But I keep thinking about the expression,

“If faith were easy, then everyone would have it.”

I’ve yet to understand why that would be a bad thing. It’s like saying, “If love were easy, then everyone would have it.” Would love stop being miraculous and wonderful and amazing and would people stop writing songs and crossing oceans and putting up with other people’s mothers if there were more of it? That seems ridiculous; just like how that expression seems ridiculous to me. It’s as if the value that faith has is not intrinsic but rather, in its scarcity.

And “why,” to quote Bill Maher (who I believe can be just as obnoxious as the believers he mocks, but here brings up an interesting question), “is faith a good thing anyway?” I’m not saying that it’s a bad thing, but I am saying that if someone owed me $20, I’d rather just have it than have the belief that they will eventually give it to me.

I also don’t like,

“The greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing the world he doesn’t exist.”

It sounds very deep and very Keyser Soze but–and maybe I’m wrong here–isn’t the whole creation story behind the devil that he suffered from extreme hubris? That he wanted to be more important than Jesus or wanted to be equal to God or something? I can’t remember. And my eyes are closing so I’m not going to look it up but it seems like an inconsistent pathology. More believable would be the devil convincing the world that God doesn’t exist.