Being born into the perfect situation, having the correct religion, good, caring parents, and plenty of money, what could posible go wrong?
Some people have some really weird ideas, but not mine. I don’t really need to explain what mine are for the moment (or prove them) I just get it. I’m content that the world is crazy except for a select few in my circle of friends and family—as well as a few others I’ve found on the internet.
How did I hit this jackpot in the lottery of life, so lucky to have the correct beliefs, yet still be so open minded? Why did god choose me to be so privileged and satiated with humility, yet at the same time be surfeit with knowledge and things? Why was I chosen?
Being tolerant in the world has been a struggle at times. This I figure is the test god had for me in his divine plan. Being able to accept you all has strengthened my resolve to stay humble, even though sometimes I feel like I’m forcing it. God only knows why such imbeciles are allowed to carry on.
In the game of life there is only one universal challenge—how to overcome your beliefs. Since they are all wrong, can you overcome your preconceived biases, no matter what they are? Who can outsmart their own neurology and experiences? Then do it again. Nothing is true. No beliefs are truer than others. Only if they serve our biases are they even useful. If you’ve found what your looking for you have likely arrived at your own bias through mental wrangling.
Everybody knows the studies. Everyone is trapped in the game of cognitive bigotries. Everyone thinks their experience is genuine. But none of it is authentic and it all has been corrupted by men—except mine. How can so many people be ignorant of their own ignorance?
What makes you expert enough to decide who to believe?
Authority is the almighty footnote (or now days, the link) But by what authority does one appeal to such authority? If you are using the work of another to heighten your virtue to the conversation, what expertise gives you the authority to endorse it? Authority simply means you are the author—it is a shame, really, that books now multiply by osmosis and libraries are filled with books about books—and the more footnotes the better! How on earth do you generate an original thought when inundated with opinion from all sides? How do you know the truth? By seclusion and solitude, by experience and not words from a page
Experience is not words or symbols that make them. Nor can experience by gained through the biastic process of reading what you agree with and dismissing what you don’t.
It seems that everyone is right, so everyone is also wrong, which means the amount of truth in the world could fit in a thimble. Each side vehemently believes they are right—it makes an interesting game, though not a very fun one. Is this game really worth the candle? Are things really that way, or are we all caught in the trappings of belief?
By endorsing the authority of another, it shows one must have some kind of expertise, that this person or group has a leg up on the situation and now you do too. Yet, if you have the expertise to make the judgment you are making, then you yourself are claiming some kind of authority—or that you don’t trust yourself but simply fall in line to the opinions of others based on how you were raised, which makes your opinions meaningless.
I can’t believe people can be this stupid!
If you are right and they are wrong, how can you decide they are wrong unless you are more expert on what they believe than they are?
If you believe you are right? in whose dogma are you believing that makes you more qualified to assess other beliefs of which you know less?
Bias is a funny thing—and like common sense, has been redefined by those who think they have it by some pure, determined analytical prowess (bias on steroids) versus the masses who don’t? Common sense is better defined as culture that acts in a commonly accepted behavior, but it really isn’t—only to you.
But in the end realize, the only common sense of today is this; that in spite of one’s beliefs about the other, the world is getting along just fine without them—nearly 8billion, one at a time, that can’t believe how stupid people are. We are right-on that—finally can agree.
For many millennia the world has been populated by an idiot majority—and realizing you play a part in that success should make you wonder (or sonder) and lead to a little tolerance, I would hope. Nevertheless, it’s an incredibly interesting show!
What makes you expert enough to decide who to believe? I have it on good authority (me) that by disconnecting from the grid and living in solitude for a few years, a life of living without words, not by the book or the videos (because that compels us to belief in another) that there is no monarchial boss of the universe. There is no father in heaven, nor are we separate from the whole thing.
Sonder: the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk—John Koenig—The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows
How Christianity follows a predictable path from the beginning.
“I see nothing here that would invalidate Michaels argument“.
Of course not! Christianity and Islam have effectively killed original thought by making copycats. And if you openly don’t believe it, prepare for the subtle witness or the all out testimony. The programming is fixed. Resistance is futile. Every knee will bow!
“Commonsense tells me he (Hoffer) won’t have referred to most Christians” The beauty of Christianity is its Autobias and built in A.R.S. (Automatic Rebuttal Syndrome) while Christianity and Islam are the epitome of successful mass movement, beginning with an archetypal enemy, a devil (or the status quo)
1. Radical idea that challenges the controlling powers
2. Adopted by those in power.
3. Used as a tool to absorb countless cultures
3. Creating new zealots to stand behind the religion (which is now the state)
4. Goes out in force to do the works of evil in the name of good (the conversion of Europe and Latin America) It is all very predictable that the new movement will become the enemy they hated.
Here is the quote in question on whether Christianity is well played mass movement—”Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all the unifying agents … Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a god, but never without a belief in a devil.”—Eric Hoffer
Atheism will never be a mass movement. If anything it bolsters Christian defenses and gives them another bogey man to rally against. Hitler had the jews to unify several competing foes, while Christianity has Islam (and atheism) while Islam uses the West as its eternal threat which anchors the longevity of the movement.
A testimony or “witnessing” is known as a statement that is based on personal experience or personal knowledge. A statement is accepted on the basis of person’s testimony if his or her asserting it renders it acceptable, ie; conviction, eloquence, or sincerity. We can also, rationally accept a claim on the basis of another person’s testimony unless at least one of the following is found to be true:
1 The claim is implausible;
2 The person or the source in which the claim is quoted lacks credibility;
3 The claim goes beyond what the person could know from his or her own experience and competence (children)
If you fallen to religion, just be grateful it wasn’t Jehovah’s Witness, Mormon, Catholic, AOG, Money Church of Osteen™️, Copeland, Dollar 🤡, Comfort or Ham. Id hate for you to look silly. And for the loners out there, your close. Really close.
As far as children witnessing for any religion, who’s testimony do you suppose they are they sharing? But it’s so cute… Hmm?
How long until humanity can transcend beyond belief mode?
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.
How heuristic efforts can undo the faith that killed reason.
Guessing which religion is true depends mostly on where you were born, or the one that caught you vulnerable during a crisis. If you were born to a specific faith, that is most likely the One True Church™️—makes perfect sense. With all the options available that certainly makes it a bit easier.
The three lines below represent three major world religions. The religion that represents the line in the center is yours, which initially appears conveniently as the obvious, longest center line in the group.
This is the Müller-Lyer Illusion. If you look closely the center shafts are all the same length, as illustrated below. But appearance is everything in religion. Escaping your pre-conceived (literally in many cases) religion is fighting the odds against honest reason and logic that seems at times an insurmountable challenge against the array of bias research. Heuristics can help with a cognitive hands-on approach. We can train ourselves to be less knee jerk intuitive (belief) and more discerning, or analytical, at the very least, more cautious.
Research shows intuitive people are more likely to believe in god, while reflective, or analytical thinkers are more likely to be atheist. Here is a quick test with answers to see where you fall.
If you got some wrong, no worries. A lifetime of faith can disrupt your natural tendencies (feelings) Many of us spent a lifetime overlooking the obvious acquiescing to faith—and through faith you can know hand-wave the truth of all things.
Monotheistic religions may all appear different, but in reality they all produce the equal ability to embrace contradiction through faith, playing on bias and quirks of herd psychology. It’s so obvious even an atheist can see it. Read More HERE
TheCommonAtheist 