Religion

I recently watched a video discussion between Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Christopher Hitchens. It was a very engaging discussion (view it here), but there was one thing they seemed to agree upon that did not resonate with me. They were talking about who is to blame for people’s faith, especially the less educated masses, and the consensus seemed to be that the pastor was to blame for taking advantage of people’s trust in him. People place their trust in the pastor / bishop / etc. because he / they are the experts in the field. You are responsible for the life you lead and everything that happens to you as a result.

Personal responsibility is a freedom and we should avoid the temptation to give that freedom away to others. You can not blame the pastor for your beliefs on the grounds that he is the so called expert in the field. Admittedly, we can not personally do the research for absolutely everything we claim as knowledge. There are some facts that we have to accept as truth from experts, especially if these facts do not have a large impact directly on the life of you or yours. That said, if something is very important to you (and one would assume that religion falls into that category) then you should be doing as much research as you are able yourself to find out what is and is not right.

As an analogy, if you have a child and that child is diagnosed with a rare condition, you are not going to rely solely on the word of your medical team and leave it at that. Rather, you are going to research the condition yourself so that you will understand it as well as possible for the reason of exploring every avenue available to make the life of your child as good and fulfilling as possible. Why would the same not be true of religion?