In regards to faith

What is faith?: Faith, for religion's sake, is the fuel with which religion is able to continue. A way to counter doubt without providing a straight immediate answer. Faith is the IOU for the promise of a continuation of this thing called life; have faith and you’ll be rewarded with eternal life in a beautiful garden full of treats. It’s the promise that what we call life, our conscious self, continues on, either in paradise or a hellscape.

Our consciousness; the self identity, the voice inside your head, the process of observation and experience, is a very funny thing that we are yet to truly understand, or even explain. And it is for that reason that we cannot see ourselves without it or come to terms with the fact that one day it just goes out forever. Death is not something that is easy to accept. We show it when our loved ones die, as it takes some time for some of us to accept that that person is truly gone. Some are better than others, and some carry the burden for many long years. The fact that a person that walked with you, laughed with you and affected so much of you is now no more is a hard situation to accept. It is even harder to come to terms with the fact that your thoughts will one day stop as well. It is hard to imagine that the voice inside your head will one day shut up for good.

This dilemma is how religion takes hold. Religion provides an answer to not only the question of what comes next, but also provides a fix to the I don’t want my light to go out dilemma that most of us suffer through. Religion basically tells us that your light does not go out, but continues on forever (whether you go up or down) after you die.

But for that magic continuation you must pay a price. That price is the belief that there is a higher power that created all and you owe devotion to this power. But you never truly experience this power. But you hear about others that have. And you cannot request proof. You simply have to have faith that it is as you are told that it is.

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