in our national interests. It was vital that we think clearly about our response, who attacked us, why they did, and what our most effective response would be. But here the American establishment ran up against its ideological blind spot — its received ideas about the Arab/Muslim world. Combined with the hysterical emotionalism, those ideas, which amount to a kind of de facto bigotry, allowed Bush to push through one of the most bizarrely gratuitous wars in history.

Sept. 11 was a hinge in history, a fork in the road. It presented us with a choice. We could find out who attacked us, surgically defeat them, address the underlying problems in the Middle East, and make use of the outpouring of global sympathy to pull the rest of the world closer to us. Or we could lash out blindly and self-righteously, insist that the only problems in the Middle East were created by “extremists,” demonize an entire culture and make millions of new enemies.

If you don’t think that FOX news is absolutely corrupt, and that FOX has drunk lots of concentrated neocon Koolaid, take a look at the furious spin job FOX did during the first Republican debate.

This video has been doctored by Ron Paul’s people, sometimes in an entertaining way. The video does a good job of demonstrating that FOX thinks that FOX gets to choose the next president, not the U.S. voters. I just love the text message voting stats throughout.

This one is difficult to watch because O’Reilly is so utterly condescending and so unwilling to allow his guest (Ron Paul) to speak. The debate does capture the neocon perspective (O’Reilly) and Paul’s view, to which I am sympathic. Ron Paul argues that our “troubles” in the Middle East are largely blowback for inappropriate actions the U.S. has taken for decades in the Middle East. We have been interfereing in Middle East politics in grotesque ways, installing puppet leaders and acting under the assumption that it is our oil under their sand.

Now, our policies regarding Iran are causing the Iranian government to associate all internal Iranian dissent with the United States, which has led to the squelching of dissent. We caused many of our own problems in the Middle East by ramping up tensions with our preemptory invasion of Iraq, our rhetoric and our conduct in building permanent military bases all over the region, including 14 permanent bases in Iraq alone.

This is an excerpt from a book written by presidential candidate Chris Dodd:

“For six decades, we learned the lessons of the Nuremberg men and women well,” the presidential candidate writes in his book, “Letters from Nuremberg” published this week. “We didn’t start wars — we ended them. We didn’t commit torture — we condemned it. We didn’t turn away from the world — we embraced it.”

“But that has changed in the past few years,” Dodd writes.

These are not poor cities, yet their citizens prefer getting around by using bicycles.

What does “No Child Left Behind” mean in real-life classrooms? I’ve discussed this topic with several grade school teachers. They are uniformly distressed that NCLB narrows the focus of classroom instruction to the point where children are too often “taught” factoids, ephemeral bits of information that will allow them to pass a test without significantly advancing their ability to understand the world around them.

Jonathan Kozol writes passionately about this point at this Huffpo post:

The poisonous essence of this law lies in the mania of obsessive testing it has forced upon our nation’s schools and, in the case of underfunded, overcrowded inner-city schools, the miserable drill-and-kill curriculum of robotic “teaching to the test” it has imposed on teachers, the best of whom are fleeing from these schools because they know that this debased curriculum would never have been tolerated in the good suburban schools that they, themselves, attended.

When I ask them why they’ve grown demoralized, they routinely tell me it’s the feeling of continual anxiety, the sense of being in a kind of “state of siege,” as well as the pressure to conform to teaching methods that drain every bit of joy out of the hours that their children spend with them in school.

“I didn’t study all these years,” a highly principled and effective first-grade teacher told me — she had studied literature and anthropology in college while also having been immersed in education courses — “in order to turn black babies into mindless little robots, denied the normal breadth of learning, all the arts and sciences, all the joy in reading literary classics, all the spontaneity and power to ask interesting questions, that kids are getting in the middle-class white systems.”

Kozol raises the issue of what to do about the many dysfunctional inner-city schools. It is, after all, a tragedy that we have so many buildings that look like schools but don’t function like schools. I happen to live near several dysfunctional inner-city schools. No thoughtful parent with options to do otherwise would willingly send their kids to such “schools.” I wrote about one teacher’s experience in one such school. I invite you to read the words of this conscientious teacher, who I called “Geri Anderson.” The epilogue to that troubling story is that “Geri’s” contract was not renewed. I have heard it over and over (from teachers and ex-teachers) that inner-city school teachers who show heartfelt enthusiam and creativity can expect to burn out or get fired in short order. In fact, one of my neighbors volunteered to tutor at that same school for several years. She spoke up last year when she noticed that a 2nd grader was getting none of the special education he required (and that school documents indicated he was getting). Epilogue II: My neighbor, the volunteer, was consequently “fired” (told that her services were no longer needed).

