re:"What I fail to understand is what process occurs in the mind of a religious person when [s]he reads this. I would expect something along the lines of "Omg! you're right. You've opened my eyes! *falls down and worships you etc..*" but experience has taught me that this never happens. - Why?"
Ego as a defense mechanism prevents it.
In this case you've got a worldview that's presented as a fundamental (funny how often that word comes up eh?) core belief in reality expressed as a pile of unarguable and barely intelligible mandates and stories that supersede - or are attributed to being higher than - all laws, and are the basis for many other laws that are still around (particularly in theocratic states).
Hell of an absolute eh? Now - when presented with something in direct conflict with some belief systems from "evolution" to "bacon is yummy", the response will flip from intellectual to emotional. Most just flee the "heathens", or announce that they don't want to participate anymore. I recall depressing the hell out of a mathematician professor in Minnesota who was in the fundie camp by directing him to the writings of Bertrand Russell - who was a mathematician among other things. Since that was his super-peer I figured he would open up to the possibility of no-god (in response to the old and retarded as fuck "prove he doesn't exist" argument aka: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot).
Nope - his defenses kicked in and he sulked off in a huff declaring that the board was "wasting his time".
How much time he was wasting before didn't seem to be an issue before that - so obviously, his emotions kicked in. So he left the forum for a time (he came back later tho). Some people leave forums. Others will walk off in a huff. Some fly airliners into skyscrapers in lower Manhattan and build car bombs. Like racists, I tend to stay the fuck away from fundies as much as possible. I may have to live with them - but I don't have to associate with them.
