The Rant Institute

 “Do you believe God exists?” Answering this question “Yes” or “No” is an example of attribution substitution.  But before we understand the problem with this question, we have to ask, what is "attribution substitution"? According to David Cycleback, in his piece "Brain Function and Religion," attribution substitution is an automatic unconscious process the brain uses to make speedy decisions needed to function. It contributes to many cognitive biases, misperceptions and visual illusions. It is a heuristic used when someone has to make a judgment about a complex, ambiguous situation and substitutes a different but more easily solved situation. (Poulter 2018), (Brockman 2007) The substitution is done at the automatic subconscious level and the person does not realize she is answering a related but different question. This explains why many visual illusions still trick the eyes after the person has learned they are visual illusions. This also helps explain why many in

 if a soul entered a “life” at conception, as the Catholic Church now claims, then the Catholic teaching that unbaptized souls ended up in hell or limbo - which began with St Augustine - means that every spontaneous miscarriage throughout history, most of which may have been had by people who never even knew they were pregnant, all went straight from the God who creates them to the hell that same God created. And this, according to Catholic logic, must be blamed on the soul not on the God who came up with such a “divine plan.”

 When someone is listening to music, the music’s note, pitch, speed, volume and the listener’s ear vibration and heartbeat can be measured by scientific instruments. However, the listener’s aesthetic experience cannot. This experience is experienced by the listener alone. Even if asked to, the listener could not fully translate the experience to others, in part because it is beyond words and their own consciousness. The emotional experience is experiential, and therefore as subjective as it is ineffable.  And this illustrates the trouble with any idea of  a God, for God is an infinite abstraction that can only ever be experienced subjectively, like music, in a way unique to each and every person.  God, as such, operates like an emotional inkblot. So just imagine people arguing and killing each other over their interpretation of an inkblot, and that's what religions selling God encourage people to do. Or think of it this way. If God is infinity, then each person experiences "Go

 Neil deGrasse Tyson: "If you live forever, then what's the hurry? Why do today what you can put off until tomorrow. There is perhaps no greater de-motivating force than the knowledge you will live forever.  If true, then knowledge of your mortality may also be a force unto itself-the urge to achieve, and the need to express love and affection now, not later.  Mathematically,  if death gives meaning to life, then to live forever is to live a life with no meaning at all."        So when Jesus promises eternal life, it has no meaning.

 “The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holder’s lack of rational conviction. Opinions in politics and religion are almost always held passionately.” ― Bertrand Russell, Introduction to 1961 edition of Sceptical Essays (1961)

 a god who casts you into a fire for all eternity for failing to "believe" he is a "good god" is like a five year old child who refuses to talk to their parents for the rest of the child's life for the parent's failure to "believe" the child was actually a magical princess in a school play, not just playing a part in that school play.