How do we fix these problem schools? I hate to sound like a broken record, but media reform is a big part of this problem (and most other big problems too). Stories of what it’s really like to go to these types of schools should be on the front page of local newspapers every day until we address the situation with real changes. We do have lots of available space on the newspaper front page–it’s often filled with advertising disguised as articles and other feel-good stories such as how to purchase a special Halloween-theme leash for your dog. Advertisers don’t like stories about failing schools, though. It makes people feel that they should tax themselves enough to fix the problem. It makes them feel guilty about buying those diamond bracelets, sporty new cars and the other non-essentials advertised in the paper.

Depriving children, our next generation of adults, of real education is a bill we will pay, within our lifetimes, with the high costs of prisons and social services. That’s the message that should be front and center every day.

Kozol is correct, in my opinion, that one important way to help the schools is to quit foisting NCLB onto teachers. Great teachers and good teachers don’t teach in ways that obsess with the narrow-minded tests required by NCLB. After all, when they grow up, these kids aren’t going to find jobs that require them to take trivial quizzes. They will need to know how to think so that they can continually tool up to meet the needs of jobs that don’t even exist today.

Kozol goes further, advocating a new round of inter-district busing, a system not based on race. I’m wary of such an approach for many reasons, however. Mainly, it’s an approach that doesn’t force bad schools to become better. Why not spend limited money on more teachers and better teachers rather than bus drivers? Politicians advocating another round of busing have no chance of getting elected in most of the U.S.

Instead, why not publish a constant steam of media stories about what it’s really like to attend class in a dysfunctional school. Cut the classroom photo ops and show the citizens that too many of the kids in the classroom are not getting a meaningful education. Do it until people can’t stand to see these articles anymore. If people stop reading the papers because they don’t want to do anything about this massive problem, then we have a much bigger problem, indeed. Especially in light of the fact that it makes economic sense to address this problem. Fixing this problem should appeal the self-interest of everyone.

In the meantime, Kozol is right that the status quo is intolerable. We need to put an end to fake education; no more bandaids. No more big government programs that actually make education worse. NCLB is a fraud being perpetrated on the public. It defrauds parents who send their kids to the horrible schools and it defrauds a public that assumes that other people’s kids are being educated when they are actually being turned into resentful robots. Those kids are being taught to be turned off by anything that goes by the name of “education.” That’s the state of education in all too many of our public schools.

Here’s an elegant and well-written vignette contrasting two views of what it means to achieve wealth and meaning in one’s life.  

Check out these bizarre photos of our Commander in Chief during his recent visit to Iraq. These photos are posted by Abu Aardvark, along with some provocative commentary. 

What it means is not certain. I read of this study at Mindhacks.  

The researchers suggest that this study supports the claim that “contagious yawning and the capacity of empathy share common neural and cognitive mechanisms.”

Don’t scoff at the concept of a “shadow puppet show” until you actually see it. It’s pretty amazing:

I realize I’m on a Youtube kick these days. But there are some pretty amazing things to see. For instance, this impressive collection of tornadoes.

Here’s another fun site. 15 dots walking–a walking animation. It’s amazing how much emotion can be conveyed by 15 dots.

This is crazy enough to share. Mozart goes on the road.

Visit this site and enjoy a lush minute of sites and sounds from BBC Motion Gallery.

These Hubble photos from HubbleSite sum it all up. Studying nature with rigor is a high spiritual calling.  In my mind, honoring the scientific method is a much higher calling than cherry-picking vague passages from old books of questionable origin. 

The following photo is of the Crab Nebula, taken by the Hubble telescope.

Go to HubbleSite for a high-res version of this Hubble photo and more than 1,000 others. 

From Wikipedia, we learn that the Crab Nebula was first observed in 1731 by John Bevis, and corresponds to a bright supernova that was recorded by Chinese and Arab astronomers in 1054. Located at a distance of about 6,300 light years (2 kpc) from Earth, the nebula has a diameter of 11 ly (3.4 pc) and is expanding at a rate of about 1,500 kilometres per second.

The idea of Bill Maher’s post is that we should just tell President Bush that his wildest fantasies are, indeed, coming true. Will Bush ever find out that we’re lying to him?  Are you kidding?  He just told Australia’s Prime Minister that we’re “kicking ass” in Iraq.  That’s the way it is when your reality is not based on evidence.

