“To believe” is a tool that we all use to inspire progress. Believing is a powerful motivator. During difficult and trying tasks “belief in success ” can be the difference in fulfilling our dreams. As American’s we respect human perseverance when the odd’s of success are not in our favor.
How then does this belief differ from that of religious belief. At what point does belief become nothing more than speculation.
When seated at the roulette table, odds of success are one out of thirty eight. Our hypothetical gambler will wager one dollar per spin of the wheel believing that he he will collect the reward of $36, before having to spend that amount. No matter how deep his “belief” of success is, the outcome is not affected, as the odds remain 1/38 every time the wheel spins. We call this believing, speculation.
When religious people take the leap of faith within a particular religious ideology, they too are merely speculating. The bet is that if you believe in the “deity” and play by his rules, you will get the big payoff. The belief here is pure speculation, because as humans we do not possess the ability to analyze or even understand the true nature of the deity. The bet however is better than that of a the gambler, because if the gambler is wrong he looses his money. The faith believer has nothing to loose. If he is wrong and his deity isn’t real, then he ends up no worse off than the average atheist.
The truth is that in taking the “bet” of the faithful, we all ultimately lose. Society as a whole is degraded and constantly molested by those who believe and choose to take the leap of faith. Belief in speculation is the same as lying. The believer is lying to himself and to others. Priest’s, Rabbi’s, and all religious leaders who profess a knowledge of god are and have been lying to us for millennium. The lie is so complete and has gone on for so long that they themselves have no idea that they are lying. Selling a bill of goods that they actually know nothing about is the business of religion.
What they are selling seems very attractive because it answers questions that we would all want to have answers for. Given all our technological advances we still do not have any insight to the afterlife. Religions provide answers and rituals in regard to the dead. Unfortunately these answers are based on pure speculation. Any theories about the nature of the afterlife are complete fabrications as no human has ever died and returned with a report.
The great religions of our day justify their existence based on revelation of God. So at some obscure moment in time, long ago, the lord God decided to reveal himself to a particular group of people. It seems that god is incapable of one revelation to all humans. And in doing so codifying of the events should happen hundreds of years and multiple generations later. In this way god reveals himself to select few and continues playing hide and seek with the rest of us. As in most fabrication verification is elusive and simply nonexistent.
It should come as no surprise that in countries where education and peoples are less exposed to science and technologies harbor the greatest amount of religious fanatics ready to die and be killed to further the dictates of their faith. The horrors associated with religious fanaticism are alive and well in populations that technology which today has provided many answers and improved quality of life and health, is not readily available. In this regard the lie of religious faith has come to roost and we are all in danger of loosing everything to fanatics who would stop at nothing to destroy our world.
Big Brother Burt urges that the next time you hear a religious leader speak of god and what god wants from us, ask him how he knows so much about God. Ask him when he last visited with God and if he doesn’t mind if you came along to one of those meetings. Integrity demands of us all to represent the world in ways that conform to the scope of what is observable or can be rationalized through human intellect. We must be willing to admit an agnostic view to ideas and concepts that our outside our experiences that we cannot see any evidence for. To do otherwise is to perpetuate deception in a universe of speculation.