Going for a long drive today thru Sunday to surprise my pops for his 85th birthday. To get to southern Utah from NE Washington I had a couple of choices—I-84 through Boise to I-15, or take the Idaho panhandle on I-90 crossing a good chunk of Montana, and finally back into SE Idaho on I-15. I’m staying in Blackfoot and have another 7 hours to drive after 10 hours today. So much of Idaho is uninhabitable for humans. 115 mountain ranges and 5 million acres, including the number 1 most remote place in the lower 48 states, means you have to avoid most of it and go around it. Central Idaho’s multiple rugged mountain ranges makes it a long, long drive. Without avoiding the tough places, it would be near impossible to get through it.
Religion has a similar story. If you stick with the easy roads and the good parts, it doesn’t sound like a bad trip. The catch phrases along with the kind stories and gentle scriptures hold little solace when comparing the “rest of the story” which is most of it. If you had to get to Utah through the wilderness of Idaho, chances are you’d never even attempt the trip. With religion, make sure you check out the bad parts first. If you do, you may just go another way altogether. The road around the truth is just a fraction of its roots.
“verify most carefully, his book of words and then you’ll see, but by and by the search from me, had eyes that crossed with dotted tees and woeful were the histories. I read and pondered every verse, the lord it seemed he was a curse, that opened eyes on every verse” Jim
TheCommonAtheist 
Not sure why, but you made me think of a song by “Free Hot Lunch”: I Hate to Wake Up Sober in Nebraska.” Yeah, I would hate to wake up sober in a religious community, too.
But the wilderness of Central Idaho, it looks like it is worth the effort to get there. No place for god there, just you, whoever you are with, and Nature. What could be better…
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HAHAHAHAHA!!! YES, yes, YES! Two concepts…
1) Cherry-picking
2) Osterich heads buried deep, buried permanentely
This is exactly the reason(s) I chose to go through, under, over, and around EVERYTHING that is Hellenistic Christology (Xianity) in extensive detail with my new page “Why Christianity Will Always Fail“…to (hopefully?) at least show someone who cares just how utterly convoluted, problematic, and failing Christianity truly is.
Wonderful analogy Jim. 😉
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You should post the link here again just in case anyone missed it. Be nice to have that in a Ebook or hard copy? Hints
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Hahaha, hint? Umm, YEAH… specifying “Ebook or hard copy” is pretty damn blatant hint, dontcha think? 😄 Here you go fine Sir:
Why Christianity Will Always Fail
Is an Ebook real easy to do? 🤔
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Sure it’s easy. Takes a day and it’s free in Amazon. They also print hard copies on demand. They keep 30% for Ebook and 40 for the paperbacks.
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Excellent! Many thanks Sir. 😉
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I just did a quick run through of this post. So excellent and so well researched. This definitely should be a book. I will read it at my leisure.
I have such difficulty wrapping my head around why people are religious. I know all the early and sometimes late indoctrination, culture, fears, arrogance, a need to belong, tribalism, brain neural pathways, genes, lack of education and the many things and more you have mentioned.
I know it fails, simply as we speak, because it simply is not true..none of it..no religion. The truth is always the winner because it can be no other way. I also know truth is not affected by fantasies and untruths because it is relentless. When mankind is long gone and the thousands of fantasies, cults and supernatural beliefs will be long gone too. But the truth will always remain eternally.
Now this will sound weird, but it’s like I have always had an innate feeling that none of this religious stuff is true. It’s like an atavistic feeling.probably goes along with always having had an interest in cosmology, geology etc. I sense how very small and insignificant we are and our little galaxy and the big picture of the universe at large, is so far removed from religious beliefs of any kind that it’s incomprehensible to me, that people actually believe them.
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I agree with your assessment, Mary, about the vastness of the universe and how when one looks at the BIG picture, it clearly illustrates how insignificant we humans really are. Yet there are those like Colorstorm that see the earth as flat and (apparently) is free-floating in a sea of … ??? I suppose from such a weird perspective, religion might make sense. Maybe.
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A troubled mind can never make sense of the real world and the true nature of reality. It is simply an impossible feat.
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Mary, I have assessed, helped, managed, and discharged 100s and 100s of psych patients — with every possible degree of disorders — much of my life professionally and simply as a friend or bystander, and you might have NO CLUE just how right you are with that comment! 😉
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Where but institutionalized patients in state hospitals can you see such a broken bridge between reality versus what is believed?
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BINGO Jim! And I am not distorting the numbers/percentage here one iota, but…
Between 35% to 60% (because admissions vary with many fluid personal and social-occupational factors) have religious co-symptoms or syndromes, which usually falls under the general diagnosis of Schizophrenia (minor or major) or some type of Delusional Disorder. David Koresh, Jim Jones and a PLETHORA of other prime examples litter the field of hyper-religiousity… or another term for it can be charismatic, eccentric, or episodic Fundamentalism. These character traits often manifest in a self-perceived, extremely complicated, daunting, world and Cosmos that is just TOO IMPOSSIBLE (for their neurocognition) to manage on a overly simplistic viewpoint.
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A great perspective Mary! I am too often baffled as to WHY religious zealots refuse to look at life, human nature, other species, ecobioloy, the Cosmos, etc, etc, constantly through their OWN tiny Wooh-wooh microscope lens and no other lenses, telescopes, subatomic scopes, kaleidoscopes! LOL 🤔😄
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Ahhh, nevermind Jim, I’ve Googled this and it seems (up front) fairly easy to do. I’ll look into it. Thank you! ❤
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Christianity hasn’t failed, though, has it?
Despite the best efforts of rational people. I suppose the Flying Spaghetti Monster is still in business too? Santa still makes his annual rounds, but I accept Him ‘cos the evidence is there every northern winter solstice, in the sock, foot of the tree or otherwise behind the sparkling eyes …
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Pauline Christology hasn’t, but the historicity and rationale of “Christianity” absolutely has… miserably. Now the best most compelling belief system today — based on 2,000 years of Christendom — is hands down Sasquatchianity. No contest! 😉
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Is this related to the new Yeti fetish? Abominable! I think they’re calling it Yetishing.
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You’ve almost got it Jim. It’s actually Yetisheen-shang! Now… say it like this in a sentence…
Yetisheen-shang, yetisheen-shang… yeng, yang… shitty shitty yang yang I love you! 🤩
Now, YOU SING IT!!!
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I immediately sang that to the tune of chitty chitty bang bang too. I think your on to something here… again.
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There are things with wings which you can climb inside of and they carry you to places… quite quickly.
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One hour drive to the small airport two hours early for tsa, no direct flights, car rental and two hour drive to dad’s house makes it a ten hour day anyway. This was I see some country to inspire my irreligiousity
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I’m guessing it’s a nice drive.
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Indeed John Z!!! And those are some MIGHTY FINE drugs — both legal and illegal! 🤪😆
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Lol
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We have ’em here too in the ‘native bush’ … especially at Lake Hauroko. We call them sandflies, others mght know them as flying leeches (writ huge).
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Climb into them is one thing … but if they engulf you, and spit out the bones afterwards … brrrr
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It’s notable that the wilderness you describe is highly habitable by humans, just not your typical, modern American. It takes wits, grits, and mitts to make the land your means of survival, but uninhabitable it is not 😉
Regardless, your point is great. When the easy routes are made typical of a land, it fails to address the harsh and rugged realities it passes through, which ignored or not are still relevant to the journey and it’s planned and unplanned stops along the way.
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It’s only a qualified ‘wilderness’ if there’s no Big Mac (or other coffee place) within earshot of a wildly enthusiastic yodel after (say) dropping a brick on a sore toe.
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