According to Maher, here’s why we need to implement the Bush Bubble immediately: 

According to the Times of London, the Air Force has drawn up plans for massive strikes against 1,200 targets in Iran. The plan doesn’t just call for eliminating Iran’s nuclear program, but for taking out its entire military in one blow. Can Bush destroy another country’s whole army? Why not? He did it to ours.

We’ll get Condi to slip him a note. “Mr. President, Iran is free!” And he’ll scribble some garbled bullshit on it, like “let freedom Purple Rain” and that will be that.

You bet it did!  Actually, the Earth moves whether or not you are having sex.

The only real question is figuring out how far the Earth moved. Luckily Quirkology has provided you a calculator that allows you to customize input to figure out, in miles, how far the Earth actually and truly moved.

This is a good trick and a terrific experiment. Watch the video all the way through for a great illustration of “attention blindness.”

I’ve just checked in with the Rapture Index, just in case. According to this site, the rapture

is an event that will take place sometime in the near future. Jesus will come in the air, catch up the Church from the earth, and then return to Heaven with the Church. In 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, we are given a clear description of the rapture: “the dead in Christ will rise, then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord.”

The “Index” is now at 159, just short of the 160-mark Rapture Index characterizes as “fasten your seat belt.”  Really, it’s almost time . . . 

What does this mean?  I would think it would mean to spend down your savings and run up your credit cards, since money will soon not matter.   But, alas, it’s not that simple, according to Wikipedia.  Similarly, the Rapture Index presents lots of important Rapture-related information all in one handy place: the Rapture Index FAQ.

All angels have penises.

Beware of perfect red cows in Israel. 

Not everyone who gets to heaven gets the same reward.  Some people are treated extra special in heaven.

The antichrist might be a homosexual. 

Women shouldn’t work outside of the home.  Nor do they have a place as a church leader. 

Spanking is acceptable.

There is not any such thing as dog heaven for your dog.  Get over it.  After all, there’s not enough room in heaven for all of those dead dogs. 

The Bible does not require us to be vegetarians.

What are demons?  The site offers this strange response:  “Thankfully, the Bible does not devote a whole lot of time to discussing demons and their activity, but we can trace their origin.”

It’s OK to be rich. 

The Rapture Index will try to remain online after the Rapture. 

It’s been interesting watching Ron Paul hammer the other candidates of both parties on the issues Iraq and our out-of-control deficit economy. The Republican elite and the corporate media have no idea of what to do with Paul–he just won’t fall in line.

Here are a couple examples of Ron Paul articulating his positions on these two issues (and others).

“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” 

Ludwig Wittgenstein

We are suffering greatly because too many people are incapable of saying “I don’t know.” 

Why can’t people simply say “I don’t know” when they don’t know?  Is it because so many of us were chastised in school when we didn’t know an answer?  Back in school, there wasn’t any penalty for guessing when you were not certain of your answer—maybe this training to engage in penalty-free guessing taught too many of us that we should continue to guess out in the real world, when we don’t really know.

Or could this unwillingness to say “I don’t know” be yet another manifestation of cognitive dissonance (or see here)?  Perhaps many people feel exposed and belittled when it is revealed that they don’t actually know something.   Therefore, they strive to present themselves in a good light (by confidently saying something rather than admitting that they don’t know) to reduce their inner dissonance.

Ironically, the people who are worst able to perform are often the most confident in their abilities. This has been repeatedly shown by psychologists.  For example, it was shown by Justin Kruger and David Dunning in an article entitled:  “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments.”

We argue that when people are incompetent in the strategies they adopt to achieve success and satisfaction, they suffer a dual burden: Not only do they reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it. 

This unwillingness to say “I don’t know” can sometimes be dangerous.  Let’s assume that an President announces his plan to needlessly invade a country with the world’s largest military.  Let’s assume that this President, when asked to explain his intentions to invade, is incapable of saying “I don’t know.”  Instead, he struts around acting like everything is under control even though he has no idea whether his plan will succeed or at what the invasion will cost. 

Then again, imagine this exchange involving a President who puts the truth first:

Mr. President, does the enemy really have WMD?

A:  I don’t know.

Mr. President, will the citizens throw flowers to greet our troops?

A:  I don’t know.

Those honest answers would compel this answer to whether we should invade: “I don’t know.”  But this is not the world in which we live, of course.

What could be more dangerous than a President who can’t admit that he doesn’t know things he doesn’t know?  Here’s something that would be more dangerous: Assume that the citizens mistake the Leader’s obstinate unwillingness to say that “I don’t know” for fortitude.  Assume further that the citizens themselves begin acting certain that their President is correct when they actually have no idea.  Such citizens would thus be afflicted too.  They would be too embarrassed to say these magic words in front of their friend: “I don’t know whether our President knows.”

