Eighth, when you say, "Such a man is unwilling or unable to accept reality on its own terms and live his life accordingly, preferring instead to rely on religion as an anesthetic to make sense out of an otherwise very uncertain world. It is a crutch. It is a narcotic," do you mean to assign this as a criticism to all believers, or only those who have a very weak faith and in fact to rely on religion as an anesthetic? If the former, I can think of quite a few believers throughout history who faced a much harder reality than you or I could even imagine. Take Bonhoeffer, for example. And, at a theoretical level, I would add that accepting Christianity doesn't remove the uncertainty from the world. The need to trust God presupposes that uncertainty, so it very clearly can't eradicate it.
If you rely on faith as an acceptable means of understanding our world then you are anesthetizing yourself from reality. Far from those with weak faith most egregiously committing this error, I would argue that as one's faith increases so too does his or her misunderstanding of reality. Facing hardship probably induces some people to gravitate towards faith because it helps makes sense out of an otherwise chaotic world and justifies their experience. Bonhoeffer's trials were likely made somewhat easier in his own mind by believing that his suffering was unavoidable and that his life was being used for a greater good. This still has no bearing on whether or not any of that is true. I never claimed that accepting Christianity removes uncertainty from the world, only that those who ascribe to its doctrines use them to attempt to anyway. After all, didn't you know that everything happens for a reason?
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