Nornagest comments on Questions on Theism - Less Wrong

23 Post author: Aiyen 08 October 2014 09:02PM

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Comment author: Nornagest 15 October 2014 08:38:21PM *  0 points [-]

More cultural hegemony means more status accruing to people that can credibly claim to have witnessed (or, better yet, been beneficiary of) a miracle, and therefore more coattails to ride. It also means fewer skeptics hanging around to poke holes in your testimony.

More speculatively, it might also mean a greater cultural acceptance of magical thinking, which could make supernatural explanations more salient whenever people are faced with the sort of freakish coincidences that happen a few times in every life by the laws of statistics.