The Dude wrote:Why have a belief system where you need to do this? Isn't that a red flag when come right out and admit you had to brainwash your children to ensure they wouldn't quit believing the fairy tales you've placed on their little minds? Holy heck, I think there is clearly a problem here. Reality shouldn't be this much work!
Exactly. But the believers' narratives are designed partially around solving this particular problem. Reality shouldn't be this much work, true, but what if there's a reason that it's so much work? A reason like...... Satan ? (cue the church lady)
There's a reason why invisible evil bogeymen have been invented by religionists. There's a reason for the paranoia and the siege mentality. By convincing people that there's actually an invisible undercurrent of evil constantly working to undermine belief in "The Truth", they rationalize why it takes so much work to keep believing.
This is why it makes sense to them that people have to keep "working" to maintain a testimony, and why it also makes sense to them that someone can know with 100% certainty some cosmic truth, and then lose that belief. It's obvious why they lost the belief - they didn't do all the work necessary to maintain the belief, and thus came under the deception of this invisible, evil bogeyman and his evil spirit henchmen.