Robert Heinlein wrote,
Belief gets in the way of learning.
Time Enough for Love, 1973
I think we are seeing an extreme case of this. Buz seems incapable of entertaining any idea that contradicts his beliefs--no matter what the evidence says.
This may be good religion, but it is contrary to what it means to be human.
Another gifted writer, Ayn Rand, explained it this way:
What is the nature of the guilt that your teachers call his Original Sin? What are the evils man acquired when he fell from a state they consider perfection? Their myth declares that he ate the fruit of the tree of knowledgehe acquired a mind and became a rational being. It was the knowledge of good and evilhe became a moral being. He was sentenced to earn his bread by his laborhe became a productive being. He was sentenced to experience desirehe acquired the capacity of sexual enjoyment. The evils for which they damn him are reason, morality, creativeness, joyall the cardinal values of his existence. It is not his vices that their myth of man’s fall is designed to explain and condemn, it is not his errors that they hold as his guilt, but the essence of his nature as man. Whatever he wasthat robot in the Garden of Eden, who existed without mind, without values, without labor, without lovehe was not man.
Source
Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.
™ Version 4.2
