The other monkeys hate me
It's always been a huge red flag for me to see people claim favor with God, with anything, much less trivial dumbass bullshit like sports wins and attributing divine intervention when that motorhome narrowly misses you on the bridge or the pregnancy test was positive/negative. Basically, any time you hear someone piously invoking God having anything to do with the affairs of men, your spidey-sense should be jangling like a windchime in a hurricane.
You've probably heard the saying "Reason is the Enemy of Faith", and of course it's true (except for some inexplicable reason, Christians see this as a positive attribute for them). If you apply even a modicum of logic to the Mexican piñata that is the fallacy of answered prayer, I think one good whack at it is all you need to release a cornucopia of niggly little questions.
Any time you're asked to believe something you know is wrong, your brain is going to rebel, so to bypass that, you have to be trained from an early age to accept incongruities.
When you're a kid, your brain is soft, and anybody can push whatever they want into it like pressing a sardine into a jello mold. This is how tiny White Supremacists and My Lil' Jihadists are made. It's the same for Christianity: You go to Sunday School, you're told to pray during meals and at bedtime, and this happens all week long, every week throughout your formative years. I mean, man... that sardine is embedded. It took me a while, and I needed help from lots of different resources to dig it out. I'm still digging out pieces every day. Last week I found half a dorsal fin and a partial hymn.
It's little wonder to me that today's Christians are so easily taken in by the flaming Republican rhetoric of exclusion, hate and fear. It's very familiar to anyone that's sat through hardcore Sunday morning hellfire and brimstone sermons or even easy listening type "God loves us all, but the Gays are rejecting His love" teachings. There's always a good guy (that's you) and a villain (that's <insert target of hate>), there's a cautionary tale of avarice run amok and a neatly packaged solution, a brightly lit Path of Righteousness where everybody lives happily ever after as long as we call agree on who's the right person to string up.
It's like we've been brainwashed since we were kids to accept batshit crazy bullshit as long as it has the right shiny packaging. I think this is very damaging to children, I'd go as far as to call it child abuse. I think it impairs their ability to protect themselves from scammers and cults, like a computer hacker putting a backdoor password into your root access.
I eventually grew out of believing in Santa knowing if I've been good or bad and visiting billions of homes in a single night, but it was continually reinforced by my monkeysphere to believe in God knowing the number of hairs on my head and listening to billions of prayers in a single instant. That kind of disconnect is only possible through continual reinforcement within a closed logic loop.
So whenever you hear someone say, "Don't stress out over that, honey, just Let Go And Let God™ because remember, Jesus Has A Plan For Us All™ and as everybody knows, The Lord Works In Mysterious Ways™", you can almost hear your logical brain whirring down from that ancient backdoor program activating.
It's tough to override that command. It's tough to wrench yourself out from that loop because when you've been raised in Christianity your whole life, your automatic programming always tries to find a way to reconcile your 'faith' when those niggly questions pop up.
It's much easier to let your mind slip quietly beneath the waves and be obedient. Everybody in your congregation wants you to. People who ask too many uncomfortable questions are often ostracized.
There's an old business metaphor about an experiment with ten monkeys: Ten monkeys were kept in a cage with a ladder, and some bananas were kept on the top of the ladder. Whenever one of the monkeys would climb the ladder to get the bananas, all the other monkeys were sprayed with ice cold water. Soon, the monkeys begin to police themselves, and would prevent any monkey from climbing the ladder. Eventually, the cold water was turned off, but the monkeys kept policing themselves. Then, one monkey was removed, and another monkey put in its place. Of course, the new monkey didn't know about the forbidden bananas, so when it tried to get the banana, the other monkeys would stop him. Soon, the new monkey started policing the other monkeys too. Eventually, one by one all the monkeys were replaced in the group, but the monkeys kept policing themselves, even though none of the original monkeys weren't there and the reason for policing themselves was now non-existent.
They use this metaphor in business classes to help students realize that processes need to be continually re-examined to maintain efficiency and make new breakthroughs. It's a useful metaphor as we consider religious dogma...
If a new religion popped up tomorrow, we'd be able to examine it closely and via its genesis, decide its validity rather quickly.
I think it would be very difficult to get any new brand-new religion to pass the smell test, yet look at recent "new" faiths, like Mormonism or Scientology. Standing outside the Mormon religion, non-Mormons can ask the hard questions very easily, such as, "If the Book of Mormon is true, where is all the archaeological evidence for all the cities, peoples and battles that supposedly existed in pre-America?" Of course, it's apparent to the non-Mormons that the answer is, "Because they never existed, as the Book of Mormon seems to be a poorly constructed fiction.". If you press a Mormon on this point, his or her answer will usually be, "I've searched my heart, and I know the Book of Mormon to be true.". End of story, end of thinking. If you question a Scientologist on their core beliefs, you might get a heated, 'bull-baiting' response of "What are YOUR crimes, huh?!?", but as usual, end of story, end of thinking. The monkeys have been trained well.
I know I certainly was well-trained (being raised as a Christian), but I found my way out of the loop. I broke my programming.
As I continue my climb up the ladder as a new Atheist monkey, I find (unfortunately) that reaching for the bananas is a path that leads to a lot of beat downs by the other monkeys.
