Why Is It Enough to Believe?

People with strong religious beliefs may have nothing more substantial – or rational – on which to base them

One of today’s big issues of has to do with people who “identify with” the gender they weren’t born, i.e. men who identify with being women and women who identify with being men. That simply means that they feel and believe themselves to be of the opposite gender, despite the physical and genetic evidence to the contrary. They consider themselves to be transgender.

Scientifically, however, changing one’s plumbing, appearance, etc., doesn’t change one’s chromosomes or gender.

There are those who’ve correctly pointed out that, following such logic, someone who identifies with, who believes themselves to be of, another race, color, age, species, size, etc., should be equally entitled to be regarded and treated as such, with any and all accompanying and accruing rights, benefits, privileges, etc., despite any objective evidence to the contrary.

It’s an obviously very slippery slope.

Born Sinners?

I’m sure many of the people who see the obvious problems with such beliefs may not be quite so clear-headed when it comes to their own religious beliefs. In fact, people with strong religious beliefs may have nothing more substantial – or rational – on which to base them.

While some children at an early age start to feel attractions to the same sex, and/or feel and behave more like the opposite sex, how many young children spontaneously feel that they are “born sinners” and express relief that somebody supposedly died long before they were born to relieve them of these imaginary sins?

I haven’t heard of, or met, any.

Pounding Mush

People who have strong religious beliefs were usually indoctrinated into them at an early age. This is no accident. Deliberately pounding basically irrational, unscientific mush, myths, legends and horror stories into young, vulnerable minds is the basis of almost all religions. Such indoctrination, coupled to the authority of willingly complicit parents, assures the best chance of overriding any possible tendencies towards critical thinking and questioning before it can develop.

And of course with zero actual, testable evidence to support the objective reality of any religious beliefs, they are certainly no more valid than those feelings and beliefs that arise from within someone pertaining to their gender and that may possibly also have a genetic and/or psychological component. To the contrary, the religious beliefs have to be learned and accepted.

The Fear of Death

Since most religious beliefs have some underlying fear-inducing premise, based largely on people’s fear of death and what happens to them, if anything, after it, whatever particular religion one may gravitate towards as – an adult – is then a matter of choice.

That means that the actual authority is the person who chooses one religion or belief system over another, which also means that all of them are equally wrong, as they’ve all been rejected by someone in favor of the one the person has settled on. This also means that the real authority isn’t the religion, its god or whatever, it’s the person who themselves picks the “one true god and one true religion” over all the other claims of “one true god and one true religion”.

It’s ironic that people exercise some free will and self-responsibility in choosing their belief system…to which they will then turn over all self-responsibility. And, as frequently mentioned before, all religions rest on the illogical, inadmissible premise that, “What’s in this book is true…because this book says it’s true.”

So, while it may indeed be a practical, though difficult, necessity to require people who consider themselves transgender to not try to impose their feelings on society in situations that can pose a risk to other people, women and children included, such as with public restrooms, will the day ever come when “true believers” of the religious variety cease to push their particular, often peculiar beliefs on others – starting with their own children and let them decide and choose for themselves when they are capable of thinking and reasoning?

Why Is It Enough to Believe? originally appeared on They Fly Blog on June 12, 2016.