| | More on the reasons why people accept ideas without evidence/reason: Just as Terry Goodkind says...
Say when you are faced with a situation that is really gloomy: 1. You recognize that you did some really despicable things in your past, and you don't feel like there is any way to reimburse the victim (given you realize you don't want to do it anymore makes retribution and incapacitation no longer necessary). Or maybe incapacitation is necessary because most of the time you know what is "right" and "wrong"... but sometimes you get urges and you just do what you feel instead of what you know is best for the fun/whatever of it that brings momentary pleasure.
Christianity is good at picking up on that self guilt... "You are damned forever, but God has made a way out, all you have to do is believe in the existence of God (in secret: haha, God as I define my new slave!), and you will be forgiven!" Some people look for that "easy out" for their self guilt for their past actions, when really they could just use some counseling on how like everybody makes mistakes sometimes, just restitute and your good.
So the guilt -> forgiveness method is duel: first make a person believe that there is no way to "make right with the world/victim" when you commit force initiation (or arbitrary faith based rules)... in fact Christianity completely separates good/bad from goal attainment. In Christianity, an action is good or bad depending on rules (which is nonsense).
Good and bad and justice only come into play between people who live in harmony of interest (their actions have synergy on each others' goal attainment). Between people who have conflicting goals or conflicting ideas on how to accomplish the goals and hence have destructive actions to the other's goal attainment, they are enemies, and so long as they are enemies, justice as in restitution from one of these people is nonsense, they already are fighting against each other attempting to see who can control the other in order to enforce retaliation and incapacitation. Restitution is only performed by friends and incapacitated enemies (slaves). In this sense, guilt is the identification that you have tarnished your character to the victim and other friends and that you should restitute in order to stay on the victim's "good side" (stay their friend), otherwise you are in the state of living at the expense of the other, which means you reduce the other's goal attainment, you are their enemy.
So as you can see, Christianity completely de-links good & bad from their true meanings (impact on goal attainment of each participant in a context). Instead it supplies rules on certain actions deemed as good or bad irrelevant of participant goal attainment. Hence in Christianity there's not really any measure of how "good" or "bad" a person is relative to any goal attainment. Its not even clear what the Christian God's goals are: "Just follow his rules because he knows what you should do, and you are too stupid to understand (his reasoning on how it attains his goals)." I guess they suggest that God's goal is to reward those who obey his command and punish those who don't, but other than that, the question of what is God's goal is left unknown (due to humans being stupid)? So since there is no measure of good or bad, of helpfulness or harm, of degree of increase or decrease on a person's goal attainment... there is no concept of restitution being a way to "make good" with your past victims. Or if a Christian does recognize this, its only because that's God's rule, but they say from God's point of view, the breaking of one of God's rules is in God's mind cannot be restituted, because God's goal is for you to obey.
Accept the Christian manipulator's idea of God, and they give you the ability to immediately feel forgiven/"made good" on your past initiations of force (or maybe just Christian God's rule breaking)... the only price is that from then on you have to obey the rules of their God. Some people find this price is worthwhile... and via argument of authority/popularity/historical belief/peer pressure they are swayed into believing the scam without evidence. That is the core of it.
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Then there is the case where a person finds that they are living in a violent world where theft and murder are rampant, and to believe that: 1. There is an "after life" where God will administer justice. This gives an "easy out" mental way for oppressed/enslaved people to feel like "justice" will eventually come, when in reality this is the only life we will have and if you don't bring justice against those who initiate force against you and your friends then you and your friends will be slaves, and its unlikely that any Superman will come to the rescue. 2. Its easier to think of your slave master as your protector rather than your enemy, because if you thought of them as your enemy than you would then realize the extent of their harmfulness against your goal attainment and the extent of your enslavement, your hate against them, you feeling that you should retaliate, and your realization that retaliation may very well bring you death due to the size and power of your master. So thinking of your slave master as your friend is an easy out escape from having to live a life where you are conscious of being a slave.
There's another way. But the manipulators and slave masters don't ever tell you: #3 Accept your current place in life for what it is, and still work to attain your goals to whatever extent you can. Maybe one day you our your children will develop the means to defend yourselves and hence put an end to your enslavement. Such might make life enjoyable rather than the depressing worthlessness feeling that results from #1 where your actions no longer matter or #2 where you live in a state where deep down somewhere you still know you are evading that you are a slave. But this one is very hard to do. You have to face that most everyone in the world is either a manipulator or has been manipulated. You have to realize that in reality, all of those people are your enemies, and right now since you have been on the manipulator's side, that you don't actually have any friends, for the friends that you really should have you've betrayed by your past alignment. That it actually is really hard to establish trust with others, its impossible to know which side another is on deep down inside them.
Somewhere deep down the manipulated Christians might sense the suppressed fright that they have been lied to and that their leaders and friends are actually their enemies, and they instead of facing that fear they continue to suppress it, hate that feeling of fear, and Atheists bring that fear back to them, so they associate feeling that fear with the Atheists, and hence end up concluding that they fear is either that they fear the Atheist or that they hate the Atheist due to the Atheist making them feel that way, or now that the Christian has stubbornly chosen sides, the Atheist is an enemy. The same relation goes for citizens of protection rackets.
So if you take #3... then life is very different than #1/#2. You have to think for yourself. If you chose to be honest with yourself like #3, then that means you might have to lie to your enemies in order to prevent potential harassment (out of sight out of mind) and remain safe. It can be hard, and risky, to take such a path in life. No wonder so few chose this path? If only there was some way to expose the manipulations, and for the manipulated to all at once break free. That would require that both they have the self confidence that they can think for themselves, and that it won't go badly for them when others find out they've rejected the manipulation.
Fortunately for the 911 manipulation, at least we don't have to live in too much fear. Potentially the elite manipulators are making a list of people to assassinate... I wouldn't think they'd kill all who know their ruse, just a few in order to maintain fear/power, but they need us who think for ourselves because we are so inventive and make new technology and produce tons of market goods.
Bitcoin, by the way, is an excellent new technology that enables producers to defend their market value. Its very difficult to steal bitcoins when you encrypt your private keys with passwords and only enter the passwords into non-interconnected devices. And as it stands the manipulative Feds and Christians etc don't have any argument as to why its bad. Eventually I suppose some will try to think of a way to say "for your protection" or "because God's rule is"... which will make it difficult to use bitcoin in large business, but Bitcoin will always exist and be traded in private between #3 friends. I don't think they can stop it from being used everywhere in the world, and where ever it is used people will flourish. (Edited by Dean Michael Gores on 11/08, 7:17am)
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