If that's the case, then I assume you believe that the NO-AGW folks, who have no predictions about the climate and presumably would predict no change in anything over the general variability previously seen, and are therefore a lot further off than the worst model, are WORSE science. If not, why not?
There are plenty of real scientists publishing observations and pointing out the flaws in current models, and these things, once confirmed, go back into the system (when they can get around the alarmists' decredentialing program), and improves understanding of ALL the factors of climate changes and the assumptions that need to be adjusted in the models.
The alarmists have created a huge distraction over fear of CO2, which is simply not the issue we should be focusing on. It's part of the life cycle. Instead, we can look to mitigate some of the changes we observe happening (for instance, we know sea levels are rising about 3mm per year - plan for THAT). And there are MANY pollution issues - nitrogen and phosphorous pollution in rivers and bays, sulfur, mercury, and particulates being released into the air, high-density animal farms overusing antibiotics and destroying the surrounding ecology, and many other CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGERS - that we should be focused on reducing or ending.
The alarmism over CO2 has distracted from dealing with these issues, so it makes one wonder exactly who stands to benefit from that. It isn't the middle class and poor, that's certain.
Could be that we eat organic food as much as possible, we avoid food additives like the plague, don't know. Fact of the matter is I was stable at 141 pounds (+/-2) for the last 20 years.
This.
Empty calories, additives that fool your body into thinking you're getting enough protein when you're not, and stuffing things with too many carbs and nutritionally deficient ingredients means you end up eating too much, and the cycle perpetuates. Do a raw cleans, and switch to a paleo diet. You'll get more energy and stop gaining weight.
HAHAHAHA. Known ExxonMobil hand puppets doing the same job that was done for the tobacco industry. Keep trying.
So the only rebuttal you have to the entire post is an ad-hominem attack on the source? Epic Fail on your part.
There are reams and reams of peer-reviewed papers pointing out substantial flaws with climate models and inputs used in them that assume the opposite of what observations show. Why bother linking to any of those though, since they won't appear on your list of "approved journals" and "approved experts"?
Wooo! It just keeps getting better. Enjoy your little isolated enclave, dude. The irony of YOU telling ME about ignoring (supposed) "uncomfortable fact" is... entirely laughable. You're deluded, there's not really any point in reading more of your propaganda-induced fantasy, I couldn't go on after that one.
majority of credible climate models support the "hockey stick"
Sure - if you want to create a hockey stick, it can be easily done, but it's still just a trick. Add that to the complete failure of the climate models to make accurate predictions, and you have a lot of shrill propaganda drowning out the reasoned science.
Mann's agenda is a political one, not a scientific one. That's why he had to produce a graph that showed something dramatic, so he manipulated the data, with some statistical errors that have been pointed out and never correct (I won't go into all the shenanigans again), to show "WHOA! IT'S A NEW HORROR!".
The issue is what is the scale of impact that this CO2 warming is having on the overall climate system. Is the effect of the CO2 so big that it can drive the temperature of the whole planet up in a way that is big enough to actually alter the climate? Mann the shrill alarmist publicity hound needed to show something dramatic to demonstrate his own opinion that the answer is "Yes". But this is a much harder question to answer because no one has a model of the total climate system that actually works and which verifiably produces even remotely accurate forecasts about climate trends.
So without a working model of the total climate system the only way to “prove” that CO2 is driving climate change is to prove that something truly unique is happening to the climate, that there is unprecedented warming occurring, and and then propose man made CO2 change as the only candidate as the cause of this ‘unprecedented’ warming.
Between the 1995 second IPCC report and the 2001 third IPCC report there was a complete revision in the way that recent climate history was portrayed. The supporters of the theory that CO2 changes were driving temperatures up had succeeded in their goal of eliminating the Medieval Warm Period. This rewriting of climate history and the elimination of the Medieval Warm Period was achieved through the famous Hockey Stick graph.
Mann completely redrew climate history, turning the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age into non-events.In the new Hockey Stick diagram the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age have disappeared, to be replaced by a largely benign and slightly cooling linear trend in climate until 1900 AD after which the Mann’s new graph showed the temperature shooting up in the 20th century in an apparently anomalous and accelerating fashion.
Apparently, you've never even tried to read any of the papers about the statistical tricks Mann used to generate "hockey-stick" graphs. You should at least examine Ross McKitrick's analysis.
His original hockey stick graph still holds up as shown by around a dozen similar studies done by different scientists using different proxies and techniques.
