Hi Steve,

I can certainly understand those reactions; I've seen enough of them myself - and been on the receiving end of proto-Dominican style academic inquisitors. Hmm, maybe I'll start calling them "The Hounds of Dog" (since they are atheists) .

Honestly, I don't think "complexity" is the right word for what we are seeing. I've spent a lot of time developing a theoretical model of subjective "perception" and one of the key things in it that seems to be backed up by most data is that very few people take the time to develop enough "self awareness" to spot when they are applying a socially constructed perception / interpretation (it's also a contra-survival trait in Darwinian terms).

Ideally, this is what is meant by "critical thinking" but, from my own observations, this term has come to mean either making finer and finer distinctions within an accepted paradigm or just saying "it sucks" if one is in one of the institutionalized "radical" paradigms. It's like watching a bad soap opera in the first case and bad stand-up comedy in the second <sigh>.

Marc