This pro-Science fake-poster (fake because it doesn’t exist) suffers a bit from that too. It’s the de-humanization process Greenspan talks about. You define a boundary to make a clear separation between you and them. You see some lunatic do something horrible and then you try to catalogue him into some group you don’t belong to.

That’s because we’re all scared of finding any humanity in someone who pulls that kind of monstrosity. We don’t want to be associated with them at all. So you end up having to profile an enemy. They dress a certain way, they have a certain belief or they do whatever thing which is different from you.

We want an enemy with a face. We don’t like thinking that evil is everywhere and it can jump out of nowhere. We need to group it into some box so as to makes it easier to recognize.

Well, Mr Science lovers, I have news for you: Religion doesn’t make someone evil and Science doesn’t make anyone a good person. Those are just beliefs and they do not make someone a psychopath or not.

In this world you can have Buddhists who don’t eat meat because they don’t want to hurt living creatures and you can get a genocidal mad man (like Hitler) who believes their race is superior because it’s a scientific fact – Yes, Hitler’s theory of Aryan Superiority was based on his literal readings of Darwin’s and Nietzsche’s work (one an Agnostic and the other one a fervent Atheist).

So next time you see someone trying to catalogue evil into a group, remember it’s just a trick some people use to stay in their comfort zone and it might trigger segregation (which will lead to all the conflicts we are used to reading about in news feeds every day).