"It seems the more detailed and rich the analysis,
the more impossible a true comparison becomes."

-- Thomas Kasulis, Intimacy or Integrity

"You cannot get it
by doing something about it
;
you cannot get it
by doing nothing about it.
...
Wherever you look for it,
it runs away
;
and if you try to deceive the devil
by pretending to yourself that
you are not looking for it,
you certainly
won't deceive
the Tao."

-- Alan Watts, Talking Zen

"Those who claim
to lead the masses
must resolutely refuse
to be led
by
them,
if we want to avoid
mob law
and desire ordered progress
for the country.
I believe
that mere protestation
of one's opinion
is
not only not enough,
but
in matters of vital importance,
leaders
must
act
contrary to the mass of opinion
if it does not commend itself
to their reason."

-- Gandhi, Young Indian 2.23.22

There is no benefit
to avoiding mistakes.
On the contrary,
there is
an art
to making them,
as the only real form
of honest
learning.
The discipline of it
is in
listening closely to one's heart
and reason,
one's
bodymind,
to avoid making
the wrong mistakes.

"What is the value of completeness
if the possibilities generated
during the classification process
have absolutely nothing to do
with the subject area?"

-- Klaus Glashoff, "Problems of
Transcribing Avinabhava
into Predicate Logic"

Indeed,
there is the case in which disbelief is only support for the construction of the object or substance, the ontology, disbelieved --

atheism is the validation of something divine to disbelieve.

The game of God is still played by those who deny God;

the Universal Conspiracy is potentialized (and thus given possibility and room for actuality) --

for this is the very nature of construction,

constructivism,

of nominalist becoming.

It's therefore also the very nature of disbelief, of denial.
In this scheme, of course we only continue to affirm the domain of choices

even by the choice not to choose.

But the problem with games is that we are capable, and often do, forget the rules. I have no contention with God if I have no memory of what God is,

or at least what God's about.
What you have proposed counter to this, my friend,

is the issue,

the superordinate problematic,

of power:

"But what if I kill you
[if you don't play the game]
?"

We are playing life-or-death --

literally, another game with overlaying rules to the above.
Religions,
at least those parts that contend with power --

the dominant and the oppressed,
death and fear of it --

hold the card for challenging this game,

for they are their strongest in spiritual quality

(the origin of purpose for religions)

under the weakest conditions,
at the very brink of their supposed

losing.

(Thus, it is true that you really do sometimes win when you lose.)

Of course the idea is that power belongs to the winner, and that is how the domain of what we call the spiritual

transforms the game of power:

it wins by its loss,

by its surrender to death,

by its crucifixion,

by its Forgetting of death

and thereby of the rules

of the game of power.

As such, the superordination of power over the games of choice and belief and the like, is only so by its affiliation and not by some
intrinsic significance.

But isn't belief the very source
(or at least the vehicle)
to even Religion?

Let's say this:

you must be engaged in
something,
even if in nothing

(which validates there
being something)

We call this belief, passion, whatever you like.
But let's not forget the difference between religion and Religion,

the spirit and the institution.
One only exists by the game of power;

the other can't be contained.