Stop Believing What You’re Told
Everyone’s always so happy to just accept what they’re told, be that statistics about car crashes, stock market advice or that no, your wife isn’t sleeping with your best friend behind your back.
Statistics about Car Crashes
Statistics are funny things. They can often be misquoted, misrepresented or just made up on the spot, but we take them and let them be supporting evidence for all manner of corporate propaganda. Why? Well, simply because statistics make verifiable claims about events. If someone says “three out of ten drivers who crash are underage,” then another person can go out into the world, take a random sample of car crashes and see if that claim is reasonable. We don’t expect people to lie about statistics because they can be found out if they do so.
Stock Market Advice
You have an educated stockbroker who has been trading shares and bonds for most of his adult life. He is qualified from experience to make educated guesses about the future of a particular share price. You can see evidence of his ability in previous or concurrent clients’ successes.
Cheating Wife
You might believe your cheating wife if she and your best, most trusted friend collaborated on their stories. But that wouldn’t change the fact that they were having illegitimate sex without you knowing. The point is that you are close to both of them, and you trust them. You trust them, even though they’re lying to you, because you don’t believe that they would lie. And they might not see that they are doing anything wrong… perhaps they think it’s better for you if you don’t know the truth.
Your Preacher
Priests, vicars, pastors, reverends; whatever you want to call them, chances are they aren’t your best friend or your wife… If you’ve just joined a church, they can be someone you’ve never met. Everyone who attends a church will have had to have joined it, so at some point in their lives they’ve taken the word of someone who they don’t know very well and have no reason to trust.
They are no more qualified to believe in a God than anyone else - they won’t have gone to a special angel seminar where they teach you intimate things about how heaven works, or what God’s favourite kind of soup is (it’s oxtail). They get what they preach from each other, but mostly from the textbook they give to those they preach to. They’re like that supply stand-in teacher who used to give you the questions from the book as classwork and just mark them against the answers in the back. Preachers are frauds.
They are on the payroll of the church because they are qualified to run a church, not to believe. So instead of taking a preacher’s word for it when he says “Jesus died for you,” take his word for it when he says “the best time to get a donation in the collection plate is just after they sing.”
Finally, of course, they don’t make verifiable claims about the world. They don’t quote supporting statistics that can be easily measured. When they get desperate, they might say “oh, one in six people is Christian,” which will lead on to “you should be too,” and we all know that such a statement is a fallacy. They don’t say “if you pray, miracles will happen,” because they know that it’s utter bullshit, and prayer won’t affect a single thing. All of their doctrine and material comes from hearsay and creative embellishment that has been stirred through with a generous helping of fiction and thrown inside a black leather cover with “HOLY BIBLE” stamped on its face. There’s no evidence for their claims of a deity, so why trust them?
on May 22nd, 2008 at 1:50 pm
It is sad but very very true that everyone will happily use the “statistics show that…” to make their statement seem much more plausible.
I have never understood what has made priests, vicars, pastors etc. so special that they deserve a position in the church. The only thing I can think of is that they are a trusted member of the community and so as a result seem like the logical choice, but that is surely only a small pre-requisite.
Stock Market Brokers are a good example of someone no to trust. But simple Financial Management and actual research into the subject has shown that Stock Market Brokers will see you continually getting less than you should for the risk you take on. Especially after they deduct their fees.
Back to the subject at hand though, there truly is no reason to trust your local religious leader, just the fact that the religion you follow says that they are. It is yet more illogic.
on May 23rd, 2008 at 12:34 am
But you won’t lose money. You’ll make money, as per your aim in investing, and their greed and self-interest regarding their own fee is surely another reason that it’s better for them to be good at what they do.