quote:Human beings don’t tend to let their worlds come crashing down that way. Someone of real conviction (religious, political, moral, etc.) tends to respond to new, contradictory information in one of two ways--either they deny it, or they incorporate it.
What happens when you have a political conversation with someonewhose views strongly oppose yours? What happens when you present facts that clash with their beliefs? They either explain how those ‘facts’ are nothing of the sort, explain how those facts actually make their point, or they accept the facts and let their beliefs evolve. It’s doubtful, I think, that they’ll do a one eighty--denouncing all of their pre-conversation convictions--or crumble into suicidal oblivion.
New scientific principles aren’t likely to be seen by a religious person as a tragedy there’s no escape from, because that’s just not how people are built.
So, I wanted to write a character that embodied the real-world tendency to incorporate new information, and came up with Thomas (I suppose I also wrote a character that embodies the rejection aspect: Bishop Krier). Thomas is intelligent and open minded, and never backs away from his faith simply because he’s learned something new.