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"Jesus said it. I believe it. That settles it." [1]

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Date: 2023-02-18  

Those words are on a bumper sticker frequently seen throughout the United States’ Bible belt. The sentiment sums up the reality of all religious people, regardless of their cult: “my authority says it’s true, so I believe it and there’s no room for debate.”

Humans rely on mathematics (the ultimate form of logic) and on reasoned debate to define how we live and interact with each other and our environment. The laws of physics, via mathematics, prove how things work in our universe and establish limits on our reality. Then, reasoned debate can produce a logical conclusion that is based on fact and provable reality. To embrace any other conclusion requires the suspension of reason and the embrace of an illogical and unprovable assumption. That is what we call “faith” and it is the opposite of reason. To believe in something that has no basis in our physical reality or logic is the foundation of all religions and requires “faith.”

Although many people who think they reject religions and call themselves “spiritual” would deny it, blind faith is the universal requirement for believing in ghosts or any other forms of spirits. There is no proof of the supernatural, which is what gods, ghosts, and spirits are. Physics disproves their existence and reasoned debate provides no logical conclusion that they exist outside of our reality. (That’s why they’re called “super-natural.”)

All religions (and their euphemistic replacement: “spirituality”) are based on a belief in the supernatural, whether it’s the belief in anthropomorphic deities (a god or gods), “karma,” or ghosts and spirits of any kind. All of these concepts are outside the laws of physics and none of them withstand reasoned scrutiny, so they all require a blind, “faithful” belief that they are true.

Faith is superstition. Believing in the Judeo-Christian god, or Vishnu, or Zeus, or Tlaloc, is no different than believing that you will have seven years of bad luck if you break a mirror. The belief is based not on any provable or logical conclusion, but on some story that someone told you they believed and that you then accepted as reality, without taking the time to analyze it or then not having the intellectual and emotional courage to dismiss. That said, it’s also clear that superstitious, religious people arbitrarily pick and choose which supernatural superstitions that they accept and reject.

Nobody should be surprised by radical religious people’s rejection of science and logic. For Islamic, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Satanist, or any other religion, the complete and unwavering acceptance of science, logic, and physics would be fatal to one of their central views of life. Science, logic, and reasoned debate disprove those core beliefs, so they have a natural and essential dismissive attitude toward them.

Herein lies the problem of trusting anyone who is religious or superstitious: it is clear that they are able to ignore reasoned debate and our physical reality. No matter how much they may work to establish their lack of illogical bias in other areas of their lives, they prove with their faith that they are capable of suspending logic and reasoned debate in at least one part of their thinking. So, to me, it logically follows that they are likely doing that same thing in other areas of their brain. It frightens me to think of the number of innately illogical people who are judges, doctors, and—especially—politicians.

With that said, imagine how disheartening it is for me to know that only 2 of the 534 members of the 118th U.S. Congress proclaim themselves to not be affiliated with a religion. How can we possibly hope for mature, logical, reasonable government when our government is made up of the logic-rejecting superstitious?

If “shaming” the faithful is the same as saying that I will never, ever trust a person who relies on faith to always think and behave reasonably, then I’m guilty. If I’m shaming the faithful when I say I automatically have a degree of distrust in them solely because they proclaim their faithful allegiance to the supernatural, so be it.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/18/2153703/--Jesus-said-it-I-believe-it-That-settles-it

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