Certainty? Not...

As I see it, one of the drivers behind the exponential growth of fundamentalism at home and elsewhere, and it's attendant belligerence, intolerance, and frantic insistence that their way is the ONLY way to the Big Imaginary Friend, is a near neurotic demand for the impossible. People who cling to this or that belief, and will tolerate no questioning of it, are demanding certainty.

They know they cannot avoid death, so this fact produces a demand to know, beyond any doubt, that after death, things will be wonderful, safe and blissful. That certainty is promised by religion if one follows all the laws to the best that they can, begs forgiveness for failures, and gives lip service to all the right formulas, prayers, and duties. On top of that there is the threat of eternal torture if you don't do the above things.

OK...prove it.

Prove to me that what you believe is true, and not wishful thinking prodded on by fear. If I question this, the burden of proof is on the claimant. Holy books and the like will not do. They prove nothing, except their existence, and that a lot of people accept them as holy. That proves nothing beyond that. Having 'faith' is no proof of anything beyond a person's assertion that they choose to believe a set of statements as facts. If having faith is such a powerful criteria for the truth of something, a short walk through a psychiatric hospital will prove that having faith in an idea or perception, really counts for nothing as far as proof of the truth of that belief.

I guess that is all I am asking, some proof that one's dearly held beliefs are, in fact, empirically true.

Until such time, I guess I will just go with what I and every other human being on the planet see and experience every day of their lives. Everything changes, people die, people are born, the great cycles of the seasons move along in their quiet progression. The sun rises and sets, night following day, and that there are NO guarantees, and NO certainty, aside from the inconvenient fact that there is no certainty. The more we close our eyes and stop up our ears to that truth, the more we suffer. If we accept it, then perhaps we will take better care of the things we have, like our health and our planet, and each other.

And that, is a simple truth.

Tim