Faith is a tool to summon courage. The concept of faith in overcoming obstacles is found in organized religion. But drawing courage from belief in faith distorts perception. It prevents you from seeing all the facts of reality. Is there a better option? Yes, come and see for yourself.
Veils symbolize mystery and purity. They also are a symbol of obedience and the concealment of beauty. In spirituality, a veil or hood symbolizes a separation from the physical world. It is a barrier that shields the wearer from harm.
What is the Veil of Faith?
Faith and belief are powerful tools that create a link between our emotions and thinking. Confidence and faith are two different things. Unfortunately, they can be easily confused.
Confidence and faith both elicit feelings of trust. However, confidence is based on evidence that is likely to occur. Sunrises and sunsets are a good example. We have a high level of confidence that the sun will rise and set each day. Our confidence in this is based on the history of sunrises and sunsets.
Faith is anticipating something will happen because we want it to. The gambler’s fallacy is an example of this type of faith. It occurs when you believe a certain random event will happen because you want it to.
Religions consider belief in faith to mean accepting things without proof. Taking a leap of faith is an idiom that infers doing something contrary to the evidence. Saying, “I walk by faith and not by sight,” is a common statement in the Faith Movement of Christianity. Faith healers and the prosperity gospel go hand-in-hand with this kind of cognitive distortion.
Drawing Courage from Belief in Faith
Courage is doing something that you find fearful. Fear is a reaction that is linked to our fight, flight or freeze instinct. We share a number of instinctual fear triggers. These triggers include fear of heights, the dark, snakes, and insects, especially spiders.
Our culture also programs other fears that trigger the same instinctual fear response. The fear of social interaction and fear of rejection are increasingly common due to the impact of social media. These social fears are “false fears,” but they still evoke the same fear response as physical threats.
You don’t have to hold religious beliefs to have false faith in someone or something. Drawing courage from belief in faith is similar to trusting someone implicitly. Religious believers have misplaced trust in the existence of a higher power. They believe their God will intervene on their behalf. What about the athlete who has faith in overcoming obstacles to achieve a goal? Here, their faith is actually confidence based on their practice of the skills involved.
Conjuring Courage Through Trust in Faith
Exactly what is the veil of faith? This veil is a cognitive distortion. A cognitive distortion is a programmed bias that taints our perception of reality.
All of our perceptions take place in the mind. The five senses are less than half of our sensory experience. The darkness that prevents us from seeing is faith and belief. These devices are what cloud our perception.
Wearing this veil becomes normal and comfortable. Our comfort zone becomes an “unhealthy zone” when it promotes unhealthy thinking and behaviors. Fears are what keep us under the veil.
Your vision is obscured when you live under a veil. So, it’s easy for those in control to trigger our fears. If we close our eyes and ignore the fear, the darkness does not disappear. We can see reality only when we take off the veil of faith and belief.
Which choice do you make? Do you rely on religious faith for harnessing faith for strength or evidence and logic? What is the veil of faith as it relates to your own life? Can your religious faith overcome the evidence of common sense and science? Or do you prefer the confidence of evidence, science, and logic?
Moving beyond these fears isn’t easy; it requires courage. The longer we live behind the veil concealing reality, the harder it becomes to take off. To navigate these fears, you need courage through trust in faith or confidence.
Significance of the Veil of Faith in Overcoming Obstacles
Harnessing faith for strength is willful ignorance. You are purposely ignoring facts and logic and deriving a conclusion based on a false assumption.
If you are ignorant, it doesn’t mean you lack the intelligence to understand. Ignorance is the absence of understanding or the rejection of knowledge or information. (1)
The significance of the veil of belief in faith should not be underestimated. It acts like a shield. The denial of facts has a cost. Believers use their faith as an excuse to deny credible science. Denial of modern medical treatments still costs many lives. Faith enables family members to blame the sick for not getting well. Those who died simply didn’t have enough faith in overcoming the obstacles of their illness.
Faith and ignorance go hand in hand. For example, many otherwise intelligent people with college educations have an imaginary friend. A lot of other baggage comes with accepting this type of worldview. It requires unbelief in all the evidence that contradicts their beliefs.
To combat this obvious flaw, the preachers of the Faith Movement often used con artist tactics to mimic evidence of healing. What is the veil of faith to believers? It is a steadfast belief in supernatural intervention we know as a miracle.
Peter Popoff was a famous faith healer who could diagnose a person just by looking at them. He would call out the name of a person sitting in a large audience and tell them what their problem was. It was discovered he used a hidden ear microphone. His wife would read the prayer requests of the person in the audience. Other preachers simply paid health people to come in wheelchairs so they could heal them on stage.
“All religions are ancient monuments to superstition, ignorance, and ferocity.” — Baron d’Holbach
Harnessing Faith for Strength Instead of Common Sense
Common sense is the use of sound judgment. Ignorance is often not a matter of common sense but of the acceptance of bias and prejudice. Ignorance is the basis for religious hatred. You are taught that a source that challenges your beliefs is evil. You must fight to maintain the boundaries; otherwise, the system crumbles.
“Faith is a term that makes ignorance sound like a virtue” — Anthony Provenzano
Myth and superstition are the sources of delusions that enable faith and belief to supersede rational thinking. It acts like blinders that shut out common sense. We don’t see things that are contradictory or illogical.
Harnessing faith for strength requires self-hypnosis. Self-hypnosis is a hypnotic state that disconnects the user from reality. It is why religious and political leaders use rallies and gatherings to create a highly emotional atmosphere. Self-hypnosis is easier when you are surrounded by others who are accepting the propaganda. Faith in overcoming obstacles is a mind game.
