Great post and interesting article
Its hard to gauge sometimes what role Belief plays in human lives, it can be argued that in some ways its like a glue that holds things together, provides comfort or purpose, But equally it smashes things apart in dogma and tightly held onto practices that hurt and destroy others. Almost all major conflicts and people hurting people have some kind of belief system underpinning the actions. These beliefs are usually close-minded and not up for critical evaluation and those who promote the belief are the ones who resist skepticism.
I personally have no problems in people believing what they want, but if you bring those beliefs into the public arena then, I do have a problem, especially if the belief asks me to accept it without question OR even worse asks me to follow it without descent skeptical evaluation. (Sometimes follow things as a law as well)
The one place that I think is worth challenging, in regards to belief is our very own recovery communities. There are so many people saying so many things, and its mostly built upon unchallenged belief. Many claims are dogmatic absolutes and even when We pretend that we accepting of others ways to recover, many times (I was this way for many years) we secretly think we personally have the right way. .
I often wonder how much good science and research is blocked by these beliefs, we may never really know, addiction could very easily be a product of the recovery movement as much as a product of the behavior/drug of choice.
I guess this is why I promote first and foremost a skeptical and questioning attitude to what we hear in recovery, when claims are made we deserve evidence and descent science backing them up. Its not believing or believing in gods, or pseudo science that is the issue in my opinion, its credulity thats the issue. Sometimes we so desperately want to break free and are so lost we accept many things unchallenged, and as human history tells us this desperation, high emotion is fertile ground for credulousness.
Thanks