@mcjulie @LarissaFae Except it persists even in religions that achieve high levels of social control and severely punish people who dissent openly. I suspect it’s more insidious: investing belief in something overtly untrue takes huge emotional/psychological investment. @mcjulie @LarissaFae And with huge emotional/psychological investment comes great resistance to admitting a false belief. The Emperor’s New Clothes and all those bureaucrats who can’t admit they see nothing after everyone else has claimed to see them… and then can’t admit they were pretending.