So has there ever been a study on this? Instead of opinionated answers.

Don't put us all in a box now, your implying that everyone thinks the same way. also the word convince does not imply whether or not what your trying to get them to believe is true or false or that there is any proof involved, simply that you want them to believe. That being said, if they simply "Believed" merely because they were "Told" than they were ignorant to begin with. This im sure does not reflect the entire population

When someone says "society", they aren't referring to every single person...
And it doesn't matter if what you're telling them is true or false.
If what you have to say has greater evidence than what they believe, it would only be logical to believe you instead.
Yet society has its closed minded nature, where they just stick to their first belief and that's that.

Don't try to insult my question. I'm looking for an answer, not a troll.

This post was edited by Katey on Oct 5 2009 03:33pm

Atheists are the most closed-minded, intolerant group of people on earth.

because making an informed decision requires being informed.

if i told you something you knew nothing about, you could use my thoughts as your own without knowing what they mean.
or you could spend time to research, then decide for yourself.

there are only 4 ways knowledge can be gathered.

- authority - someone with credentials.
- intuition - logic
- observation - empirical
- tenacity - "it just is"

unfortunately, when talking about society and the beliefs of a society, these beliefs are all learned by tenacity, i.e. 7th grade health teachers, tv commercials, parents and police say drugs are bad, so people believe drugs are bad.

I would have to disagree. I have talked to a few atheists who are very open-minded and do not close their minds to new theories. I think that the majority could be but not all.

Like someone stated before, Society wants to feels comfortable in where they are. If making itself believe in something wrong then it will do that because it wants to feel secure.