Why do so many people believe in God? It's how they were raised.

sardonyxmemoirs asks:

Logic and practical reasoning obviously point to the unreliability of deism, but the thing bothering me is how and why so many people cling to it blindly. How can millions of people be so unreasonable? What do you think drives them and convinces them NOT to be an atheist?

Thank you for your time reading this and more power.

One word: Indoctrination.

“For those who stubbornly seek freedom, there can be no more urgent task than to come to understand the mechanisms and practices of indoctrination. These are easy to perceive in the totalitarian societies, much less so in the system of ‘brainwashing under freedom’ to which we are subjected and which all too often we serve as willing or unwitting instruments.”
-Noam Chomsky

Religion is taught uncritically to children from birth. It is as simple as that. At least I think so. People’s religious beliefs are nothing more than a simple geographical accident (as seen here).

via friendlyatheist.tumblr.com

This is why we all need to question everything about ourselves. You never know when something you’ve done your entire life will suddenly seem amazingly stupid/wasteful/odd/hurtful.

Everything we know we’ve learned from someone else or from our own personal experience and none of it should be blindly trusted. Out intellect is what makes us different from the other animals. Use it to better understand yourself and your actions. Don’t trust your parents or the media or your friends or the government to decide what is right for you, because ultimately, your life is your responsibility to live.

via website666.com

This is what happened to me back in 2000, when I read a book (specifically this book ) which was given to me by my late step-mother-in-law). I realized that history as I was taught it, in school, was much more interesting--and that if you stood to one side of the accepted version of human history it all made a helluva lot more sense.

It happened again to me in 2003 when I read the book Sugar Blues and realized that I wasn't being "cool" by sucking down loads of Coca-Cola and Mountain Dew (ironic!)--I was actually harming my own health. This book also helped me see history from another angle, as well.

Then it happened again, in 2007, when I read Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States and realized that America had been founded on a grand holocaust and genocide. The number of Native Americans killed will never be known, but it's obvious from the first page of A People's History how Europeans were going to treat them.

Don't stop questioning!! Question even me!

(ESPECIALLY me!!)

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