A Stimulating Article
Thanks Brian, very stimulating and expressed clearly. I enjoyed the real-life examples too.
I think that one of the hardest stages of life is when we switch from "follow the leader" or "follow the masses" to "critical reasoning". I guess that for most people, we don't admit to, or are not aware of, using the former tools - especially if the leader/s has used critical reasoning or seems to have. We accept certain things as truths without monitoring or understanding how we came to believe them.
Of course when you "upgrade" to critical reasoning, you often find that some of your beliefs are not well supported, which breaks your confidence in those leaders and can be quite disconcerting. It displaces you. You realise that, as you said, the leaders have followed the leader for so many generations that the critical thinking at the beginning, if any, is hard to find.
Where once is was inconceivable that our beliefs could be wrong, it now seems like you can ber certain of nothing. frightening. Then you are hit with the challenge of the effort required and the time which you mentioned are necessary to build solid beliefs. This seems to be the point where many x-religious people become disillusioned, hopeless, even clinically depressed. It's not an easy road.