Christian, God, Jesus, and church have become another group of trigger words.  Keep in mind that some words, like the ‘7 dirty words’ do not become trigger words via propaganda, but instead as a true cultural phenomenon.  Either way let the storm of emotions I just lit off subside.  I think faith is as simple as knowing something you can’t prove and any religion that thinks it’s above criticism is actually a cult.  In other words, no I will not be trying to brainwash you into thinking something crazier than you already think.  That, as they say, is entirely up to you.

The bible is interesting because it offers some very strange psychological perspectives.  First of course it predates anything resembling formal psychology, so it can be interesting when things match up.  Sometimes it has has had influence on societies perspective so naturally, logical leaps seem shorter when they line up with past ideas.  But the thing to remember about religion and faith, especially the larger older ones, is it’s not like they haven’t had any competition.  Religions (not cults) have ALL (yes all) offered at least some insight into how the world works.  They provide emotional maps to how we can and maybe even should work.  The same structures that psychologists spend so much time constructing and examining.  Those same structures that are responsible for civilization itself.

I would like to summarily trash a popular idea floating around.  That religious faith of any sort indicates an irrational or even a completely crazy person.  This is categorically, emphatically, unequivocally true.  All empaths have some disconnect between step by step logic and their ideas, but it’s not a bad thing.  They are simply using their second mind.  The only people I know who make decisions strictly by linear thinking are psychopaths.   This is one of the core concepts of mandatory emotional recall. Allegory, metaphor, parables, and music, to name a few, are a way to communicate with the metamind.  Faith can be as simple as trusting your metamind’s conclusions.

Faith and in a more specific context a hunch, are the core of our advantage in the world.  Things you know, but can’t proven are derived from the imagination, which is in turn derived the metamind.  If you have been careful (and lucky) your metamind reflects the emotional information you have accumulated over a lifetime.  The danger and the outcry of religion gone bad comes from cults reprogramming the metamind with alien emotions.  A cult is a dangerous control structure and sabotages the emapths understanding of the world for it’s own selfish goals.

It’s easy to back away from foreign emotional maps, and direct metamind communication, trembling in fear, but keep something in mind.  The metamind is fluid.  You are adding to your experiences with every thought and memory.  Keeping someone as a proto-psychopath(brainwashed) requires constant attention.  We make lousy prisoners.  So long as you (and others) can speak your mind, enact change, and if necessary walk away, a religion or even more so a faith posses little threat to your well being or the well being of your society.  Religion creates powerful, tight knit, local societies.  Most religions abhore dishonesty and other selfish behaviors.  Consider not just what you could lose from a cult, but what you have lost without religion.  It’s not just about an invisible man in the sky, it’s about you.