Or imagine this exchange:

Is their a God or an afterlife?

A:  I don’t know

Imagine how much this would eliminate most debates regarding religion! 

When challenged, many people who don’t really know (but who claim they know) put up vicious fights.  Often, the less they know, the harder they fight for their unsupported positions.  This anomaly is understandable.  People give more respect to people who know.  People who claim to know are cheaters.   They are pulling a bait and switch.  The world is full of cheaters (all of us some of the time), and people who refuse to say “I don’t know” are simply one type of cheater.

If they had been questioned about something discernable, e.g., whether they tied their shoes that day, everyone could look down and see for themselves.   There would be no emotional fight in such a circumstance (where the facts could actually be determined) But when the issue is a complex issue such as education, how to invest one’s money, how to raise a child, religion, nutrition or running the country, there is no way to determine any long-term “correct” (or, often, short term) answers.  Therefore, to disagree with a person who can’t say “I don’t know” on one of these complex issues is not to have a disagreement at all, but it will seem like you’re having a disagreement.  The consequent displays of anger and frustration are inversely proportional to the paucity of information available.  I’ve seen it hundreds of times.  Again, if the answer were actually clear, people would exchange information without emotional distress.  Because no clear answers are available (and because so many people can’t say they don’t know), however, heated arguments can be heard late into the night.  Intelligent people don’t often argue to support things they don’t know, however.  Intelligent people know enough be able to say “I don’t know.”  This is one of the things that makes intelligent people intelligent.

Where facts aren’t really available (and where arguments thus become more personal) people are being rejected, not information.  Where people argue in ignorance, people are being dissed and they’re feeling it. That’s what too many “arguments” are about today: people blasting hot air at each other in full ignorance in a vain attempt to increase their social status.  All too many arguments today are for the sake of social status or defending one’s social group rather than for the sake of exchanging information.  In fact, if two people are arguing, it’s most likely that they’re not exchanging information.  

We would all be better off if more of us felt at ease uttering those three magic little words: “I don’t know.”   Will we ever have a world where most of the people who don’t know say they don’t know?  I’d love to live in such a world, but I’m not holding my breath that it will happen soon.

This post is from Press Esc:  

The Pope’s calls to save the environment [were] met with dismay by critics who have repeatedly pointed out that the Vatican’s ban on contraception will effectively negate all attempts at protecting the environment and tacking climate change.

“Care of water resources and attention to climate change are matters of grave importance for the entire human family,” Benedict XVI said today, on th eve of an international symposium on the defense of the Arctic. “Encouraged by the growing recognition of the need to preserve the environment, I invite all of you to join me in praying and working for greater respect for the wonders of God’s creation.”

But William Lawrence argues in New Scientist that Catholic church is responsible for denying women access to condoms that could halt the population explosion, which is the main cause of Planet Earth’s environmental ills.

It’s called the American Dream because “you have to be asleep to believe it.”

I’ve rarely agreed so many times in four short minutes.

This paean to Taco Bell, from Mark Dery of Salon.com:

No matter how sophisticated my palette has grown, nor how politicized it has become, I still feel a nostalgic fondness for Taco Bell tacos, triggered by sense memories of that first bite, when the shell would disintegrate into a heap of tortilla shards and meat on the orange wrapping paper that doubled as a tray. The sublimity of that crunch, the sensuous contrast between brittle, ultra-thin shell (worlds away from the chewy, chamois softness of the griddle-warmed tortillas served by Tijuana taquerias) and moist, spicy-sweet meat: Taco Bell tacos combined the delights of Pringles chips and sloppy Joes. For a kid in the late ’60s and ’70s, what could be better?

In an earlier post, I summarized an Elliot Aronson interview on the topic of cognitive dissonance.  Because I find this to be such a critically compelling topic, I took the time to listen to a recent Point of Inquiry podcast featuring Dr. Carol Tavris, Aronson’s co-author regarding Mistakes Were Made (But Not by ME): Why we justify foolish beliefs, bad decisions, and hurtful acts (Harcourt, 2007).  This book applies cognitive dissonance theory to a wide variety of important real-world topics, including politics, conflicts of interest, memory the criminal justice system, police interrogation, the daycare sex-abuse epidemic, family quarrels, international conflicts, and business.

In her interview, Tavris explains herself clearly and convincingly.  She does not shy away from applying cognitive business to such real-world topics as religious beliefs and the political decisions made by George W. Bush.  It also applies to alleged medical cures, approaches to education and child rearing techniques.  It applies to any topic where the evidence might clash with a person’s need to maintain a self-image that conflicts with the evidence. 