There is a very clear standard for this; if you follow the law or appear to do so in all outward respects and there is no grounds for investigation against you then you have the right to privacy/secrecy. If you break the law in one way then you are subject to investigation in all ways.
In today's environment, that is no protection at all, because there is always some law that can be applied that you are breaking. In fact, speculation is that the average American commits three felonies a day.
If the bar is set so high that people like Snowden have to prove their intentions unambigously, beyond a reasonable doubt, in order to prove their credibility, then they are lost before they begin, because the system assures that's never possible.
But that's not the US justice system - the burden of proof is on the prosecution, not the defense.
Real Climate is run by some of the leading climate scientists in the world and that post was written by one of the principals of the NASA/GISS Model E climate model.
You mean the visible shrill climate alarmists, Michael Mann included.
I trust what they say about the science and how to interpret it
You might do better not to trust anyone, and look at everything with a critical eye.
If you expect climate models to "predict" the current slow down in warming in such a short time period you really don't understand how climate models work and how their projections are made.
I seem to have a pretty good understanding, for a layman, anyway. And there are major problems with the inputs and assumptions in the prevalent models. You should look into that. It's pointed out in the peer-reviewed literature every month where the issues are, but the shrill alarmist nutjobs seem to want to put more effort into shutting those people up and controlling the mainstream messages than they are addressing those issues.
It's absurd to call climate models wrong for not doing something they're not expected to do in the first place.
The point is they don't do what they are claiming they do - which is predict climate changes and the (all bad, disastrous, something-must-be-done-think-of-the-children) effects of those changes. That makes them BAD science, and screaming for politicians to make expensive and damaging policy changes based on those untenable predictions with major deviations from observation make them REALLY BAD scientists.
All religions start somewhere, that is true. Usually with someone not understanding something and making up an explanation, or with someone wanting to achieve a goal.
No, sorry, that is incorrect. You're thinking of institutions.
Claims need to accurate. So far not one AGW model has been shown to be correct by actual climate. No one needs to prove them wrong, the fact that their predictions aren't accurate prove them wrong.
Is the problem inaccurate projections by climate models or is it poor understanding by people like you of what climate models are capable of in the first place? I really doubt you know enough about how climate models work and what they are expected to do to make a useful judgement about their accuracy.
There is so much confirmation bias in that site (you could have picked something more rational than a shrill propaganda site like Real Climate), I don't even know where to start with it. Instead of pointing out the clear inability of the models to predict anything that someone would be able to rely on, they just sum up with "hey, it's all going along as predicted." WUT?
Finally, a big nail in the coffin is this paper published in Nature, which demonstrates that "semi-arid ecosystems in the Southern Hemisphere may be largely responsible for changes in global concentrations of atmospheric CO2." The authors find links between the land CO2 sink in these semi-arid ecosystems "are currently missing from many major climate models." In addition, they find that land sinks for CO2 are keeping up with the increase in CO2 emissions, thus modeled projections of exponential increases of CO2 in the future are likely exaggerated.
This would be valid if you could find people of a specific religious or spiritual belief who came to it without ever having come in contact with anyone teaching it to them before they came to it. But that does not happen. All these "subjective experiences" only serve to lead someone to a belief they have been taught about.
Nope, you are just wrong. It does happen, it has happened, and that's what others have experienced but you never have.
You're looking at it bass ackwards. All religions start somewhere, you can't just say "it's turtles all the way down", and while some may use the language of religion, that's because... people use words. And there are so many names for god because of historical corruption of the prevalent use of the word, so they use another. People that become enlightened tend to use the language that they have heard before because they suddenly can "see" those teachings from a new perspective.
And yes, some people are charismatic enough to lead other people into believing they share their experience and vision.
I think you're conflating a couple of different things, which for want of a better term I'll call "cult" and "awakening". There have been many cults that have come and gone, and they are based on a leader having the ability to convince people of something, and, yes, encourage them to share a vision. Members of these cults are following a leader, and remain followers.
An awakening looks very similar, because it is often started by someone charismatic and/or with a compelling story. But rather than convincing people to share a vision, they are leading them into having their own experience, and those people then "see" something new, something profound. And they become leaders themselves, because they now have something of their own, and it's natural to want to share this new way of seeing things.
