That's not exactly the truth as I see I, but merely a shorter exaggeration for the sake of a title.  What I think, based on a lifetime's worth of observation, that belief has a detrimental affect on one's ability to think and make decisions.  Belief requires one to ignore any counter-arguements in a specific area and, instead of laughter as a reaction to silly actions or proposals, substitute abject obedience to a set of 'beliefs.'

Belief, like any disease, thrives on an environment with little natural resistance.  The smaller amount of cognitive ability one  starts with the greater the effect of belief and the larger the possibility that belief will grow to take over, form its own complex structure and become a 'philosophy' or a way of life.

I was formerly a scientist and so the ferreting out of cause and effect relationships is mother's milk to me. In this case, we can't run a double-blind test but we can look at the correlations around us.

Religion is a fine place to start. Look at the amazing number of observably silly things that religious people believe - without naming any - and look at the effort that people must exert to avoid a realistic look at any situation. "A nice God."  "Look around you. Does the world seem nice?" "Oh,he has his reasons and we can't know them."

In an interview, an NGO worker who was saved after 5 days under rubble in Haiti, said that she believed that an angel was watching over her.  She and two others were taken out alive and two others died in this same building collapse - and she ignored the death next to her and the immense amount of agony and torture around her to claim that her belief was what brought her through.

Is it too frightening for any individual to accept that life is a collossal series of random accidents and coincidence and that any living being exists by luck - and not by any divine intervention? Well, it must be!

Look at the numbers of people who, as lone survivors in a sea of calamity, profess their belief in a god and how he, never she, is on their side. I guess they also believe that god must watch sports and take sides.

Politics is another fertile field for observation but the amount of hypocrisy there really confuses observations. It is difficult to separate true belief from skillfully practiced abject self interest.

But that wasn't what incited me to write this.  I read a lot of the Mid-East discussions and I am truly amazed at the decided lack of thought and excess of  'belief' exhibited there. Rarely are there discussions; rather one side will state a belief and the 'other' side will begin spouting off their beliefs, using a recent and available fact as justification, but ignoring any more of the facts of history.

The one thing that a scientist can get from looking around him or herself is that we, the world, would be a lot better if belief wasn't part of our cognitive set.

  As always, I will end with a picture.  This young man in Philadelphia took taking his picture rather seriously.