Still Living in Caves

Human beings are generally bad at recognizing the direction of the arrow of causality. We get confused by correlation, thinking that if we wear the robes or sing the hymns or say the prayers, we will become holy. But as many people have experienced by suffering at the hands of people in robes or by losing investments in turtleneck-wearing entrepreneurs, the form of a thing does not equate to the substance of a thing.

Remember Plato's cave: the shadow on the wall is not the underlying reality, just a flat observable effect of the causal reality outside the cave.

Appearances deceive.