It Takes Effort To Believe

Being a believer is hard work! Not just a Mormon believer, but any faith-based religion. You see, you are supposed to take a whole Bible full of teachings and take it on faith. This requires effort because most of what you read in the Bible is stuff that is scientifically impossible.

Here is an effective but rather stupid example: It takes absolutely no effort at all to believe that the sky is blue because it is blue. But someone who chooses to believe the sky is orange must exert a lot of effort to maintain that belief. Mostly because the obvious fact is right there: it's blue! So it takes effort to believe anything else because that belief is false. Makes no sense?

Believing takes even more effort when one discovers that the gospels were written several years after the supposed fact, about one hundred years to be more precice. How could the authors of the gospels be eye-witnesses of Jesus if they lived 100 years after him?

This type of evidence strongly suggests that the Jesus story is not all it is cracked up to be. Therefore, to continue believing takes effort. Take your belief, throw in an opposing fact, and that leads to a real mental jungle gym. It takes effort to keep believing!

But not believing takes no effort at all. It is easy to not believe a fictional story. When more and more evidence surfaces that Jesus was not a god, and possibly not even a man, it fits right in with my belief system. Therefore, there is no mental jungle gym and no rationalizing. The more science disproves religion, it takes no effort at all for me to understand because it fits right in.

I laugh whenever I hear believers trying to say that not believing takes more effort. They only say that because it is the only argument they can come up with. Believing in the supernatural and the irrational takes effort, because those things aren't real. Believing in science and real-life takes no effort at all because it does not contradict what we know about our world.

I read a quote not too long ago: "Saying that atheism is a faith is like saying that baldness is a hair color."

Break down the word "atheist". "theist" is a term meaning 'having to do with religion' and "a" is a prefix usually meaning 'anti' or 'against'. Therefore a-theist means 'not having to do with religion' or 'against religious belief'. Religion requires faith, so if you're against religion, then you're against faith. Therefore, anyone who tries to argue that atheism is a faith, is a moron. Atheism is the opposite of faith. Atheism is believing in what can be seen, rather than what cannot.

In other words, atheism requires no effort. It takes effort to believe in something that you have never seen, let alone anyone else. The fact that there is no real evidence supporting this belief does not help either.

But since I don't believe in what really isn't there, then I'm not really an atheist either; I'm just a rational person. I just happen to not believe in fairy tales and superstition. And guess what!?!? It takes no effort to not believe in fairy tales and superstition. ZERO EFFORT!

The more evidence that we find that religion is a crock, only requires it's believers to exert that much more effort to keep believing it. But on the other hand, all the evidence against religion only makes my position easier to believe!

So my question is, why waste all that effort to believe in something that is only described in an ancient book that no one really understand anyway and is full of self-contradictions?

Hey, the minute Jesus shows up and takes credit for creating the world, I'll believe like no other! But no Jesus, no believing in Jesus. Fair enough? Why believe that god created man when the much more simple and believable explanation is that man created god? Superheroes aren't real and yet we love to hear stories about them; even I do. Jesus is nothing more than another superhero story. It's a good story, but in the end that's all it is... a story.

The Jesus story is really no different than any other superhero. But we don't exert effort to believe that Superman is literally real, or Batman. So why do we do it for the Jesus story? Because it is older? Good question. I don't know why. To me it is perfectly obvious that it's just a story too and should require no effort. I don't get it, why put all that time and effort into a story that is, in the end, no different than any other superhero story?

There are those who will say that there is significant evidence that Jesus was real. But, I've noticed that anyone who wants something to be true badly enough will find some type of evidence for it's truth. But the problem is that they want to find evidence to support their belief.

Mormon apologists are constantly coming up with bullshit evidence for their true church. Any fool can do that. It takes a much smarter person to take the evidence and let it determine the belief, not the other way around. Evidence leads to belief. Belief does not lead to evidence.

I prefer, personally, to let the evidence speak for itself. That requires no effort. Having a belief and then desperately searching for evidence to support it takes a tremendous amount of effort. I'm not willing to do that and am not sure why anyone is.

It is a fundamental truth that all things, both living and non-living, will take the path of least resistance. That is why water only flows down hill. That is why students take the least amount of classes needed for a degree. It is why electricity flows through metal but not through rubber. So learn a lesson from nature, and take the belief that requires the least amount of effort. It will probably be the right one!