How Did We Get In This Economic Mess?

There has been a lot written over the past year about who is to blame for the economic distress we are experiencing. I would like to propose that GOD, whoever or whatever that is to most people, is to blame.

A peculiar aspect of our civilization is that we begin to indoctrinate our children in the belief of the god fairytale almost from birth . This indoctrination is primarily performed by someone on whom they are completely dependent, the parents. In all other cases, from Alice in Wonderland to The Wizard of Oz, we teach our children that they are just stories. Yet we teach them that the God Story is real, not imaginary, not a fable with a message.

There are two main effects of this. First, we teach our children that their senses and ability to reason are defective. Even though the concept of a supernatural god makes no sense, they are asked to suspend our disbelief and have "faith". Second, we teach them to place an inordinate amount of trust in the leadership of whatever religious organization we belong to.

There is a third, but more subtle issue as well. This is that, because of our early training, we are predisposed to ignore the facts when they do not correlate with what we want to believe. For example, if our religion says that the earth is less than 5000 years old, we look to our religious leaders to provide an explanation that twists the scientific facts around in totally irrational ways to show that the young earth claim is valid. And millions of people believe it! On the other hand, many religions simply change their dogma to be consistent with the science and millions of followers nod their heads and pray. Don't they realize that yesterday they were claiming that god told them the earth was created 5000 years ago? Did god change his mind? Did he make a mistake? Did the people interpreting "god's word" make a mistake? How many more mistakes are they preaching?

My point is that our training to ignore facts that aren't consistent with what we want to hear flows into other areas of our lives besides religion. We see a house that we really want. The facts are that it's over priced and it costs far more than we can afford. We are offered a variable rate mortgage with an initial payment that we can afford. What do we do? We ignore the "facts", just as we have been trained to do since birth, and we buy the house. Unfortunately, when the payment is adjusted 5 years down the road we can't afford it anymore.

Oh, so the banks are the bad guys for offering this low introductory rate. Remember, most of the bankers, from the clerks to the executives, have been indoctrinated the same way from birth. When the Rev. Rick Warren tells them that god wants them to be successful so they can give mega-bucks to the church, they take it to heart. So, the banker understands the fact that he is overextending credit, yet he sees himself becoming more "successful" and he is blinded to using reason and he reacts based on his early childhood indoctrination.

Until we begin the education of our children with a respect for understanding and reason rather than wishful thinking, we will continue to struggle with making decisions in a rational manner. I think most humans are intelligent enough to be able to think through fundamental day-to-day moral issues within the framework of the human species and the environment that surrounds us without the need for fabricated sacred stories that are interpreted by a special few.

Perhaps if we teach our children to think for themselves, they will become more responsible consumers and distributors of information and resources.

If you are one of the many who have doubts about your religion and are seeking a change, you might want to check out a Reasonable Alternative.