Believing the bogeyman is under your bed as a child, is no different than believing god is watching over you as an adult. Those raised in a religious household, of any denomination, can probably relate to the following scenario;
- During the night you wake up suddenly and immediately think you hear a sound coming from under your bed. You believe, as much as a 5 year old can at that level of development ,that you not only heard something but that there is something under your bed. You take a minute, but eventually get the courage to jump out of bed and run to mom and dad's room. Shortly after you get there, your escorted back by a half asleep parent who turns on the lights to check the closet and under the bed to make sure there is nothing hiding. You're then told some generic reassurance of your safety, and let that comfort you back to sleep.
We can now look back at that time in our life and see how ridiculous it was to believe that there was actually a monster trying to cause physical harm to us if we took one wrong step too close to our beds at night. We do not realize this just because someone told us it wasn't real, or because dad flipped on the lights to prove it wasn't there. We are able to consciously realize that there is no such thing as bogeymen or anything similar in the imaginary monster family. We could talk about many different reasons how our consciousness is raised to this level of non-belief, but I think most of us are in agreement on their non-existence.
Yet somehow when your an adult the opposite is true when it comes to religion. At least as a child you only had to worry about the bogeyman at night. As an adult you have a to worry about the bogeyman in the sky every day of every year for eternity. Plus, this new bogeyman has super natural powers that can supposedly see you and effect you anywhere in the universe. If you make him mad then he will punish you here on earth, and if you don't repent he will punish you forever in hell. This story told by a child to an adult would be laughable to say the least, but this story told by an adult to a child is called Christianity. They will tell you other religions and myths are totally false, in not blasphemous, using the same logic as they did when they came to non-belief in monsters. Yet they somehow don't include their own religion in this scrutiny given to everything else they don't believe in.
When will they realize that believing god will smite you as an adult is no different than believing the bogeyman will attack you as a child. Just think about how awful it would be every night if you never questioned your belief in the bogeyman, just kept believing, out of fear. If you just kept thinking you were hearing something every night, believing just because your friends still believed in it. Religion is no different, until you actually look under the bed and into the closets of religion, you will never know how well you can sleep at night knowing that no imaginary friends exist, not even god.
Unquestioning faith is NOT a virtue.
(for a great post on 9/11. With an underlying theme of what religion can do to children, hence my above post/response)
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