I know that many people are inclined to look for the worst in whatever I say, for a variety of reasons. In this post, I will try to be both precise and thorough. If anything is unclear, I invite you to ask for clarification. I believe this is fundamentally important to every thinking being.
Every action we take is a result of our brains sending signals to our muscles. Some of those signals are automatic, we cannot stop them even if we try. Other signals are conscious choices, but this does not imply the existence of free will. The physical world around us impacts our senses, sending signals along nerve pathways to reach the brain. The brain parses these signals and, sometimes, responds by sending signals to our muscles to trigger an action.
We did not choose to be born, or the circumstances of our births. Yes, I can choose to stand up from my chair, seemingly unprompted. But that is only a natural reaction to sitting for too long, or for wanting to "prove" a point, or any other reason. The decision I make does not come from nowhere, it is the natural result of my entire life up to that moment. My brain has processed enough signals to conclude that standing up is or is not a good idea, depending on my understanding of past events as well as current circumstances.
My brain has a vested interest in keeping me alive: the survival instinct. It compels me to act even when I do not consciously understand why, especially when I am in danger or under stress. But even my calmest conscious decisions are products of my experiences. Where else could they come from?
This is why beliefs are so important. They form the foundation of our decision-making processes. Yes, we can decide in the moment to deviate from our usual patterns, but even that deviation is part of a pattern. If the deviation proves more successful than our usual result, we may reconsider our foundational beliefs. We may change our minds. Is this "free will", or the natural response from a mind that wishes to be as capable as it can be for the sake of our long-term wellbeing?
Many people insist upon the existence of free will to preserve a feeling of control. We crave control because it can keep us alive, it can give us power. But we do not have control. At best, we have influence. The world is bigger than us. We cannot fit it in our heads, and we cannot will it to be the way we want without taking action. Our brains necessarily reduce the complicated world into more easily identifiable terms that fit more neatly into our decision making trees to produce actionable results.
To a degree, we must be willing to die for our beliefs. f we are wrong about something, we may take an action expecting one result, but we may get the opposite. We may make choices we think will improve our lives while actually harming ourselves. If we are too confident in our choices, we may even reject evidence that could otherwise change our minds. If we think the same way every time, it may become second nature, harder and harder to reconsider each time we repeat the thought, whether it is right or wrong.
This is why we must be very careful to avoid accepting falsehoods into our minds. We must review what we believe we know and why we believe it. We must be open to changing our minds if the evidence is sufficient enough. Many people can be wrong for many years. They may reinforce each other's false beliefs, and false beliefs may protect other false beliefs, such as in cases when people falsely believe that false beliefs are not dangerous.
When we look outside of ourselves to see other living, feeling beings sharing the world with us, seeking truth becomes not just about our own survival, but a moral obligation. Cooperation benefits us all.
This is why I am so adamantly against superstition. A hypothesis can be tested; if it consistently passes the test, we might consider it a fact. A superstition is held even when evidence does not support it. "Supernatural" refers to something that cannot be proven; if it could, if it actually exsited, it would be natural. Everything is natural.
This brings us to "god," a word humans invented to describe an entity or idea that has never been physically sensed. By every available measure, it does not exist, yet people ascribe whatever qualities they like to it, and because they like those qualities so much, they commit to pretending. Often, it is as simple as "I wish I was special," "I wish a powerful being loved me," or "I want to believe I have some insight into the parts of the universe no person can know."
This is problematic by itself, adding needless risk in the form of overconfidence in something that does not exist. But more often than not, god is further described to be a petty, violent, hateful thing, yet "love" is stamped on top of it. "God is good," even when he slaughters children or commands rape and genocide. People start with the conclusion and try to work backwards to justify it, but there is no justification.
The truth is both simpler and more complicated. Simpler because we do not have to justify the nonsensical actions of a god that literally cannot be sensed. More complicated because we lose the easy answer of "a wizard did it" and must face the unending complexities of the rich universe we chance to inhabit. We lose the threat of divine punishment, but also the safety net of divine comfort. Are we on our own? No, we have each other, which is sometimes good and sometimes bad. We do not know what else is out there in the universe, but there is nothing to suggest it is god.
So when I say things like "every abrahamic faith is a death cult," it is partly because ANY falsehood is potentially deadly. Worshiping a lie, forming a cult around a lie, is harmful to humanity as a whole. But the abrahamic faiths in particular, from the tanakh to the christian bible to the catholic canon to the quran and more, describe a god who, despite being immensely powerful, chooses to create suffering, and blames his own creations for it so that he has an excuse to punish us for being who we are, who he made us to be.
Yahweh regularly uses violence and death to solve his problems and commands his followers to do the same. Normalizing these backwards beliefs normalizes violence and abuse, literally glorifies suffering and submission to arbitrary authority. Tolerating falsehoods is tolerating death, and as a living person I am compelled to object.
I hope you can understand why I am so angry. It is not just my life that was ruined. Many are dead for these lies, but those deaths are attributed to other factors. Lies protect lies, and more people die every day for nothing more than the most fundamental human greed: the willful rejection of evidence. The willful invention of that which has never been sensed.
Love is honest, even when the truth is not what we want it to be. Please think carefully. Our actions ripple out into this interconnected universe in ways we will never be able to fully measure. Our beliefs are of utmost importance. Thank you for reading. Please ask if you have any questions.
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