Because this article is about probability and reasonable evidence I will use a casino metaphor. We’ll call it the ‘Casino Argument’. All over the world hundreds of thousands of people play slot machines at casinos. I don’t personally play because the probabilities of winning are so remote that I’d have a better chance of coming across that money by working hard, which is also more enjoyable to me than sitting on a stool and pressing a button for hours on end. Nevertheless, people keep doing it. They ‘believe’ they have a chance of winning because they have evidence that others have won – i.e. it is possible. There may be a one in a million chance of winning – insanely improbable odds – but those odds are backed by the fact that real people actually do win. We can get their addresses and verify their winnings with a bank statement or casino records. We have tangible evidence that million-dollar-winners actually exist in the world.

Now let’s say there was absolutely no evidence that anybody ever won at a particular casino. For years there was never an officially announced winner and the casino had no records of such a thing ever happening. No winner was ever published in a newspaper or announced on the TV. No-one had ever SEEN a winner. Would people keep going to that casino with one-in-a-million odds against them and no knowledge of their ever having been a winner? Probably not. A rational person, even a rational gambler, would find a casino where there was some evidence to back his faith in the machine.

But what if rumors started to circulate that a guy called ‘Moses’ (a popular South African name) had won a million dollars, but that he chose to keep it a secret and forbade the newspapers from publishing the story, and the casino conveniently ‘lost’ the records. On top of that Moses had no surname and no-one knew where he lived or how to find him. Would the ‘Moses Myth’ add weight to their belief in a win? For some it would, but for most it would make more sense to go to a casino where real people, rather than myths, won real money from time to time.

Now back to religion. The average human is not entirely stupid in my view – if I thought they were I wouldn’t bother writing these articles. On the contrary I see people making logical decisions every day. When people make decisions about moving home or personal finances or career plans etc. they use logic and reason. They weigh up the facts and go for the option that makes more logical sense. At times two options have the same weight and then they either go with feeling or preference or seek advice from someone who might tip the scales one way or another.

Why is religion exempt from this rational approach? Why do we believe ‘Moses Myths’ when there is an overwhelming amount of evidence to the contrary? Why do we hold onto something with insane odds when the odds presented by science and reason are almost undeniable? I think the reasons are similar to that of another great illogicality – love. They say love is blind and it usually is. Millions of people fall out of love every day and yet when they fall in love again they forget all the lessons learned from the previous round of insanity. Why? Because it feels good! Because we don’t want to be alone. Because we want to be acceptable and accepted. Because we need someone else to give us a reason.

Just because the benefits of feeling in love doesn’t make a ‘happily ever after’ true – so the benefits of religion (feeling good; communal acceptance; people to do things with during the week; feeling right or justified; something to stand for; etc.) don’t make the myth true. While religious people harp on about the ‘good’ that religions do for the world, they refuse to recognize how pervasively sinister the whole thing is, and more importantly, how they personally contribute to the insanity of war, death, bondage, manipulation and mind control from the warmth and safety of their prayer meetings, worship sessions and church family fêtes.

Many religious people will get personally offended by this article because, in their minds, religion, or certainly their own religion, is above reproach, question or analysis – it is simply true and requires no reasonable evidence! I do have hope however that some rational religious people, if that is in fact possible, will respond with probabilities and evidence to back up their belief and follow the rules of rational discussion they would use for any other topic.

There are several root causes for the dreaded disease of sense-less-ness:

• People don’t listen. Many people have the insanely annoying habit of listening only for gaps in the conversation so that they can continue to spew forth their out-of-context agenda at any cost. These people have no idea what anyone is talking about because they’re not engaged for the purpose of discovery or learning anything, but rather to give… and give… generously from their never-depleting resource of knowledge and oracle-like opinions. There are others in this category who simply don’t have time to both listen AND speak, so they err on the side of speaking. And then there are others still who can’t listen to you if they don’t like you – so the more offended they get, the less they hear anything you may have to say. You will never make sense until you learn to listen.
• People don’t understand or care about the rules of rational argument. This is my personal favorite! I can still handle someone who may not understand that they have broken three rules of logic in one sentence because they simply don’t have a clue what logic is or how to use it, but when someone who understands logic, insists on being illogical, for manipulative and bullying effect, I tend to lose my sense of humor. The following are NOT reasonable or logical arguments:
  • “Because I say so!”
  • “It must be true because I read it in a book”
  • “I’m fond of carrots. Some cakes have carrots in them – so I love cakes”
  • “Zulus are taxi drivers”

  It’s one thing for someone to get their argument muddled up in the heat of verbal dialogue – not everyone thinks quick on their feet – but there’s no excuse for sending an illogical email or letter which you’ve had time to think through and double check with a colleague for instance. Logic takes practice, and I have a strong conviction that all children should be taught logic and rational debating skills at school in their language classes, especially because so many kids drop mathematics as a subject in grade 10.

• People are dominated by their right or left brain. Not all systematic and logical people (left brained) make sense – mainly because they often lack in the emotional and people skills department. Often discussions only make sense in the context of both feeling (right brain) and fact (left brain). For instance, an emotional wife says something like “My whole world is crashing around me!!” Her left brained husband says “Don’t talk rubbish!” Of course, from a purely logical point of view he is correct in his assessment that his wife may be overstating the case, but he’s not connecting with the emotional truth that she feels as though she’s about to be crushed by a heavy weight. Her statement makes more ‘sense’ than his in the context of what is being discussed. Equally, an entirely right brained person might take every conversation down a rabbit hole of fantasy and feeling and ignore all rules of logic. To be truly good at problem solving you need to develop both sides of your brain and also learn to be in tune with irony and sarcasm, as most people don’t usually ‘literally’ say what they mean.
• People don’t know the difference between healthy debate and emotional warfare. All points of view that can be argued or defended are merely that – points of view. There are multitudes of people who simply cannot discuss some topics without getting ‘personally offended’, as though the topic defined them, and any disagreement is perceived as an attack on their character. Here are examples of points of view that have such people lashing back with personal attacks and irrationality:
  • “I don’t think God exists”
  • “Marriage is irrelevant today”
  • “Pornography can be healthy”
  • “Women should have the right to have an abortion”
  • “There’s nothing wrong with being gay – people have the right to have sex with anyone they like”
  • “George bush was correct to invade Iraq”
  • “The bible is not God’s word. It was written by men”

  These are the sorts of topics that cause people to switch off, stop listening and shut down – and they shouldn’t be! It’s 2010 – time to grow up and stop living in the dark ages of cultural and religious censorship.

So what can one do when they discover the early symptoms of sense-less-ness in their lives? Pray… Only kidding! Read – grow your paradigms and vocabulary which are tools for rational discussion. Learn about the language of logic (Philosophy 101). Listen! Listen to hear and understand – not to respond – then your responses will make sense. Grow your general knowledge and sense of the world. Practice – engage in debates on hot topics with people you trust and feel safe with, this will help you practice the techniques of reasonable and rational debate. And finally – don’t take everything personally – have fun talking to people, even when they disagree with you… no wait – ESPECIALLY when they disagree with you!