Humans, in spite of great brain and social capacity, get totally irrational and blind on certain issues. Frequently this is due to dogmas, taboos, religion, political correctness, old habits. etc.  Maybe someone’s hidden agenda is the source for some such manipuative selective (self)-deception .

It took the pope until 1992, 13 years after Neill Armstrong stepped on the moon, to recognize that the Galileo Galilei was right and the earth was not stationary. And people still take the pope seriously when he prohibits the use of condoms in Aids-struck Africa and threatens to excommunicate who turns off the artificial feeding of a girl after 20 years in brain dead coma.

People who normally are highly intelligent (like the pope) become totally irrational, unconscious, self-deceived on issues related to dogmas, taboos, religion, habits, political correctness. Not only at Galileo’s time, even today the taboos go as far as to repress scientific research

1. Prohibiting  the use of embryos for stem cell research. Throwing the embryos into the garbage, that is allowed
2. Persecution of researchers on racial differences in intelligence. This is a tough issue, because equal intelligence of all races is a dogma shared by liberals who would agree with most of my other points. So any research that points to different intelligence in the races must be repressed. But, we claim we are an open-minded scientific society. As long as scientific results don’t contradict our dogmas.
3. Repression of research violating dogmas:  Bill Clinton condemned the “Bell Curve” (about racial differences in intelligence) without even reading it. The US senate condemned, with a 99:0 vote, prestigious research in the American Psychological Association journal showing that in cases of child abuse,
4. Child pornography witch hunt: under the guise of saving a few abused children, the entire interpol hunts down some poor loners who pay for a web site with teen sex photos. They get arrested with the entire might of interpol, and get their life destroyed. As collateral damage parents get arrested for naked photos of baby in a bath tub, of infant suckling on mom’s breast. Adolescent teenagers get on sex offender lists for taking photos of themselves naked on their cell phones and sending the photos to a friend.  This constitutes  producing and distributing child pornography (actually it is neither child nor pornography, but adolescent nude self portraits).
5. Abuse of language to mislead: Words get distorted, worse then Göbbels in Nazi Germany.  Adolescent nude non-sexual phots are called “child pornography”.  Consensual sex with teenagers is called “rape”.  A new law in Brazil defines inappropriate touching as “rape”.  This use of a clearly defined term “rape” for actions that is clearly NOT rape, as defined by popular language  for centuries, is  a clear misuse of language, meant to arouse more anger against the alleged perpetrators.
6. Obsessive repression of teenage sexuality. An enormous legal apparatus, under the guise of protecting 5 year olds from clear obvious abuse (no extra law is needed for that because penetrating a 5 year old is severe bodily harm) ends up arresting 17 year old girls for sending their own nude photos to their boy friends.  A 17 year old buy Ganarlow Wilson got a 10 year jail sentence for getting a blow job from a 15 year old girl, similarly Marcus Dixon got jail for having consensual sex with a peer.
7. Negation of Darwin’s evolutionary theory in spite of overwhelming scientific support with not one single counter-example. The churches see, correctly, that with Darwin’s theory, there is no more pressing need for a God-Creator, so they do their best to invent Creationist nonsense to confuse the non-scientific public.
8. Repression of drugs as harmless as marijuana at the cost of waging wars in Colombia, jailing a considerable percentage of the population
9. at the same time allowing alcohol and tobacco to kill thousands of people. There seems to be some kind of contradiction and inconsistency.
10. Negating right to die for the terminally ill.  We are a liberal society that respects self determination and individual dignity. And we are not a religious state, so why do religious people want to force incurable cancer sufferers to rot and die slowly? If we let our dog die like this, the humane society would sue us for cruelty with animals.
11. Victimless crimes: Why does government and police interfere when consenting adults decide to buy and sell sexual services? Are we not a free country? Is anyone harmed by this? And why are people in jail for planting two flower pots of marijuana in their own back yard for their own consumption? But booze and cigarette stock is listed on the New York Stock Exchange?
12. Prohibition of prostitution: under the guise of protecting women from “abuse”, Cambodjan brothels get closed, leaving the sex workers jobless and without income.  Seems the “victims” are unable to decide for themselves, they need the law and self appointed feminists to decide for them. Basically,  consenting adults are not allowed to sell and buy sexual services .
13. I ran across a very compelling theory, that middle aged unattractive feminists conspire to eliminate competition by young attractive women (especially minors), cheap sex (prostitution), pornography and even sex dolls, so man have no other sexual outlet and are thus forced to stay with unattractive women even though it costs them half their income and property. This is why this brand of feminists do not oppose the burka, do not favor self determination in prostitutes, …
14. Obesity, unhealty food, sedentary lifestyle: due to misguided evolutionary mechanisms (hunter gatherers don’t have McDonalds, chocolate, unimited all you can eat buffets) we tend to eat wrong and be lazy to make unnecessary moves. Add to this industry greed, …. and we have a health epidemic.
15. Human Rights:  The well meant intention to dignify human life has led to absurd protection of criminals in detriment of public security and protection.
    1. Somali Pirates get rewarded with asylum in Holland or Britain.
    2. Old white middle class white ladies in Britain get searched for bombs, just to avoid charges police might racially profile young arab muslim men.
    3. vicious killers on death row can complain about cruelty in execution that take 3 minutes to die (while law abiding citizens are not allowed to die humanely in a hospital but die agonizing deaths taking weeks)
    4. Should society really spend billions on safeguarding criminals. Maybe the old fashioned methods like execution, whipping, cutting off hands etc. should be reconsidered? (I am playing devil’s advocate, I am not whole-heartedly suggesting these solutions)