"At all other times you will hear me talk as if I believed it, too.  Ordinary politeness.  One of my most valued friends believes in astrology; I would never offend her by telling her what I think of it.  The capacity of a human mind to believe devoutly in what seems to me to be the highly improbable - from table tapping to the superiority of their own children - has never been plumbed.  Faith strikes me as intellectual laziness, but I don't argue with it - especially as I am rarely in a position to prove that it is mistaken.  Negative proof is usually impossible.  Mike's faith in his 'Old Ones' is surely no more irrational than a conviction that the dynamics of the universe can be set aside through prayers for rain.  Furthermore, he has the weight of evidence on his side; he has been there.  I haven't."