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The Danger of Belief

Those who think they must believe in religion have often offered as a justification for doing so as "if you don't believe in something, you'll believe in anything." 

Like all claims by religions, since religions all conflate their "beliefs" for truth, the exact opposite is true. 

Religion is so valuable to powerful rulers of all stripes, because "Believers" are conditioned and therefore primed to "believe."  As a result, "believers" are far more likely to believe anything and everything, because the only time they ever fully engage their "god given" powers of skepticism is when someone dares to point out that their own particular brand of "God" and religion are just as absurd as every other brand of "God" and religion.  

 As Gibbons put it in The Decline and Fall Of the Roman Empire:

 “The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful.” 

 That's how a mind virus works: it turns a person's skepticism agaisnt anyone who tries to point out the person has been seduced into a cult of blood drinking cannibals.

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