Clinging to faith is to test what we actually see, against sentiments we can only feel (or think we feel) It is to dismiss our five senses to put trust in a chemically induced emotional response. Then, step by step we carefully absorb what another has felt through his own chemical release—by the art of storytelling.
“And the men of words carefully embellish the story to elicit excretions”
The problem with trusting the hormonal response? It is more powerful than anybody’s intention, resistance, or intuition. As proof we look to the hormone who has populated the earth to the tune of 7.8 Billion, against marathons of religious warning, driving countless souls to breed even when they knew the risk of hellfire, disease, or poverty.
“In the land of the blind, Enucleation is the corrective surgery”—Marshall McLuhan
Faith admonishes humanity to abandon the common senses for a less reliable one—feelings dispensed by acute events, driving each individual endocrine system and mental sensitivity (a night at the movies is the simplest observation) tugging your Jesus strings can be easily accomplished, even with known fiction.
Corrective lenses or hearing aids is a fairly easy fix for faulty sight and sound, but hormones simply require testimony and the right cadence with the right timing. Belief is supposed to heal the soul. But which of your other senses can be enhanced with repetitive persuasion? What truth anywhere requires a specific timing or carefully crafted event to become true? Catastrophe can also dispense the hormone. Then, as long as the men of words are there to tell us what it all means by god [sic] we can trust the gospel message as authentic—because dopamine always feels right, right?
Faith is believing the hormonal response is more valid than our primary audio-visual and tactile senses.
The fact is this; the expansion of the gospel required swordplay to achieve dominance, not its ideas. A great way to open a gland is to receive violence followed by salvation. That relief alone, whether from physical or emotional trauma, step by step bolsters faith by secretions.
Have you ever seen a touching scene in a movie, knowing full well it is fiction and felt that same feeling from a good sermon? What if the credits falsely labeled the movie “based on a true story?” Monotheism in a nutshell.
Hormones are a predictably unreliable benchmark for faith…in anything, and much too powerful to wield without understanding the emotion and conviction of faith are simply drip-fed in micrograms—or is it really the Holy Spirit?
Understanding even the basics of the endocrine system may be enough to keep you on the level—unless they got to you too early… The beautiful part about not feeling the emotion they try to elicit (through the storytelling) is now you’re under condemnation over failing to secrete when they say the magic words.
TheCommonAtheist 