Tom Wolfe's "Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" explores the topic pretty well (but without the comparison to personality cults). The difference is clear when you talk to "converts" in whatever movement you're looking at. In a cult, members will typically be reserved, guarded, and there is often a clear chain of command to the leader. In an awakening, every member will try to talk about things from their own perspective, and share the experience they have had.
I think what you're doing is looking at these people pointing at something, and all you can see is their finger. Maybe that's your perspective. Maybe you're looking for some kind of "real divinity" as the answer, but there is no "real divinity" there, so you need to look for something else.
However, if we're honest we'll see that sort of thing at every level of government.
I don't agree with that. That is, yes, there is corruption, but at the local and state level the system of checks and balances seem to be working well, even if it sometimes requires appeals to federal courts to correct (which sounds ironic, but it's not when you see how things are playing out). Those checks have broken down once you have federal enforcers. The bureaucracies are so powerful they have become impossible to fight. Even getting a court to hear your case is difficult and expensive, as the agencies now have their own "hearing and review" divisions and the courts won't hear your case until you have "exhausted" the internal appeals. They can keep that going for years, which is why Gibson gave up without even getting to see the accusations.
Understand, I am not saying the feds are evil or bad. I am rather saying that they have information overload.
Actually, it's worse than that. The Federal justice system is a complete mess and totally corrupt.
Take the example of the Gibson Guitar raid, which according to the CEO was incited by Lumber Union protectionists. After years and hundreds of thousands spent in legal fees, the warrant is still sealed. Really. And this is the way the Federal Justice system has developed since the 1980's.
Now I'm no Randian, or Objectivist, but I did read Atlas Shrugged in my youth, and this situation reminds me of the national laws in that book, which were designed to ensure that they could always arrest anyone they wanted to, then find a law to charge them with. We're there now. But even Rand didn't envision the government passing secrecy provisions where you can send the swat team in to raid someone and you don't even need to tell them why.
"When you have a system predicated on jurisdictional interests rather than on specific, identifiable, understandable, definable violations of law, there is a great opportunity for tyranny."
if you have only a single copy of the gene you are perfectly healthy, and immune to malaria
Incorrect. The trait provides only some resistance to malaria (varying by age but generally around 20% - 30% resistance).
Probably a bad example for the GP, though, considering it's a trait that provides both advantages and disadvantages. The color blindness one is better.
And yes yes, there are loads of otherwise intelligent people who are deeply religious because of their nurturing environment. If the whole family respects and honors a belief, it can be difficult to overcomoe this early brainwashing, to the point of ignoring all Bayesian inference.
While you may have identified some segment of religious people, there is a large segment, especially falling in the "otherwise intelligent" category, that you have decided do not exist: Those people that hold their religious / spiritual beliefs because of their own subjective experience. This, in fact, is the essence of virtually every religious movement or reawakening in history (Scientology and other scams not withstanding). Sometimes people's experience is so profound they are able to guide other people to share it.
This is generally not something that can be explained to you in objective terms, and thus not the realm of science (nor, in fact, should it attempt to inform science to anything but a minor degree). It's certainly not something you can come to understand when you're thinking in terms of religion as brainwashed people looking for "sky fairies" and other anthropological descriptions. Spiritual understanding is a paradox (people criticize biblical writings for its paradoxes - it's not an error, it's a requirement), you can arrive there through logic.
For example, if everyone believed in Jesus, that wouldn't make him any less fictional.
Well no one believes in you, but I still don't go around calling you fictional. And in 200 years, you won't even be fictional, just null. In 2000 years? Less than nothing.
Slashdot Mirror
If that's the case, then I assume you believe that the NO-AGW folks, who have no predictions about the climate and presumably would predict no change in anything over the general variability previously seen, and are therefore a lot further off than the worst model, are WORSE science. If not, why not?
There are plenty of real scientists publishing observations and pointing out the flaws in current models, and these things, once confirmed, go back into the system (when they can get around the alarmists' decredentialing program), and improves understanding of ALL the factors of climate changes and the assumptions that need to be adjusted in the models.
The alarmists have created a huge distraction over fear of CO2, which is simply not the issue we should be focusing on. It's part of the life cycle. Instead, we can look to mitigate some of the changes we observe happening (for instance, we know sea levels are rising about 3mm per year - plan for THAT). And there are MANY pollution issues - nitrogen and phosphorous pollution in rivers and bays, sulfur, mercury, and particulates being released into the air, high-density animal farms overusing antibiotics and destroying the surrounding ecology, and many other CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGERS - that we should be focused on reducing or ending.
