You Can Do What You Decide To

Imagine A World In Which Generations Of Human Beings Come To Believe That Certain Films Were Made By God Or That Specific Software Was Coded By Him. Imagine A Future In Which Millions Of Our Descendants Murder Each Other Over Rival Interpretations Of Star Wars Or Windows 98. Could Anything -- Anything -- Be More Ridiculous? And Yet, This Would Be No More Ridiculous Than The World We Are Living In.

Everything We Do Is For The Purpose Of Altering Consciousness. We Form Friendships So That We Can Feel Certain Emotions, Like Love, And Avoid Others, Like Loneliness. We Eat Specific Foods To Enjoy Their Fleeting Presence On Our Tongues. We Read For The Pleasure Of Thinking Another Person's Thoughts.

Despite A Full Century Of Scientific Insights Attesting To The Antiquity Of The Earth, More Than Half Of Our Neighbors Believe That The Entire Cosmos Was Created Six Thousand Years Ago. This Is, Incidentally, About A Thousand Years After The Sumerians Invented Glue.

A Kernel Of Truth Lurks At The Heart Of Religion, Because Spiritual Experience, Ethical Behavior, And Strong Communities Are Essential For Human Happiness. And Yet Our Religious Traditions Are Intellectually Defunct And Politically Ruinous. While Spiritual Experience Is Clearly A Natural Propensity Of The Human Mind, We Need Not Believe Anything On Insufficient Evidence To Actualize It.

I Know Of No Society In Human History That Ever Suffered Because Its People Became Too Desirous Of Evidence In Support Of Their Core Beliefs.