This should come as no surprise ...

... to anyone who lived during the '60s: It's often too easy to exploit our willingness to believe. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.) But this piece is true only as far as it goes. That many people are gullible does not discredit all belief, anymore than errors in computation discredit arithmetic. Moreover, belief and faith are not identical. Finally, it is not so much that we are "pattern-seeking primates" as that, as Abraham Maslow pointed out, meaning is intentional: We tend to find what we're looking for. I myself have great faith in the power of imagination. I think it is, of all our faculties, the one most likely to guide us to the truth.