OK, Scorpion, let's try this.
The human brain is hard wired to look for patterns and to ascribe significance to those patterns; it's how we make sense of the world. As I sit here typing this my brain is being bombarded by information from all of my senses, but only a tiny fraction of that information is being brought to the attention of my conscious awareness. Whilst I pay attention to the screen and keyboard other sensory input (e.g. the sound of the occasional passing car in the lane outside) is being filtered out by my brain because it is not relevant to the task on which I am engaged, though if I deliberately direct my attention to it I will start hearing it again. My brain, your brain, everybody's brain is doing this all the time. If we paid conscious attention to all the information that floods into our brains all the time we would be completely overwhelmed.
To see the relevance of this, let's take an example in which you probably don't have so much emotionally invested. Let's use astrology.
I have known several people - perfectly intelligent, rational people - who were utterly convinced that there is something to astrology because they people they knew were so accurately described by their astrological signs. Yet when data is collected and analysed statistically (and many such studies have been done) no such correlation is ever found. People are, in fact, just as accurately described by their astrological signs as they would be expected to be by chance. No more and no less. So how is it that so many intelligent, rational people have managed to convince themselves of something which isn't true?
Let's imagine that I'm wondering if there is any truth in astrology and I know two people of a particular sign, two of whose main characteristics are, say, intelligence and laziness. One of the two people is intelligent and hard working, the other is stupid and lazy. Every time I see the intelligent one being intelligent I'll think "Aha! Intelligent! Typical Aries!" (or whatever sign it is), and likewise when I see he the lazy one being lazy. But there's no corresponding Aha moment when I see them behaving differently to the way I expect, because that data doesn't fit the pattern I expect to see, and my brain therefore filters it out as noise. I only notice and remember data which confirms my expectation - that's the signal. That, in essence, is confirmation bias, and it's a bias which is built into the way in which our brains work. Can you see how it can inadvertently mislead us?
There a former professional astrologer called Rudolph Smit who spent many years confidently producing horoscopes which all his clients assured him were amazingly accurate. One day he went through one such horoscope with a client who gave him the usual highly positive feedback, then finally asked him why he was calling her Mrs [X] when her name was actually [Y]. Only then did he realise to his horror that he'd picked up the wrong horoscope and the one he'd just discussed with her was for someone else entirely. He describes his painful journey back to reality here:
http://www.astrology-and-science.com/a-pass2.htm
Do you have the integrity of Rudolf Smit? Are you prepared to subject your cherished beliefs to critical analysis? Or are you going to continue to handwave away the reasons why your convictions are unsupportable by pretending that you are some kind of superhuman who is not subject to the fallible perceptions and cognitive biases of the rest of the human race?
