I don’t. And some­times I can’t stand peo­ple who’re proudly pro­claim­ing their faith in pub­lic. More often than not those peo­ple seem very, very for­eign to me. It’s not only that I’m an agnos­tic. No. To each his own. I won’t inter­fere in that free­dom of expres­sion. Nonethe­less, it’s intrigu­ing how many peo­ple don’t really believe. They say so, yes, but ulti­mately they don’t. They just need some­thing to blame for their own faults. Even more so, they want to believe in what they believe they’re believ­ing in but they can’t. Deep inside they know that it’s no use blam­ing oth­ers for their own faults. It’s a tragedy.

I under­stand, no, I know that there is much to be gained if one truly believes in some­thing, be it a deity, a con­cept or a human. True belief makes things real and that’s why it is so dan­ger­ous to us humans. From time to time, reli­gious fanat­ics show us what it means to believe. Some may think they’re a bad exam­ple, picked to show only the down­side of it. Well, there’s a say­ing: “The road to Hell is paved with good inten­tions.”. How many times have peo­ple hurt oth­ers when they only had good inten­tions in mind? After­wards, all you hear is a mut­tered sorry or some­thing like “How was I sup­posed to know?”.

True faith has its good sides too. It fills peo­ple with hope, it gives a mean­ing to their life. Faith sat­is­fies peo­ple in more than one area. It makes peo­ple happy and con­tent. I’m not even scratch­ing the sur­face here but I think you know what I mean. If you expe­ri­ence such an epiphany for your­self you know. And that’s exactly where the dan­ger lurks. Uncon­di­tional faith is a two edged sword because it doesn’t need con­fir­ma­tion. Some peo­ple don’t want to think for them­selves. They rather believe in the teach­ings of some preach­ers with­out ques­tion­ing, becom­ing sim­ple tools to be used by those respon­si­ble for this indoctrination.

The aver­age Joe is prone to become a vic­tim because he’s almost never con­tent with what he has. One has to assess sit­u­a­tions and actively think instead of only tak­ing them in. I couldn’t think of mak­ing a liv­ing by apply­ing the “wis­dom” of holy teach­ings to my daily life as so many oth­ers do. Thus, no faith is to blame but peo­ple are. Humans have choices. They choose how to per­ceive their envi­ron­ment, things they see and hear. I don’t think a post-religious world would be a bet­ter place to live in if peo­ple stay the same.