I saw a good bumper sticker this morning that said it pretty well. It went something like, "In order to grow and learn, one must open their mind…but not so far their brains fall out."
I can attest that this does happen on occasion. Some people I know quite well—you could say they are like family—began a search for "enlightenment" (can't even bring myself to call it truth) several years ago, and I believe their brains did actually seep out along the way. They began following a cult leader and very soon had no reasoning ability on their own. So anyhow, just remember it's always good to question everything, to study from different sources and teachers, and to keep your mind open with caution. When you join a cult, you lose all of those abilities. When you get steeped in "religion," (a.k.a. rules, rituals, and doctrines) you also lose many of the freedoms required to truly find and experience God.
So here's the new thought today: If there were no God, and everything was left to chance, how do you explain good coming from evil? Everyone can see how trials or difficult times have been ultimately used for good at some point, and how would you explain this if there wasn't a positive force driving our universe? Nothing good should ever come from bad, except where we exert our own force to make it happen. Along this line of thinking, all scientists agree on the laws governing our universe (thermodynamics) and one of those is the law of entropy—all things are going to disorder. It is obvious that many of the good things coming out of bad have nothing to do with our effort. They happen completely without our hand driving them.
One of the best examples of good-coming-out-of-bad I can think of is new life coming out of nine months of pregnancy along with labor pain so intense that you wish someone would shoot you through the head to put you out of your misery. I can also think of several testimonies of women who were brutally raped, or others who made big mistakes, and yet cherished the beautiful little child that resulted with all their heart…my Mom is one of them.
Along with this thought is the fact that most humans have a conscience. If we are nothing more than animals (that is basically how it is if you don't believe in God and you believe we evolved by chance), and the world is perpetuated by "survival of the fittest," why would we ever have a conscience about things like harming others to get ahead? Why not just kill everyone we don't like and live off their stuff? Yes, there are a few people who live like this, but if there is no God and He didn't make us with a conscience, EVERYONE should/would be like this.