The alarmism over CO2 has distracted from dealing with these issues, so it makes one wonder exactly who stands to benefit from that. It isn't the middle class and poor, that's certain.
Could be that we eat organic food as much as possible, we avoid food additives like the plague, don't know. Fact of the matter is I was stable at 141 pounds (+/-2) for the last 20 years.
This.
Empty calories, additives that fool your body into thinking you're getting enough protein when you're not, and stuffing things with too many carbs and nutritionally deficient ingredients means you end up eating too much, and the cycle perpetuates. Do a raw cleans, and switch to a paleo diet. You'll get more energy and stop gaining weight.
Here's some "uncomfortable facts" for you:
HAHAHAHA. Known ExxonMobil hand puppets doing the same job that was done for the tobacco industry. Keep trying.
So the only rebuttal you have to the entire post is an ad-hominem attack on the source? Epic Fail on your part.
There are reams and reams of peer-reviewed papers pointing out substantial flaws with climate models and inputs used in them that assume the opposite of what observations show. Why bother linking to any of those though, since they won't appear on your list of "approved journals" and "approved experts"?
No, it does. Check my follow-up below.
Wooo! It just keeps getting better. Enjoy your little isolated enclave, dude. The irony of YOU telling ME about ignoring (supposed) "uncomfortable fact" is ... entirely laughable. You're deluded, there's not really any point in reading more of your propaganda-induced fantasy, I couldn't go on after that one.
majority of credible climate models support the "hockey stick"
Sure - if you want to create a hockey stick, it can be easily done, but it's still just a trick. Add that to the complete failure of the climate models to make accurate predictions, and you have a lot of shrill propaganda drowning out the reasoned science.
Here's some "uncomfortable facts" for you: "the models are in significant disagreement when it comes to their SLP, SAT, and precipitation community structure," (2) "none of the models comes close to the community structure of the actual observations," (3) "not only do the models not agree well with each other, they do not agree with reality," (4) "the models are not capable to simulate the spatial structure of the temperature, sea level pressure, and precipitation field in a reliable and consistent way," and (5) "no model or models emerge as superior."
Mann's agenda is a political one, not a scientific one. That's why he had to produce a graph that showed something dramatic, so he manipulated the data, with some statistical errors that have been pointed out and never correct (I won't go into all the shenanigans again), to show "WHOA! IT'S A NEW HORROR!".
The issue is what is the scale of impact that this CO2 warming is having on the overall climate system. Is the effect of the CO2 so big that it can drive the temperature of the whole planet up in a way that is big enough to actually alter the climate? Mann the shrill alarmist publicity hound needed to show something dramatic to demonstrate his own opinion that the answer is "Yes". But this is a much harder question to answer because no one has a model of the total climate system that actually works and which verifiably produces even remotely accurate forecasts about climate trends.
So without a working model of the total climate system the only way to “prove” that CO2 is driving climate change is to prove that something truly unique is happening to the climate, that there is unprecedented warming occurring, and and then propose man made CO2 change as the only candidate as the cause of this ‘unprecedented’ warming.
Between the 1995 second IPCC report and the 2001 third IPCC report there was a complete revision in the way that recent climate history was portrayed. The supporters of the theory that CO2 changes were driving temperatures up had succeeded in their goal of eliminating the Medieval Warm Period. This rewriting of climate history and the elimination of the Medieval Warm Period was achieved through the famous Hockey Stick graph.
Mann completely redrew climate history, turning the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age into non-events.In the new Hockey Stick diagram the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age have disappeared, to be replaced by a largely benign and slightly cooling linear trend in climate until 1900 AD after which the Mann’s new graph showed the temperature shooting up in the 20th century in an apparently anomalous and accelerating fashion.
Apparently, you've never even tried to read any of the papers about the statistical tricks Mann used to generate "hockey-stick" graphs. You should at least examine Ross McKitrick's analysis.
His original hockey stick graph still holds up as shown by around a dozen similar studies done by different scientists using different proxies and techniques.
LOL! Okay, dude. lol.
If this were true then it would make the CIA/FBI and NSA criminal organisations.
Have a cookie.
But you were describing one of the ways a religious institution is formed.
No, not at all. Your cognitive filters are betraying you.
There is a very clear standard for this; if you follow the law or appear to do so in all outward respects and there is no grounds for investigation against you then you have the right to privacy/secrecy. If you break the law in one way then you are subject to investigation in all ways.
