Promised Something Better
To me, one of the saddest and scariest realizations I have had since de-converting is the way religion promises something better after death. It is the single most comforting thing to a religious person, this idea that there's more than what we have here on earth. This notion that there is an eternal reward for the suffering here on earth is what gets many people through. The issue I have with it is that it sets people up. People put up with shit they shouldn't. They settle. They endure abuse and put up with an awful existence because they believe there is something better waiting for them on the other side of this life. There is power in taking control of your life. In seeing this life as a fleeting gift that we get to experience for a little while. When you view this life as the one chance you get and look at it through the lens of things being finite, it changes your perspective on a lot of things. Instead of trudging through life, trying to live by a weird set of archaic...