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Belief-ism: How Religion is Like Racism

Religion teaches people that "beliefs" are what really matter, and that having the "right" beliefs is the only thing that can prevent a person from otherwise becoming a raving psychopath who would rape you as soon as murder your children.

 It is our "beliefs" after all, that are necessary for making people moral, without which we would all quickly devolve into cannibalistic savages. But for the rosary and mass at 7 a.m. every morning of the week, even grandmothers would be selling heroin to kids in kindergarten and doing drive-bys for a parking space at the grocery store.

It is this absurd notion that one "belief" is somehow better at making us more "moral" that leads people who subscribe to whichever "belief" is lauded about in a given society as being the one necessary for doing so, that makes them think that their "thoughts" and "ideas" are therefore better than the thoughts and ideas of those who do not subscribe to the same "belief." And all those who do not, like the Native Americans or African slave who were not Christian, are therefore expendable simply because of they do not posses in their brain the right "beliefs" to make them worthy of being treated like equals.

It is to assume, in other words, that only when someone starts with a certain "belief" can they ever actually contribute anything truly meaningful to the world, let alone discover "truth" and "meaning" and "joy," and all the rest. 

In this way, the color of our "beliefs" are interpreted as a kind of racism, as if the color of one "belief" should be ranked above or below the color of another "belief," which could properly be referred to as "belief-ism." 

Belief-ism, then, is simply the belief that my beliefs are better than yours - for finding happiness, promoting morality, understanding the nature of love and sex, interpreting the "proper" function and meaning of everything in the universe, deciphering the fabric of reality, finding cures for cancer, whether God exists at all, etc etc -  in the same way that racism is the "belief" my biology is better than yours. 

But it's my "belief" that such a belief is not only demonstrably false, but that it is precisely such a "belief" that has caused all of the very problems in the world, that every organized and indeed institutionalized "belief" system claims to only ever be working to combat. 

It is not necessarily the "beliefs" themselves, however, but the obstinate quest to maintain those "beliefs" in the face of any and all evidence or reason, as well as the absurd notion that by doing so, or even dying or killing for that "belief," one is somehow serving and pleasing a "God."

While it is considered the noblest thing ever to die for one's beliefs, for the sake of our eternal soul, it is a far nobler (and indeed sane) thing to let our sacred "beliefs" die instead, for the sake of each other. 

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