[Research finds that atheists are the most hated and distrusted minority]
While it's true we're pretty much despised here in America, I have to give it up for Teh Intertubes, as I'm finding more company on the ladder every day. It makes it easier.
You've probably heard the saying "Reason is the Enemy of Faith", and of course it's true (except for some inexplicable reason, Christians see this as a positive attribute for them). If you apply even a modicum of logic to the Mexican piñata that is the fallacy of answered prayer, I think one good whack at it is all you need to release a cornucopia of niggly little questions.
Any time you're asked to believe something you know is wrong, your brain is going to rebel, so to bypass that, you have to be trained from an early age to accept incongruities.
When you're a kid, your brain is soft, and anybody can push whatever they want into it like pressing a sardine into a jello mold. This is how tiny White Supremacists and My Lil' Jihadists are made. It's the same for Christianity: You go to Sunday School, you're told to pray during meals and at bedtime, and this happens all week long, every week throughout your formative years. I mean, man... that sardine is embedded. It took me a while, and I needed help from lots of different resources to dig it out. I'm still digging out pieces every day. Last week I found half a dorsal fin and a partial hymn.
It's little wonder to me that today's Christians are so easily taken in by the flaming Republican rhetoric of exclusion, hate and fear. It's very familiar to anyone that's sat through hardcore Sunday morning hellfire and brimstone sermons or even easy listening type "God loves us all, but the Gays are rejecting His love" teachings. There's always a good guy (that's you) and a villain (that's <insert target of hate>), there's a cautionary tale of avarice run amok and a neatly packaged solution, a brightly lit Path of Righteousness where everybody lives happily ever after as long as we call agree on who's the right person to string up.
It's like we've been brainwashed since we were kids to accept batshit crazy bullshit as long as it has the right shiny packaging. I think this is very damaging to children, I'd go as far as to call it child abuse. I think it impairs their ability to protect themselves from scammers and cults, like a computer hacker putting a backdoor password into your root access.
I eventually grew out of believing in Santa knowing if I've been good or bad and visiting billions of homes in a single night, but it was continually reinforced by my monkeysphere to believe in God knowing the number of hairs on my head and listening to billions of prayers in a single instant. That kind of disconnect is only possible through continual reinforcement within a closed logic loop.
So whenever you hear someone say, "Don't stress out over that, honey, just Let Go And Let God™ because remember, Jesus Has A Plan For Us All™ and as everybody knows, The Lord Works In Mysterious Ways™", you can almost hear your logical brain whirring down from that ancient backdoor program activating.
It's tough to override that command. It's tough to wrench yourself out from that loop because when you've been raised in Christianity your whole life, your automatic programming always tries to find a way to reconcile your 'faith' when those niggly questions pop up.
It's much easier to let your mind slip quietly beneath the waves and be obedient. Everybody in your congregation wants you to. People who ask too many uncomfortable questions are often ostracized.
There's an old business metaphor about an experiment with ten monkeys: Ten monkeys were kept in a cage with a ladder, and some bananas were kept on the top of the ladder. Whenever one of the monkeys would climb the ladder to get the bananas, all the other monkeys were sprayed with ice cold water. Soon, the monkeys begin to police themselves, and would prevent any monkey from climbing the ladder. Eventually, the cold water was turned off, but the monkeys kept policing themselves. Then, one monkey was removed, and another monkey put in its place. Of course, the new monkey didn't know about the forbidden bananas, so when it tried to get the banana, the other monkeys would stop him. Soon, the new monkey started policing the other monkeys too. Eventually, one by one all the monkeys were replaced in the group, but the monkeys kept policing themselves, even though none of the original monkeys weren't there and the reason for policing themselves was now non-existent.
They use this metaphor in business classes to help students realize that processes need to be continually re-examined to maintain efficiency and make new breakthroughs. It's a useful metaphor as we consider religious dogma...
If a new religion popped up tomorrow, we'd be able to examine it closely and via its genesis, decide its validity rather quickly.
I think it would be very difficult to get any new brand-new religion to pass the smell test, yet look at recent "new" faiths, like Mormonism or Scientology. Standing outside the Mormon religion, non-Mormons can ask the hard questions very easily, such as, "If the Book of Mormon is true, where is all the archaeological evidence for all the cities, peoples and battles that supposedly existed in pre-America?" Of course, it's apparent to the non-Mormons that the answer is, "Because they never existed, as the Book of Mormon seems to be a poorly constructed fiction.". If you press a Mormon on this point, his or her answer will usually be, "I've searched my heart, and I know the Book of Mormon to be true.". End of story, end of thinking. If you question a Scientologist on their core beliefs, you might get a heated, 'bull-baiting' response of "What are YOUR crimes, huh?!?", but as usual, end of story, end of thinking. The monkeys have been trained well.
I know I certainly was well-trained (being raised as a Christian), but I found my way out of the loop. I broke my programming.
As I continue my climb up the ladder as a new Atheist monkey, I find (unfortunately) that reaching for the bananas is a path that leads to a lot of beat downs by the other monkeys.
[Research finds that atheists are the most hated and distrusted minority]
While it's true we're pretty much despised here in America, I have to give it up for Teh Intertubes, as I'm finding more company on the ladder every day. It makes it easier.