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The Crucifix & The Power of Our Confirmation Bias

If you have ever looked at a crucifix without the lens of your own confirmation bias, the only thing you see is a torture device depicting the brutal murder of a man. People pile into churches around the world and stare at this ghoulish piece of art, convinced that it is a celebration of their salvation. And in this way, it is the most obvious example of just how truly powerful a person's confirmation bias really is, and how that bias can be used to make people see whatever it is you want them to see.

There is no doubt that anyone who was NOT a christian already, who was presented with any image of a person being savagely murdered using any number of horrific murder devices - like a machine gun, an electric chair, an iron maiden, the rack, a pack of lions, or a crucifix - would naturally and automatically be horrified at the thought that any of these such devices were hung on the wall of someone who knew a loved one who had been put to death by any of them.

This would be even of those who's loved one's had been crucified. Imagine that a person is a Christian today, but that their son or daughter had been put to death via crucifixion, if such executions still went on. How truly insane would it seem to us to then walk into their home and find a crucifix, or even just a cross, hanging on their wall?

How would they be able to look at such an item and separate it from the notion of their own child being put to death on it, simply because they "believed" it symbolized Christ's triumph over death itself?

This is like early Christians keeping a picture of a pack of lions to commemorate all those Christians who were fed to the lions, or the parents of those killed at Columbine keeping an assault rifle on their wall, to remind them that their child was murdered after being asked if they believed in God, or even the parents of someone who was wrongly put to death by electrocution in Texas keeping a small model of an electric chair on their mantle. 

But these facts, that no Christian would dispute, do not a single thing to change the mind of a single Christian anywhere, of the importance of having a crucifix or a cross in their home, in their church, or even around their neck, to always remind them of the sacrifice that was made for them by Jesus, their sith lord and savoir.

Even if you point out that the use of such an icon is not only supposedly forbidden by their own religion, but that it is awfully manipulative as well, since it uses the trauma of such an event to hook a person emotionally - effectively "guilting" that person into feeling that only a truly heartless or "evil" person would not be moved to accepting Christ as their savior, given the amount of suffering He suffered for them - even as it bypasses their capacity for rational thought.

The "power" of such an image is held in front of a person to remind them of how grateful they should be for the suffering that Jesus went through. A weekend of such suffering does not compare, however, to those who linger in pain and agony for months or even years, with diseases and other aliments that the good God above sees fit to inflict people with.

But, none of that matters to the Christian, of course, since the single most important thing in life, as far as they are concerned, is the need to focus exclusively on an instrument of death and suffering that is designed to keep them distracted from ever noticing that they would NEVER do such a thing, for any other person or idea or religion or belief, were it not for their confirmation bias.

  

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