Happy with the surge of new found faith? Give it time. This is just the beginning…
Being carefully guided in belief, we learn what “we believe”, but the group effect has some curious side effects. In order to bend your bullets around corners it takes some clever self-interplay as well, guiding your mind carefully into a non-functioning model of thought conviction with no substance—peace through stagnation and empty promises.
The comfort zone of nonproductive faith includes:
- More Handwaving than you anticipated
- Answers without substance become natural
- Built-in redundancy
- Out-thinking your opponent without thinking of your opponent
- Increased desire for sin
- Misplaced gratitude
God is good. Sure, he steadies the hands of the surgeon, but did you know, before surgeons are qualified to operate, they must meet a set of challenging education requirements? These generally include four years of undergraduate study, four years of medical school leading to a Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) degree, and three to eight years of surgical residency at a hospital.
Not to mention having the guts to do the dirty work—digging around in cadavers and engaging in mastery of human anatomy and physiology.
Don’t thank god, thank those who are willing to explore (in any field) People are pretty awesome and there’s no shame in accepting that. If we are going to make it on this rock, we could certainly use some help. But, you may have to set beliefs on the back-burner and engage as passionately in a skill as you do in mere belief. That same belief that has made a lot of claims, yet here we are, having gone nowhere for 2000 years and already hoping and praying it ends? That is the history of faith. Every generation thinks this is it! It isn’t even close.
I believe in the potential of humanity, but first we must discard the biggest problem that holds us in first gear.
The padlocks on this paper show how some things are just way too important to some people—beliefs are no different. There is a better way.
TheCommonAtheist 