Religious abstractions like the "devil" are ridiculous

It's crazy to believe in a world that doesn't exist. This is what many mentally ill people suffer from: a mistaken belief that what their dysfunctional minds tell them is true, really is. 

Today I heard on the radio that a pastor presiding over a service in the town where the Fort Hood shootings took place said "the devil is the author of what happened." 

Whatever made Ivan Lopez kill three soldiers before he killed himself almost certainly was not the devil.

(I added the "almost" to show my scientific credentials, since absolute certainty isn't a hallmark of the scientific method. However, the chance of the devil actually existing as an objectively real entity that causes people to do bad things is so low, as to approach zero.)

It's interesting that Lopez apparently put up a Facebook post before the shooting where he said the "devil" had taken him and he was full of hatred. 

Lopez was undergoing treatment for mental health problems. Plus, lots of people believe the devil is real. The above-mentioned pastor and Lopez share this delusion. Which obviously isn't the only religious abstracton that holds sway over true believers.

God. Heaven. Soul. Sin. Angels. Devil. Hell. Salvation.

These are all concepts conjured up by the human mind.

There is no demonstrable evidence that the concepts reflect anything that exists in objective reality. By contrast, "electrical charge" also is a concept. But it is based on careful observations of goings-on in the physical world. There is proof electrical charge is something more than an abstract notion.

I understand the appeal of living in an imaginary religious mental realm filled with comforting ideas that make the believer in them feel special and protected. I embraced such a realm for many years. 

Thankfully, though, I had a deconversion experience. I saw through the insubstantial mirages that I had mistaken for solid reality. I got tired of living in my head; I wanted my life to be marked by real living, not fantasies about an unreal religious theology. 

I doubt there is life after death.

But even if there is, I choose to focus on living life now. Let me be pleasantly (or fundamentalist Christians would say, unpleasantly) surprised by an extremely unlikely, yet possible, afterlife.

That would be real. Not an abstraction. So until God, Heaven, Soul, Sin, Angels, Devil, Hell, Salvation, or whatever other religious notion shows up as really real reality, I'll pass on fantasies.

Comments

[ThatThingThatYouDo]

He probably collected some bad karma in a previous life and now has to pay it off with a mental illness or something along those lines in this life. This karma theory is a pretty interesting way of administering cosmic justice. It's like that Justice Field in a Red Dwarf episode I saw a long time ago.

[Mike Williams]

I firmly believe the Devil exists
and demons exist.

The unconscious is a powder keg
of forces.

The Devil came to earth in the form
of Kirpal and Darshan.

Have no mercy on them, for they
had none for you.