In today's environment, that is no protection at all, because there is always some law that can be applied that you are breaking. In fact, speculation is that the average American commits three felonies a day.
If the bar is set so high that people like Snowden have to prove their intentions unambigously, beyond a reasonable doubt, in order to prove their credibility, then they are lost before they begin, because the system assures that's never possible.
But that's not the US justice system - the burden of proof is on the prosecution, not the defense.
A religion is a form of institution.
That's not what I was referring to in my original post.
Real Climate is run by some of the leading climate scientists in the world and that post was written by one of the principals of the NASA/GISS Model E climate model.
You mean the visible shrill climate alarmists, Michael Mann included.
I trust what they say about the science and how to interpret it
You might do better not to trust anyone, and look at everything with a critical eye.
If you expect climate models to "predict" the current slow down in warming in such a short time period you really don't understand how climate models work and how their projections are made.
I seem to have a pretty good understanding, for a layman, anyway. And there are major problems with the inputs and assumptions in the prevalent models. You should look into that. It's pointed out in the peer-reviewed literature every month where the issues are, but the shrill alarmist nutjobs seem to want to put more effort into shutting those people up and controlling the mainstream messages than they are addressing those issues.
It's absurd to call climate models wrong for not doing something they're not expected to do in the first place.
The point is they don't do what they are claiming they do - which is predict climate changes and the (all bad, disastrous, something-must-be-done-think-of-the-children) effects of those changes. That makes them BAD science, and screaming for politicians to make expensive and damaging policy changes based on those untenable predictions with major deviations from observation make them REALLY BAD scientists.
All religions start somewhere, that is true. Usually with someone not understanding something and making up an explanation, or with someone wanting to achieve a goal.
No, sorry, that is incorrect. You're thinking of institutions.
Yea, you make a good point about the islands of tinpot dictatorships.
Detroit is also quite bad I've heard.
That's why I've taken to calling it Detroilet.
Claims need to accurate. So far not one AGW model has been shown to be correct by actual climate. No one needs to prove them wrong, the fact that their predictions aren't accurate prove them wrong.
Is the problem inaccurate projections by climate models or is it poor understanding by people like you of what climate models are capable of in the first place? I really doubt you know enough about how climate models work and what they are expected to do to make a useful judgement about their accuracy.
Here is a comparison of model output to observations to help you understand the situation a little better.
There is so much confirmation bias in that site (you could have picked something more rational than a shrill propaganda site like Real Climate), I don't even know where to start with it. Instead of pointing out the clear inability of the models to predict anything that someone would be able to rely on, they just sum up with "hey, it's all going along as predicted." WUT?
Oh, really? Name three. Please provide citations of peer reviewed scientific research, not whatever bullshit you read in the popular press.
Don't worry, I'll wait.
I know you're just trying to build a straw man, but I'll bite anyway.
First is this paper, which finds Inspecting commonly used parameterizations for subgrid-fluxes, we find that some of them obey the Second Law of thermodynamics, and some do not. The conforming approaches are the Smagorinsky momentum diffusion, phase changes, and sedimentation fluxes for hydrometeors. Conventional turbulent heat flux parameterizations do not conform with the Second Law.
Next shows that prevalent climate models (CCSM3) cannot accurately model the climate observations influenced by Atlantic sea currents, Hence, although there is some potential climate predictability in CCSM3, it is not realistic.
Finally, a big nail in the coffin is this paper published in Nature, which demonstrates that "semi-arid ecosystems in the Southern Hemisphere may be largely responsible for changes in global concentrations of atmospheric CO2." The authors find links between the land CO2 sink in these semi-arid ecosystems "are currently missing from many major climate models." In addition, they find that land sinks for CO2 are keeping up with the increase in CO2 emissions, thus modeled projections of exponential increases of CO2 in the future are likely exaggerated.
This would be valid if you could find people of a specific religious or spiritual belief who came to it without ever having come in contact with anyone teaching it to them before they came to it. But that does not happen. All these "subjective experiences" only serve to lead someone to a belief they have been taught about.
Nope, you are just wrong. It does happen, it has happened, and that's what others have experienced but you never have.
You're looking at it bass ackwards. All religions start somewhere, you can't just say "it's turtles all the way down", and while some may use the language of religion, that's because ... people use words. And there are so many names for god because of historical corruption of the prevalent use of the word, so they use another. People that become enlightened tend to use the language that they have heard before because they suddenly can "see" those teachings from a new perspective.
