Why non-believers don’t exist

Matthew Hut's "The 7 Laws of Magical Thinking" is one of the most challenging and well-written books I've read in the past decade. His premise is that ALL of us believe in "magical thinking," which he defines as the "mingling of psychological concepts with physical ones" (as opposed to another approach, which would have been "holding beliefs that contradict scientific consensus--he defends his approach on p. 7 of his book). In this article at Huffpo, Hutson elaborates:

Thanks to evolved habits of mind, we suspect the reality of essences, voodoo, luck, mind over matter, ESP, the soul, karma, and destiny. We attribute mental properties to nonmental phenomena (treating natural events as purposeful, say) and attribute nonmental properties to mental phenomena (treating thoughts as having force in the world). We mix up the realms of mind and matter. What's more, such illusions are not all bad--they can provide a sense of control over the events around us and a sense of meaning in life. So before you call someone with far-fetched beliefs stupid or crazy, read on and check out 13 of the many reasons the supposed "non-believer" is just one more figment of the imagination.
What follows, I guarantee, is that everyone of you will realize that you are believe in magical thinking.

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Exploring a St. Louis decaying church

Last Saturday I joined a small group of urban explorers (I just joined this group on meetup.com). The location: Bethlehem Lutheran Church in North St. Louis. You can't help but think of all of the people who have stepped into this massive building on all of the emotional occasions. And today, there are a few more of us, admiring what this building once was. Here are a few photos glorious but sad building. open floor one observer - good IMG_4763 Bethlehem Church IMG_4717 Bethlehem Church IMG_5118 Bethlehem Church

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Your extremely low odds of dying in a terrorist attack

What are the odds of you dying in a terrorist attack. Extremely, absurdly low. You are NINE times more likely to die by choking in your own vomit. Six times more likely to die due to hot weather. 87 times more likely to die of drowning. We can easily fix most of our terrorism problem is we merely fix our innumeracy problem. Related topic: Here are eight ways to allow 3,000 people die.

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I have nothing to hide . . .

You hear this so often: I have nothing to hide (so it's OK for the NSA to read my email). Really? What if they spy on you without any probable cause, find out that you possess drugs, then they turn this information over to the DEA, which pretends it didn't get this information from the NSA, then recreates the path necessary to put you in prison? Far fetched?

A secretive U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration unit is funneling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans. Although these cases rarely involve national security issues, documents reviewed by Reuters show that law enforcement agents have been directed to conceal how such investigations truly begin - not only from defense lawyers but also sometimes from prosecutors and judges. The undated documents show that federal agents are trained to "recreate" the investigative trail to effectively cover up where the information originated, a practice that some experts say violates a defendant's Constitutional right to a fair trial. If defendants don't know how an investigation began, they cannot know to ask to review potential sources of exculpatory evidence - information that could reveal entrapment, mistakes or biased witnesses.
What else could happen to those of you who have never committed a crime? How about identity theft? How about some NSA contractor stealing your passwords to your financial institutions? This is an agency with no accountability, with hundreds of thousands of employees with the technical ability to read all of your most private information. How about screwing up your computer as they search through it with the viruses they manufacture? Far Fetched? Why should we be concerned? Check out this video. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/05/dea-surveillance-cover-up_n_3706207.html

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