These kinds of blinders on so many people risk the stability of society. It always has been and always will be one of the primary sources behind the world’s conflicts. The Middle East is an example of a culture clash causing suffering and loss of life. (2)
“Religious faith is the one species of human ignorance that will not admit of even the possibility of correction.” — Sam Harris
The three most popular organized regions of the Abrahamic tree are Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. They do not have large memberships because they inspire people to seek the facts. It’s just the opposite. They have become large cultural forces because they are experts at using fear. They know the fears we don’t face are the trap that keeps people paying customers. Belief, faith, and ignorance create life-long customers.
“Religions are illogical primitive ignorance. There is nothing as ridiculous and tragic as a religious government.” — Leon Trotsky
Techniques for Changing Beliefs
If you want to grow, you have to be able to change your beliefs when you find evidence that what you believe is wrong. Clinging to limiting, inaccurate, and unhealthy beliefs is damaging to you and everyone in your circle. So, if your faith prevents you from changing what you believe, you are stuck. Thankfully, there are some great tools to help people see the errors in their thinking.
Comparative Analysis
The most direct way to remove the veil of ignorance is with a tool we call Comparative Analysis. It is a step-by-step approach to comparative religious study. Here you take a concept, typology, symbol, or belief and research to find where else it appears.
By creating a list of your core beliefs, you have a worksheet to investigate your sacred ground. It helps you understand why you believe what you believe, which gives you the power to change them if they are harmful or don’t align with new data.
Most people who adhere to Western theology are surprised that their beliefs are not unique. Here are some examples of research topics that will reveal connections to other systems:
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- The Afterlife—Heaven and Hell
- Salvation formulas
- Resurrection
- Avatars or Incarnations of God
- Angels, Demons, Devils, or Evil Spirits
This approach may be too scary for the hardline or moderate believer. Those nominal or fringe members are more likely to participate and benefit from this study. Our experience with moderate, hardline, and extremist believers is not as optimistic. These sessions can be very emotional. Some people get aggressive if you begin discussing these concepts that relate to their worldviews. There are no options or techniques for changing beliefs that are acceptable to religious extremists.
Logic and Rational Thinking
The study of logic works best for moderate believers. Less direct approaches, like the study of logic and rational thinking, are non-threatening. It helps them see how specific arguments are used to program thinking. It also reveals the tactics that were used to make them religious converts. They can finally see how their religious leaders used groupthink manipulation. They can see how drawing courage from belief in faith is a tactic to keep them as customers.
Two other companion tools are also helpful in showing how people are programmed with harmful ideologies. 10 Common Logical Fallacies and Spiritual Axioms help them see the dichotomy between truth and fiction. The suite of critical thinking skills is one of the best techniques for changing beliefs.
Enneagram of Personality Profile
Another tool we recommend is the Enneagram Personality Profile. This process helps them see unhealthy thought patterns based on personality and instinct. These preferences do not relate to their religious beliefs. But it does show how their beliefs affect these default settings. When harmful beliefs are accepted, it becomes easy to degenerate into unhealthy thinking.
If you’ve taken off the veil, you can help others do the same. We use a process we call the unconventional approach to saving a believer. It does take a considerable amount of time and effort to help people confront their belief in mythology.
Unconventional Approach to Save a Believer
Most “believers” are taught to shun the tools mentioned above. So, spending time to align and “pretend along” with them for a while helps them trust you. Once considered safe, you can share tools to help them reprogram their thinking.
“If you attach your mind to any ideology, you’re going to be on a road, and that road may or may not lead you in a good direction. But you’re gonna stay on that road because you are attached to an ideology. It could be a terrible road, but you stick with it regardless of rational thinking.” — Joe Rogan
Some people will stick with their beliefs in the face of facts and evidence. They have spent their entire lives drawing courage from belief in faith. They refuse the opportunity to participate in comparative analysis or complete questionnaires. They are steadfast in their rejection logic to investigate their faith-based worldview. Moving beyond what they believe is an impossible proposition.
There is a way to help people stuck in religious ideology. The unconventional approach to saving a believer takes considerable time and effort. You’ll need to become someone they will accept and listen to without immediately rejecting your words.
Achieving this kind of alignment requires you to pretend along with them. You do this to be accepted as safe. You pretend along to gain trust. Think of yourself as an undercover agent working to save someone.
Once accepted, you can begin raising questions about the basis of the ideology. You can ask how they deal with the problem of evil or why their all-powerful God allows an evil adversary to exist. You can ask why a loving God would create Hell. If the same entity offering you salvation also threatens you with eternal punishment, that is extortion.
If you are accepted, they will listen and think about these questions. If you aren’t accepted, they won’t listen to these questions.
How long does it take to get to the point where you are considered safe? That all depends on the level of their indoctrination. Sometimes, it takes three months, sometimes three years. It is a considerable investment but worth the result, as many ex-believers become the strongest advocates for truth. It is one of the proven techniques for changing beliefs. It can work on even hardline believers.
In Conclusion
We can see how our previous life experiences are obscured and blurred when we awaken. Then, we can see the error in using faith in overcoming obstacles as an ineffective coping mechanism.
The tactic of drawing courage from belief in faith only cements people into the mythology. The world needs free thinkers who can help solve climate change, the pandemic, and conflicts between nations and religions.
If you have questions or comments, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
References
(1) How faith is foolish. Scientific America.
(2) Religious Ignorance as a Threat to Society. The Atlantic.com.