Comments on: Belief is an instrument to do things

By: Mike in Boston

Mike in Boston — Tue, 06 Mar 2018 12:09:48 +0000

It’s almost as if belief in the divine serves as an inoculation against irrational belief, and if you don’t have it, all sorts of other things creep in to supplant or add to it. Or, as the apocryphal Chesterton quote has it, When a man stops believing in God he doesn’t then believe in nothing, he believes anything..

By: Kirk

Kirk — Mon, 05 Mar 2018 23:15:19 +0000

Terry Pratchett explains an aspect of this best in Hogfather:

Susan: Now… tell me…

Death: What would have happened if you hadn’t saved him?

Susan: Yes.

Death: The sun would not have risen.

Susan: Then what would have happened?

Death: A mere ball of flaming gas would have illuminated the world.

Susan: All right, I’m not stupid. You’re saying that humans need fantasies to make life bearable.

Death: No. Humans need fantasy to be human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.

Susan: With tooth fairies? Hogfathers?

Death: Yes. As practice, you have to start out learning to believe the little lies.

Susan: So we can believe the big ones?

Death: Yes. Justice, mercy, duty. That sort of thing.

Susan: They’re not the same at all!

Death: You think so? Then take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder and sieve it through the finest sieve and THEN show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. And yet… you try to act as if there is some ideal order in the world. As if there is some… some rightness in the universe by which it may be judged.

Susan: But people have got to believe that, or what’s the point?

Death: You need to believe in things that aren’t true. How else can they become?

[they both watch the sun rise]

Irrational belief is apparently a key and essential thing for the human mind. Don’t have some sort of irrational thing to belief in? Your mind will find one for you.

I’ve often observed this syndrome in the most bizarre places–One devoutly annoying atheist I know professes belief in healing crystals while simultaneously denying the existence of God or any other form of supernatural element.

Every single person I’ve known has something they can’t be rational about, whether it’s God, global warming, or the good intent of the Democratic Party. The ones who have God in their lives appear to be able to be rational about many other things in their lives, while those that believe in anthropogenic global warming can’t be argued or evidenced out of anything they’ve taken as gospel truth.

It’s almost as if belief in the divine serves as an inoculation against irrational belief, and if you don’t have it, all sorts of other things creep in to supplant or add to it.

By: Faze

Faze — Mon, 05 Mar 2018 04:35:54 +0000

"In real life, belief is an instrument to do things, not the end product." Precisely. This is what 98% of our anti-religious science writers don't get. They think religious people believe religious doctrines the way they, the scientists, believe physics. But most religious fundamentalists don't believe the literal truth of, say, Genesis, they believe that it is crucial for them to profess belief in Genesis — and some will do so to the point of martyrdom. It's not actual belief that holds groups together; it's the profession of belief.

By: Gaikokumaniakku

Gaikokumaniakku — Sat, 03 Mar 2018 00:05:33 +0000

That vision of religion may work for the Abrahamic religions but it completely fails for Buddhism.

Buddhism claims to be literally, scientifically true about the nature of suffering and how to end suffering. Buddhism is not supposed to be about motivating behavior in any allegorical or mythical way. Buddhism is just a literal instruction manual to get people to literally act to end their actual suffering.