> The last part is a very Western value set - that we should "base our beliefs on facts". Every culture bases most of its beliefs on facts. You just don't noti

> The last part is a very Western value set - that we should "base our beliefs on facts". Every culture bases most of its beliefs on facts. You just don't notice most of those beliefs because they're obvious. If you want bread, someone's going to have to grow grain. People fall when they jump off a cliff. I have hair. There are some beliefs that are not based on facts, and they have a survival advantage if they can convince people that facts should not apply to them. Therefore it really shouldn't be surprising to see anti-factual beliefs across a wide range of cultures. The only reason you can bring Western-centrism into this is because science had its really big success in the West. > Other cultures are a lot less pragmatic, and are willing to ignore an absence of facts as long as they can get results. Those results are, by definition, factual. I'm not sure what you're saying here. > Still both sides (the young earthers and the hard athiests) are both pretty dogmatic. Can you quantify the dogmatism here? Because you sound like you're conflating strong beliefs with an unwillingness to change them given sufficiently strong evidence.