Closed minded folks...

Particularly cogent metaphor for how people assimilate information, and how we all tend to overlook and "not see" that which doesn't fit our preconcieved patterns of association.

Reminds me of folks I know, particularly religious, who don't even realize how they pre-screen information. Though everyone obviously does it to a certain extent. But religion tends to master the concept of a mental block by making the very act of questioning sinful by its nature. Neat trick, that.

Again, via Pop Occulture:

I think most people are simply just worried that the occult is “evil.” And they won’t ever get more philosophical about it than that. Some people really do think it’s all about devils and demons and whatnot. In a lot of cases though, the way I think the concept of evil works in a religion is sort of similar to a junk email or spam filter on email account - except it’s applied on our minds. If a piece of mail comes through (ie, an idea or whatever) that contains certain keywords, or fits a particular pattern, then it’s automatically dropped into a sort of separate mental category so that we don’t have to waste time looking at it. Nobody ever reads through the text of every single spam email they get. At least I hope not. And they know that if they click on the links, they’re likely to get a virus or something. So for most people that arrangement with evil as a mental spam filter works out because it saves them time from getting lost of tangents that don’t relate to their lives. So again, it’s sort of a natural mechanism to help us prioritize how to spend our emotional and mental energy.