Ruminating on Belief—

Belief holds only a temporary benefit until a premise has been proven, not a goal in itself—when do we move on?

Understanding your human nature is an important key to resisting the patterns that sustain anchoring bias—that deep tendency to adhere to the first information acquired on any given subject. Ruminating that first morsel—a lifetime of informational cud chewing. How hard is it to change what you’ve been taught in ignorance of the subject, then believed? It takes a miracle, but let’s face it, in those first moments of exposure we’re all ignorant—and gullible to the authority, whether it be parents, professors, or pastors.

Then comes the backfire effect, a near universal, automatic reaction to repudiating evidence of your mere faith, which strengthens your beliefs in spite of better solutions—digging in, protecting those little nuggets wrapped up in your skull when new ideas or evidence is counter to what you believe. Norepinephrine is released in the brain when facts are presented counter to what we believe, creating a fight or flight (or stubbornness) to adopt new information. Religions grow from this stubbornness of human hormones and hardwiring.

Take Darwin for example; He himself was attuned to this phenomenon and lamented his discovery, struggling to procede openly with the Origin of Species because of the effect it would have on everything and everyone he knew—very aware that the reception his evidence would bring a fight.

No matter the spiritual belief, people take great comfort in what they already understand—even if it is a garbled mess to everyone else. Replaying their same old themes—reruns that are familiar and predictable. In today’s world we have to adapt quickly to keep up with technology, processes, and the devices. But belief is a special carrot, hampering progress with archaic, inerrant faith—the comfort zone, the one tool of the devil that keeps you enslaved to your biggest weakness—that overburdened ability to believe what you are initially told, even when it’s obvious it isn’t true.

Just believe. Convincing your mental self by answering your own prayers (you know that talking to yourself thing where you reason away your own mind) and making excuses for the writers inadequacies and failed promises.

Give up and let god? That is the literal example of human damnation—Abrahamic religions ability to stop the flow of actual growth and progress through mandated belief (then we defend it out of hormonal response).

Our perceptions are much more faulty than accurate. It’s no wonder the majority of the world believes something that can’t be seen, measured, or heard—craving that super hero to comfort their struggles—simply because they were told one exists and we are obligated to say yes to a fault.

Faith is pretending not to trust your poor judgement—which is using your own poor judgement to allow someone else to chose your path for you. Understanding your physiology is the key to moving on.

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