A sacred canopy of shared belief used to soar above our heads like a large umbrella, keeping us warm and dry as the contradictory data of real life beat down. What we believe determines how we act. No model of reality contains everything.
Life is larger than our models of life.
As long as our model of reality makes enough sense of the world to let us act, we hold to our beliefs. There is no snake oil this time, no flim-flam man. It's really coming down out there. More and more data just doesn't fit. Our umbrella has more than a few holes in it, and the water is trickling through.