Making Peace with Stupid

Here is something I wrote in response to an informal discussion of this article. 

Superstition is a natural state. We all behave superstitiously at some point every day (when we pick a shirt that reminds us of something pleasant; when we repeat words uttered before some successful venture; when we invest in some complex activity that we don't fully understand that has turned out well in the past). Some kinds of ignorance can be overcome with newer, better information (which falsifies or clarifies the earlier stuff). But it nevertheless remains true that lack of superstition is not natural: we have to work hard to achieve moments of clarity, and even then we only get moments (and only in certain contexts: many of us who are very astute when it comes to dealing with claims about physical or religious realities devolve into primitive morons when we grapple with politics or economics). 

A body-mind analogy may be helpful here. The human body is an enormous colony of cells, some of which work at cross purposes with one another. If something goes terribly wrong, these cells can go crazy and start killing one another (cancer, metabolic disorders). Sometimes, killing off large numbers of some cells can mitigate the damage (and save the body). But in the long run, the body that is going to survive has to have some viable means for integrating "rogue" cells: we need an immune system, and we need foreign bacteria to invade and colonize various parts of us (especially our intestinal tract).

In the same way, the human mind is an enormous collection of ideas/memes, some of which are always going to be idiotic.  Healthy living means learning to accommodate the right amount of stupid ideas, learning how to avoid letting our stupid ideas destroy us.  We would like to eradicate stupidity, but this is impossible.  We have to live with dumb, because that is what we are (at least in part).  Religion has a lot of experience dealing with stupid, and not all of that experience is bad.  Learning from history is not a bad idea.