Examining our religious beliefs can be painful

Mark Bode’s meditation on Ben Carson’s religious views points up a sad truth about human nature. Many people who are otherwise perfectly intelligent turn off their brains when it comes to religion. They give more thought to their investment portfolios than to their metaphysical beliefs, and hang onto the same beliefs they were taught as children. Examining one’s own religious beliefs can be painful. Most of us are addicted to wishful thinking: we believe the things that make us feel good. That’s why otherwise mature people comfort themselves with the belief that after death they will go to Heaven and rejoin all their friends and relatives who died.

Rather than laugh at such people, it would be kinder to sympathise with them. We are all sailors on uncertain seas, we all have leaky boats, and eventually all of us will sink beneath the waves. But although we may sympathise with candidates like Carson, we don’t have to vote for them. If they have a blind spot about religion, how many other blind spots may they have? 

Agnosticus