Taking categorizing each flavor of religion and belief system out of the equation for a second as that seems to be causing some hangups in conveying my point.
What I believe is that you can’t hold a belief in something imaginary and unfounded for any length of time, unless you engage in cognitive behaviors that enable such a belief to persist. The enabling cognitive behaviors are the repression of: critical thinking, free thinking, questioning/challenging/and refining of ideas, the scientific method, many forms of logical analysis, etc. because those would challenge and uproot any belief that is unfounded. It is fairly simple and not that far fetched to understand this idea.
Now where I upset some folks was pointing out that many major organized religions encourage these exact cognitive behaviors of thought repression, because they are holding onto beliefs which are unfounded or which are logically contradicted or for which there is no evidence, so those exact sorts of repressions are required and mandatory to hold onto such beliefs. They are required to believe that an imaginary being is real for example. These sorts of cognitive behaviors at the extreme is the root of fundamentalism (what triggered me to mention it), and at its least extreme is still responsible for a host of issues, climate change denial is a great example of a less extreme consequence.
The cognitive biases are only required for the duration of preserving any unfounded belief, the belief ending is a good sign that some internal questioning and challenging of ideas has occurred.
I am for systems that encourage questioning, challenging of ideas, free thinking, systematic exploration of understandings and observations, rational thinking, logical thinking, etc.
My issue is with beliefs that require the suppression of any of these. Not all beliefs or religions do, but many modern organized religions do, one indicator that a belief or religion probably does is if there is a fundamental faction.
Hopefully that helps clarifies what my thoughts are regardless if one agrees with them or not. cheers.