“Cognitive dissonance” is the state of discomfort humans experience when one of their beliefs is contradicted by evidence or when two of their beliefs conflict with each other.  It is curious to see what usually happens when someone’s deep belief is challenged by new evidence.  “They almost never say thank you.”  Instead, they’re likely to say “Piss off.”  This rejection is likely to occur even if the new evidence is carefully gathered scientific data.  This new conflicting evidence forces people into a state of dissonance, causing them to test their beliefs.  New evidence that challenges existing beliefs and actions is thus up against a formidable foe: the mind is hardwired to look for confirming evidence.

When we are armed with new evidence that others reject on religious or political grounds, for example, we sometimes wonder how these “hypocrites” can live with themselves.  It is true that some scam artists do exist; there is such a thing as hypocrisy.  On the other hand, most challenging evidence is rejected by well-meaning people who hold beliefs that they feel compelled to defend because of cognitive dissonance.  It is not an act of intentional ignorance or maliciousness, for the most part.  The usual choice is between a) I’m a good person and b) I’ve just done something criminal/stupid/harmful.  Our usual decision as humans is to reduce the impact of b), preserving our self-image of integrity.

This topic is so important because this phenomenon is ubiquitous.  Whenever any of us make decisions, we are always facing the need to reduce dissonance.  As Tavris indicates, when people “get” the concept of cognitive dissonance, they really get it.  “You’ll see it everywhere.  It’s like an optical illusion.” It becomes impossible not to see it any longer.  It’s important that we take this topic to heart, because all of us repeatedly face this challenge.  All of us need to stop ourselves and question ourselves.  We all need to make sure we do our best to get out of our own “self-justifying spirals.”

What is the best way to avoid that ill-effects of cognitive dissonance?  The best way is to widen our circle of friends to include different-thinking others.  We should actively surround ourselves with people who will go even further than to merely think differently; we need the people in our trusted circle to actively disagree with us.  This was done by John F. Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln, who both (eventually) recognized the dangers of groupthink  dissent embedded in our trusted advisors helps to keep us honest.  The truth will indeed set us free, but the truth can often be quite painful .  Only when we work hard to shatter the “shell of self-justification” can we keep ourselves from making the same mistakes again and again.

Most people don’t really understand enough about the proper method of resolving conflicts.  They very easily slip into cognitive dissonance.  Rather than process challenging new facts with an open mind, good people become virtual lawyers, arguing for the legitimacy of their past actions and their consistent virtuous character.  Again, it’s not that people intentionally try to do destructive things or think illogical thoughts.  Rather, we steer ourselves away from considering evidence that challenges our pristine notions of ourselves as consistently good/intelligent people.  After we buy a car, for instance, we avoid reading new information that might cause us to conclude that we actually made a bad decision in our purchase.

How do outsiders with new good information push through then, when cognitive dissonance keeps people from considering their destructive ways?  How do we puncture the protective cocoons of other people.  Tavris warns that we won’t be able to do this directly.  The more illogical/ignorant/harmful is a person’s past thoughts or actions, the stronger cognitive dissonance pushes back.  People are not very often rational, but rather self-rationalizing.

Tavris considered various conflicts between religion and science.  A fact that repeatedly surprises skeptics and scientists is that religious faith is often strengthened by evidence that disconfirms net religious belief.  Believers often come to the conclusion that God is testing them or that it was the devil’s fault when the evidence shows that a “good God” has done ill to someone in the world.  A lone survivor of a plane crash will consider that God was looking out after him or her, not that God was killing everyone else.  Tavris warns that pointing out irrational beliefs with forceful arguments usually doesn’t help.  It puts the other person into a state of dissonance, making them feel stupid.  They’ll say “To hell with you.” 

Therefore, we need to be careful to avoid the “tone of certitude” when making arguments to people who are emotionally invested in protecting their past actions or beliefs.  We need to consider what those beliefs mean to them. We might need to use some patient diplomacy.  Rather than framing the argument as one of science versus religion, present the issue as one that divides people of varying religious beliefs.  That way, it will the less likely that a religious person will feel attacked by evidence conflicting with their personal religious beliefs.

I have not yet read the book by Tavris and Aronson, but neither of their interviews touch on the topic of social pressures to conform to certain beliefs.  Rather, their interviews both hammered on the effect new evidence has upon personal beliefs.  I would be interested in knowing more about the relationship between cognitive dissonance and the effect that Solomon Asch described in many of his experiments, the “pressure” people often feel to conform their beliefs to the stated beliefs or preferences of third parties.