If you're going to be unreligious, it's likely going to be due to reflecting on it and finding some things that are hard to believe.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that skepticism towards religion often arises from deep reflection and rational questioning.
Daniel Kahneman highlights that a shift away from religious belief typically stems from a critical examination of religious tenets, leading individuals to grapple with elements of faith that may seem implausible. This introspection can be a significant step in understanding personal beliefs and aligning them with oneβs rationality and experiences.
In practice
During a debate on belief systems, I referenced Kahneman's quote to emphasize the importance of critical thinking.
We think, each of us, that we're much more rational than we are. And we think that we make our decisions because we have good reasons to make them. Even when it's the other way around. We believe in the reasons, because we've already made the decision.
The average investor's return is significantly lower than market indices due primarily to market timing.
Banks are run by executives, and executives protect themselves, and that does not always mean that banks are going to behave rationally.
Laziness is built deep into our nature.
Through some combination of culture and biology, our minds are intuitively receptive to religion.
You are more likely to learn something by finding surprises in your own behavior than by hearing surprising facts about people in general.
Most people's lives are run by desire and fear. Desire is the need to add something to yourself in order to be yourself more fully. All fear is the fear of losing something and thereby becoming diminished and being less. These two movements obscure the fact that Being cannot be given or taken away. Being in its fullness is already within you, Now.
In any culture, subculture, or family in which belief is valued above thought, and self-surrender is valued above self-expression, and conformity is valued above integrity, those who preserve their self-esteem are likely to be heroic exceptions.
In the tumult of men and events, solitude was my temptation; now it is my friend. What other satisfaction can be sought once you have confronted History?
There's a notion I'd like to see buried: the ordinary person. Ridiculous. There is no ordinary person.
When I read profiles of myself, I sometimes think: 'I have spent my whole life struggling to understand my motivations and impulses, and I've never quite sorted them out.'
I've always wanted to sail to the South Seas, but I can't afford it. What these men can't afford is not to go. They are enmeshed in the cancerous discipline of security. And in the worship of security we fling our lives beneath the wheels of routine β and before we know it our lives are gone.
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