William asks:
> Why is Cheerskep still angry over his early disillusionment with
> religion.
>
I'm sorry you believe this about me, William. My sole remark about religion
was this:
With the departure of the religious faith of my youth went many reassuring
verities.
That remark does not seem to me sufficient evidence of anger. Nor do I
recall any such feeling at the time (or after). When I came to realize there
is
no Santa Claus I didn't get angry either. A more likely emotion might be one
of sadness, but I also didn't feel that with either disillusion.
I admit I can imagine someone else getting angry, either about promises
broken ("I was told I'd go to heaven if I were good!") or burdens that "faith"
brought with it ("I felt uncomfortable guilt about masturbating and other
sexual stuff because I was told they were impure!"), but for whatever reason
once a belief in a deity or Santa Claus was behind me, I simply never had
such thoughts. "Ah! Well of course Santa Claus doesn't exist! Well that
was
a child's thought anyway." "Ah. So there's no heaven. Well, if you think
about that was a silly thought anyway."
As for Pascal's wager the way he expressed it, I thought that was pretty
silly too because it implied that belief is subject to an act of will, and
I've never found that so for me. An early murmur of disbelief came when I read
that God is an eternal being who is perfect and thus never changes, and yet
he is credited with all sorts of acts affecting humans, that struck my young
mind as impossible, and by no straining effort of mind could I make myself
think otherwise. I accept there may be others who can, by an "act of faith",
block out such doubts, but that ability is denied me. Once I came to see
the various alleged attributes of angels as silly, that was that for any
further belief in them. The belief or rejection of belief was definitely not a
voluntary act.
