Well, doc, this is a brave, brave thing you’ve written. I just wrote a piece on the psychologically fragmented mind and I mentioned religion as one of the effects of such a mind. I can sum it up in one sentence: Human beings are full of fear so they invented religion to allay their fears; and in the process they created fear, murder, untold suffering, violence, oppression, suppression of ideas, and worldwide conflict. The human reward for creating religion is punishment.
You mentioned the Dunning Kruger effect. Religious people trying to explain the need for, and value of, their ideas is indeed ignorance. This statement is not a belief or an opinion; it is evident when we examine what is being said. On the other hand, even if religious people were to realize (maybe some do) that their beliefs are not well-founded or may be just metaphors, they are nevertheless in conflict over them. How, for example, can we be loving, compassionate people like Jesus if our belief is based on one of the most divisive claims: Our religion is the best and whoever does not accept our savior is damned for eternity — or we will kill him in the name of our faith.
While Christianity, especially with all of its prosletyzing and finger wagging, has been the source for untold suffering and death throughout history, the other western religions really are not that different in their absurd claims, actions, and beliefs. One such religion is full of so many violent extremists that we dare not mention it by name. So much for love and compassion attributed to the man upstairs.
You wrote a little about myth… This is something I’ve studied for many years and it is a subject that is widely misunderstood. Myth is usually considered a synonym for a lie, and this is a shame, because a myth is a story that, at best, that guides a person back to himself as a means of knowing who he is beyond the ego. From what I have seen, religion is a corruption of myth, at worst it is poor excuse for one.
Why argue about religion if we say we don’t care about it? The answer is clear: We do care about it. We care that it leads to bloodshed, broken families, murder, genocide, schools and governments infected with its absurd claims, false pretenses, stress, and constant unrest. I would argue that we care more about religion than religious people do, because they don’t seem to care about much more than protecting a belief system that they can hide behind because the world is just too undefined and frightening to face without an ersatz supernatural power in the wings.