And yes, some people are charismatic enough to lead other people into believing they share their experience and vision.
I think you're conflating a couple of different things, which for want of a better term I'll call "cult" and "awakening". There have been many cults that have come and gone, and they are based on a leader having the ability to convince people of something, and, yes, encourage them to share a vision. Members of these cults are following a leader, and remain followers.
An awakening looks very similar, because it is often started by someone charismatic and/or with a compelling story. But rather than convincing people to share a vision, they are leading them into having their own experience, and those people then "see" something new, something profound. And they become leaders themselves, because they now have something of their own, and it's natural to want to share this new way of seeing things.
Tom Wolfe's "Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" explores the topic pretty well (but without the comparison to personality cults). The difference is clear when you talk to "converts" in whatever movement you're looking at. In a cult, members will typically be reserved, guarded, and there is often a clear chain of command to the leader. In an awakening, every member will try to talk about things from their own perspective, and share the experience they have had.
I think what you're doing is looking at these people pointing at something, and all you can see is their finger. Maybe that's your perspective. Maybe you're looking for some kind of "real divinity" as the answer, but there is no "real divinity" there, so you need to look for something else.
However, if we're honest we'll see that sort of thing at every level of government.
I don't agree with that. That is, yes, there is corruption, but at the local and state level the system of checks and balances seem to be working well, even if it sometimes requires appeals to federal courts to correct (which sounds ironic, but it's not when you see how things are playing out). Those checks have broken down once you have federal enforcers. The bureaucracies are so powerful they have become impossible to fight. Even getting a court to hear your case is difficult and expensive, as the agencies now have their own "hearing and review" divisions and the courts won't hear your case until you have "exhausted" the internal appeals. They can keep that going for years, which is why Gibson gave up without even getting to see the accusations.
Understand, I am not saying the feds are evil or bad. I am rather saying that they have information overload.
Actually, it's worse than that. The Federal justice system is a complete mess and totally corrupt.
Take the example of the Gibson Guitar raid, which according to the CEO was incited by Lumber Union protectionists. After years and hundreds of thousands spent in legal fees, the warrant is still sealed. Really. And this is the way the Federal Justice system has developed since the 1980's.
Now I'm no Randian, or Objectivist, but I did read Atlas Shrugged in my youth, and this situation reminds me of the national laws in that book, which were designed to ensure that they could always arrest anyone they wanted to, then find a law to charge them with. We're there now. But even Rand didn't envision the government passing secrecy provisions where you can send the swat team in to raid someone and you don't even need to tell them why.
"When you have a system predicated on jurisdictional interests rather than on specific, identifiable, understandable, definable violations of law, there is a great opportunity for tyranny."
What does that say about the value of subjective experiences?
When it comes to religion, they are the only kind that matter at all.
if you have only a single copy of the gene you are perfectly healthy, and immune to malaria
Incorrect. The trait provides only some resistance to malaria (varying by age but generally around 20% - 30% resistance).
Probably a bad example for the GP, though, considering it's a trait that provides both advantages and disadvantages. The color blindness one is better.
Care to name one?
Well the gene that encodes for sickle cell anemia comes to mind, but I'm sure there are others.
And yes yes, there are loads of otherwise intelligent people who are deeply religious because of their nurturing environment. If the whole family respects and honors a belief, it can be difficult to overcomoe this early brainwashing, to the point of ignoring all Bayesian inference.
While you may have identified some segment of religious people, there is a large segment, especially falling in the "otherwise intelligent" category, that you have decided do not exist: Those people that hold their religious / spiritual beliefs because of their own subjective experience. This, in fact, is the essence of virtually every religious movement or reawakening in history (Scientology and other scams not withstanding). Sometimes people's experience is so profound they are able to guide other people to share it.
This is generally not something that can be explained to you in objective terms, and thus not the realm of science (nor, in fact, should it attempt to inform science to anything but a minor degree). It's certainly not something you can come to understand when you're thinking in terms of religion as brainwashed people looking for "sky fairies" and other anthropological descriptions. Spiritual understanding is a paradox (people criticize biblical writings for its paradoxes - it's not an error, it's a requirement), you can arrive there through logic.
For example, if everyone believed in Jesus, that wouldn't make him any less fictional.
Well no one believes in you, but I still don't go around calling you fictional. And in 200 years, you won't even be fictional, just null. In 2000 years? Less than nothing.
... but it be good too!