Need a teaser to read the Scott Adams book?<\/p>\n
\nI didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t see how he could deny the obvious. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Of course they do. Billions of people believe in God.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\nThe old man leaned toward me, resting a blanketed elbow on the arm of his rocker.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Four billion people say they believe in God, but few genuinely believe. If people believed in God, they would live every minute of their lives in support of that belief. Rich people would give their wealth to the needy. Everyone would be frantic to determine which religion was the true one. No one could be comfortable in the thought that they might have picked the wrong religion and blundered into eternal damnation, or bad reincarnation, or some other unthinkable consequence. People would dedicate their lives to converting others to their religions.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153A belief in God would demand one hundred percent obsessive devotion, influencing every waking moment of this brief life on earth. But your four billion so-called believers do not live their lives in that fashion, except for a few.
\nThe majority believe in the usefulness of their beliefs\u00e2\u20ac\u201dan earthly and practical utility\u00e2\u20ac\u201dbut they do not believe in the underlying reality.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\nI couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t believe what I was hearing. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153If you asked them, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d say they believe.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153They say that they believe because pretending to believe is necessary to get the benefits of religion. They tell other people that they believe and they do believer-like things, like praying and reading holy books. But they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t do the things that a true believer would do, the things a true believer would have to do.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153If you believe a truck is coming toward you, you will jump out of the way. That is belief in the reality of the truck. If you tell people you fear the truck but do nothing to get out of the way, that is not belief in the truck. Likewise, it is
\nnot belief to say God exists and then continue sinning and hoarding your wealth while innocent people die of starvation. When belief does not control your most important decisions, it is not belief in the underlying reality, it is belief in the usefulness of believing.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\nTalk amongst yourself – and the be sure to leave your comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Need a teaser to read the Scott Adams book? I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t see how he could deny the obvious. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Of course they do. Billions of people believe in God.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The old man leaned toward me, resting a blanketed elbow on the arm of his rocker. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Four billion people say they believe in God, but few genuinely … Continue reading Want a teaser?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pEnSo-8v","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/84"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}