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Putting Religion Over Reason Demands a Very High Price

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Reason is a beautiful and priceless tool that enables us to objectively examine beliefs to determine what is true and what is false.

People who believe in any and all of the "revealed" religions mistakenly believe they are believing in God's word. Our reason informs us that in reality, they are believing what ancient clergymen wrote. Clergymen who claimed God told them certain things that they then put in the "holy" scriptures/books. This is a classic case of hearsay. Followers of the "revealed" religions are not at all putting their trust in God; they are putting it in the largely anonymous ancient clergymen whose writings are found in the various "holy" books.

Often Deists (Deists believe in The Supreme Intelligence/God based on reason and nature) are told by religious people that we should not put our trust in human reason. Thomas Paine did a great job of addressing this claim by the religious. In The Age of Reason, Paine wrote:

... he (religious people) despises the choicest gift of God to man, the GIFT OF REASON; and having endeavored to force upon himself the belief of a system against which reason revolts, he ungratefully calls it human reason, as if man could give reason to himself.

There are many painful examples of why it is foolish and harmful to value man-made religions over our God-given reason.

A trial that recently ended is yet another example of the vital importance of always valuing our innate God-given reason over all of the man-made "revealed" religions.

The trial was of Lori Vallow Daybell. She was on trial for murdering her children, Joshua "JJ" Vallow and Tylee Ryan, and conspiracy of murder for the death of Tammy Daybell, her husband Chad Daybell's former wife. May 12, 2023, she was found guilty of all counts by a jury.

Lori Vallow Daybell was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon). She was such a devout Mormon, before she married Charles Vallow, he had to convert from his life-long Catholicism to Mormonism. As a Mormon, Lori had to turn her back on her God-given reason (as everyone who belongs to a "revealed" religion has to do) in order to believe the nonsense in both the Christian Bible and in Mormonism and the Book of Mormon. When we stop using our reason in one instance, it sets a precedent to be unreasonable in other instances. And once we stop using our reason, there is no limit to the harm we can cause. As the Deist Voltaire pointed out:

Truly, whoever is able to make you absurd is able to make you unjust. If the God-given understanding of your mind does not resist a demand to believe what is impossible, then you will not resist a demand to do wrong to that God-given sense of justice in your heart. As soon as one faculty of your soul has been dominated, other faculties will follow as well. And from this derives all those crimes of religion which have overrun the world.

Some of the beliefs Lori Vallow Daybell and her husband Chad Daybell have sound insane. They seem to be a melding of Christianity, Mormonism and New Age nonsense. Ideas such as Chad having received spiritual insight and powers after a near-death experience. This allegedly made Chad a visionary and capable of traveling from this realm to other realms. It also, allegedly, empowered him to determine if someone was light/good or dark/evil. This superstitious foolishness eventually led to Chad and Lori believing Lori's children, Joshua "JJ" Vallow, 7, and Tylee Ashlyn Ryan, 17, were possessed by evil spirits and were taken over by these imaginary evil spirits to the point of them being turned into zombies. They believed all people who have been taken over by evil spirits needed to be killed before the end times/end of the world and return of Jesus could take place. This is the reason they had Lori's brother, Alex Cox, murder Lori's two innocent and helpless children.

Religious/superstitious beliefs in evil spirits possessing people are part and parcel of all religions, including Buddhism. The anonymous authors of the Christian Gospels claim Jesus exorcised demons and evils spirits multiple times. Modern-day belief in these irrational beliefs cause very real harm and even death to adults and to children.

The quality of Deism being solidly based on our innate God-given reason empowers people who become Deists to break free of the fear-based superstitions of the various "revealed" religions. People who realize that God gave us reason and not religion would never fall prey to the unreasonable teachings of the "revealed" religions. If Lori Vallow Daybell had been a person of reason instead of a person of faith, her children would still be alive today.

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Bob Johnson is a paralegal and a freelance writer in Florida. He was raised Roman Catholic, but after reading Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason, he became a Deist. In 1993 he founded the World Union of Deists and in 1996 he launched the first web (more...)
 
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