Montreal Skeptics, Secularists and Freethinkers

The topic for the MSSF’s October discussion is: The Neuroscience of Our Beliefs. Some of our beliefs can be very irrational and fixed, especially political beliefs. There's currently lots of political news in Quebec, Canada and our neighbour to the south. We’ll examine and discuss the curious neuroscience behind why political beliefs can be so unchangeable. The human mind is vast and inscrutable; we know little about it except it governs our behavior and there are countless books on its irrationality. It resulted from hundreds of thousands of years of natural selection in an environment very different from today’s. The brain’s main job was to take care of the body, politics wasn’t an issue for survival on the savanna. A link to a recommended article about why it’s hard to change political beliefs is below. Some possible questions for discussion are: - What are other rigidly held beliefs besides political ones? - How can we change someone's mind on these issues? - How do we acquire these beliefs in the first place? - Are Quebecers less rigid in their political stance than Americans, if so why? The VOX article is at this link: https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2016/12/28/14088992/brain-study-change-minds