Why get inoculations against deadly diseases? Why wear a condom when having sex, wear a seatbelt when driving, wash one’s hands before eating, or even strive to eat a healthy diet or exercise? What’s the worst that will happen - you’ll die and go to Heaven? Why is life valuable, why is it something to be preserved, in a belief system that views the flesh at best as a momentary distraction before the real thing and at worst a positive source of sin and temptation that may earn us eternal damnation if we succumb to it - and the longer we live in this coat of skin, the more likely we are to succumb, right? Again, under theism we are all lab rats running a maze, and the sooner we get out of the maze, the sooner we’ll be rewarded. There’s no reason to lengthen our stay there and every reason to get it over with as soon as possible.

Faith is truly the greatest invention ever! Nothing controls people like faith, nothing moves people like faith, and so on, and so forth.

And, of course, we couldn’t forget the 3 F’s that make up the boundaries (the extreme ones, at least) of faith: fundamentalism, fear and fanatism.