Belief is opposed to truth. To ‘believe in’ something means to have faith that something is so when there’s no factual evidence for it. Put another way, if there’s evidence of something, if it’s true and verifiable, there’s no need to ‘believe’.
To hold to ‘belief’ when it
separates you from others, when it sets you apart in your mind as special or
different, effectively walls you off in a prison of your own thoughts. A prison
or a fortress, but a separator nonetheless.
This prison’s keeper is fear and
ignorance. It traps and holds some
otherwise very intelligent people. It
causes endless divisions and quarrels.
It sets some apart in their thinking that they’re better than others;
not because of anything they’ve actually contributed to the world, but because
of what they believe in their own minds.
For example: a person believes fervently that they are
saved from eternal destruction because they ‘believe in’ God/Jesus/Allah. Because of this belief, they hold they will
go to heaven but everyone who doesn’t believe as they do will go to hell. They believe there’s nothing they can do to
earn heaven, it’s a ‘free gift’, but they do have to believe and not
doubt. It doesn’t seem to register that acceptance
of this ‘gift’ constitutes an action; that one has indeed ‘earned’ it because
of a specific action taken. Most
maintain that it’s ‘God’s grace’ (and their action of acceptance) that sets
them apart and destines them to ‘eternal life’ in ‘heaven’, that those who’ve
‘rejected God’s grace’ and not ‘believed’ are destined for ‘eternal torment in
hell’.
This is somewhat simplified, of
course. Many believers hold that your
actions in life matter, though there’s great leeway in exactly how much they
matter. Some hold that you must
faithfully observe various rituals through life, others that you must do ‘good
works’ though what those are is usually open to interpretation; others insist
you must submit to authourity (usually theirs) and not question or rebel but
patiently accept in faith.
The grand motivator for this
belief and its lifestyle is the ultimate goal of heaven, or the punishment of
hell. Now there is NO proof of either
heaven or hell of course. If there was, there wouldn’t need to be ‘belief’
because there would be proof. See how
belief is opposed to truth? Hold tight
to your belief; if you can do so all the way to death, then the prize is
yours! If this sounds silly, it is. It’s ludicrous. It’s a deception, but a
powerful one.
Belief is a dead end unless it
motivates one to act in ways that don’t destroy or harm, but instead build up,
cultivate and encourage. To leave the
world as you found it is a high calling indeed.
It’s quite debatable whether you need belief to do this, its possible it
may hinder more than help.
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