facts of life
March 4, 2009 at 1:26 pm Leave a comment
Statistically, the more educated you are the higher the chances that you are an Atheist. What that might lead someone to believe is that there is a direct correlation between intelligence and belief. While I do think there is a relationship between those two things, it is neither direct nor simple. I have met some smart people who believe some very weird things. How is is that someone can be a scientist, understand the scientific method and how to apply it and then fail to apply the same rigour to their own fundamental beliefs? The cognitive dissonance that arises from such mental gymnastics is in large part, what led my husband and I to become atheists. If you believe in rational thought and evidence-based decision making (which we did and do) then it doesn’t leave you with a lot of other options. You can examine the basic religious claims and find them lacking or you can take a large chunk of your brain out and leave it on a shelf so that you can believe.
Adam and Eve? The great flood…animals going two by two? People being swallowed by whales? Even if you dismiss these old testament stories as merely legend (which in itself gets very tricky – if the first part is “just a story” then what does that say about the rest of it?) there is still plenty of stuff in the new testament to test the limits of ridiculousness. Mormons have it even harder. All of their sacred texts and documents were written in the past couple of centuries – in English. There are no mistranslations to blame and plenty of writings, witnesses, newspaper accounts, court documents and historical facts that create problems for the Mormons. Their approach is to find them, destroy/hide them and teach the church that anything that questions the Mormon faith (even without meaning to do so intentionally like say…DNA EVIDENCE!) is anti-Mormon, not faith-promoting, and not worth their time.
They say ignorance is bliss. Ignorance is also faith I’m afraid.
Entry filed under: Uncategorized. Tags: faith.
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