The truth that all religions are false is nearly (I always want to leave a certain piece of probability; unlike the vast majority of believers) indisputable. Just for starter: evolution (including that religion is a product of it), karma, soul, prayer, creation, Gods, cycle of life, death, and rebirth, or a single, finite earthly life followed by a single, unending afterlife, reliability of old corrupt dubious books, evolutionary fear for life (while there is a way out of it), being biological robots, life expectancy at birth averaged 10 years for most of human history, theistic commencement after an extremely long time after the earth was formed, absence of immaterial world, presence of overlapping and colliding powers, impossibility of free will and claims that are completely illogical, internally colliding, groundless and non-evidence-based (Arguments for atheism, Jan Bryxí 2023). The primitive Bronze Age myths at best.
But despite overwhelming and massive counterarguments, the vast majority of people on this planet are believers. They are so convinced that there is basically no way out of it. Czechoslovakian communist regime had priests imprisoned, and tortured, yet didn’t achieve the goal of changing their minds.
When people are believers, they feel every inch of the presence of their entity (and of course, only theirs is the correct one). However, their emotional attachment goes to personal identity, shared community or family values (which atheism cancels all). I guess that addictions (specifically to highly addictive drugs) are better in the aspects that the addicted person may have insight into. There are also types of personality trait settings (some people tend to be dependent on religion to such a level).
Believers fear not only rejections from the aforementioned, but they also fear the consequences (going to hell, being unsure what is true etc.)
So the most perverting thing is not only to raise children religious, but religious educational systems that ingrain it more. They tell them that this world must be a product of some entity (it just cannot be random) yet they remain elusive that science can prove we tend to explain complex things in an evolutionary manner (since we evolved in African savanna where every member of homo sapiens had his or her intentions); therefore, the mountain couldn’t have been created by itself, someone must have done it – it same goes with physical laws or preexistence of abstract objects that a God must be a part of (Arguments for atheism, Jan Bryxí 2023).
Some people may actually doubt religion, but their enormously emotional spiritual experiences and even some kind of comfort make it impossible for them to leave. Yes, you must find that information yourself, but in the age of AI and the internet, everything is possible.
So I wrote about how people are made to be religious. Now how they can reject their faith? One of the most statistically important concepts in humanities is IQ, yet it is something statistical, somehow vague: “The individual Wechsler subtests, or the subtests that compose the KAIT or WJ III, do not reflect the essential ingredients of intelligence whose mastery implies some type of ultimate life achievement. They, like tasks developed by Binet and other test constructors, are more or less arbitrary samples of behavior.” (Kaufman, Alan S.; Lichtenberger, Elizabeth (2006). Assessing Adolescent and Adult Intelligence (3rd ed.). Hoboken (NJ): Wiley)
As you can see, even psychometrists will tell you that your IQ can be 140 (one out of 261 people) and you may be a religious fanatic. But the downside is, that some people are not so intelligent to work with their beliefs. So we have a raw mental power. If we want to use it properly, some improvement must take place and you have to overcome the learned patterns I mentioned.
As you acquire critical thinking, things will start to fall apart. But what does it take to have critical thinking? Some people will never acquire it. Oxford Languages describes critical thinking as “the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgement.”
Lack of cognitive biases, fallacies and logical mistakes while learning new key information (atheistic literature, evolutionary biology or evolutionary psychology – and you can do it on the popular science level) can tear your faith apart if you want. I am not going to torture you with so many through one of the most notable (and specially relating to religions) are these (and it is not a nuclear science):
Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one’s prior beliefs or values.
Wishful thinking is the formation of beliefs based on what might be pleasing to imagine, rather than on evidence, rationality, or reality. It is a product of resolving conflicts between belief and desire.
Magical thinking – fallacious attribution of causal relationships between actions and events.
Argument from fallacy (also known as the fallacy fallacy) – the assumption that, if a particular argument for a “conclusion” is fallacious, then the conclusion itself is false.
Conservatism bias – the tendency to insufficiently revise one’s belief when presented with new evidence.
Anecdotal evidence – information derived from personal experience or observation. Anecdotal evidence is used to learn about experiences, products, and to help prove a point. It is not scientific evidence, which can be verified objectively.
Dysrationalia – defined as the inability to think and behave rationally despite adequate intelligence. It is a concept in educational psychology and is not a clinical disorder such as a thought disorder. Dysrationalia can be a resource to help explain why smart people fall for Ponzi schemes and other fraudulent encounters.
Fallacy of composition– assuming that something true as part of a whole must also be true of the whole.
False attribution– appealing to an irrelevant, unqualified, unidentified, biased or fabricated source in support of an argument.
Cherry picking – suppressed evidence, incomplete evidence, argument by half-truth, fallacy of exclusion, card stacking, slanting – using individual cases or data that confirm a particular position, while ignoring related cases or data that may contradict that position.
Inductive fallacy – a more general name for a class of fallacies, including hasty generalization and its relatives. A fallacy of induction happens when a conclusion is drawn from premises that only lightly support it.
Appeal to the stone– dismissing a claim as absurd without demonstrating proof for its absurdity.
Argument from incredulity (appeal to common sense) – “I cannot imagine how this could be true; therefore, it must be false.”
Therefore, we have to adhere to tolerating superstitious myths, despite living in the age of science. Of course, you will live in denial using cognitive biases, fallacies, logical errors. But asking why do we need to suffer. The natural sciences can give you the evidence-based answer (because we are a part of nature), religions only lies.
And you have your chance now as it is 2024! I live in the town of Jičín, one of the most picturesque places in Czechia, and while I am starring at the church, I admit; that were I lived at the times it was built, I would have been religious as well (no rational explanation of life, creation of universe etc.).
So, my genes having been born times ago – tens of points lower IQ, little or no education, everything revolving around religion, no knowledge of evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology, no large cosmos, no Big bang, elements of chemistry, no cardiopulmonary bypass, no internet, no mathematics, physics, astrophysics, microbiology – just no explanation of the world as a natural phenomenon, only superstitions and lies. So do you want to live in superstitions and lies?
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