The brain, knowing that a person can't live forever in this world, rationalizes a future, or other-dimensional, world in which immortality is possible. In other words, religion is the earliest form of science fiction.
It has been hard to get my head around how Justice Antonin Scalia rationalizes his decisions. His body blow to the Voting Rights Act was a head scratcher, but at least he was calm when he attempted to justify his odd logic.
I remember a Buddhist teachers reflections on the Holocaust. . . What terrible karma those Jews mustve had. . . This kind of fundamentalism, which blames the victims and rationalizes their horrific fate, is something no longer to be tolerated quietly. It is time for. . . modern Buddhism to outgrow it by accepting social responsibility and finding ways to address such injustices.
. . . it is in the very fundamentals of evil that one always condemns it when they see it but rationalizes it when they do it.