I have asked this question to a lot of people. Why do we see tonnes of intellectuals (scientists, philosophers, doctors) who are all perfectly sane fall for ideas like birth without sex, paradise, angels, demons etc..... What are you all's view on this? Thank you

Religious belief is the first step towards insanity.

Kyu

You are insane

(July 20, 2009 at 5:11 pm)Faith Tester Wrote: I have asked this question to a lot of people. Why do we see tonnes of intellectuals (scientists, philosophers, doctors) who are all perfectly sane fall for ideas like birth without sex, paradise, angels, demons etc..... What are you all's view on this? Thank you

I don't believe they fall for it all at. I believe very few people do.

Very few people believe in God.

Now billions of people may say they believe in God, but very few people actually do. If people genuinely believe they would live every minute of every day in support of that belief. The rich would give away their wealth to the needy. Everyone would be just frantic trying to determine which religion was the true one. No one could be comfortable in the thought they just might have picked the wrong religion and blundered into eternal damnation, or bad reincarnation or separation from their God or some other crazy consequence. People would dedicate their entire lives converting others to their particular brand of religion.

A belief in God would require 100% obsessive devotion, influencing every single waking moment of their lives of this brief life on earth. But none of these billions of people who profess belief in God live their lives in this fashion, save for a very few. The majority believe in the usefulness of their beliefs, an earthly and practical utility, but they have no belief in any underlying reality.

They say they believe because pretending to believe is nessasary to gain the benefits of religion. They tell other people they believe and do believer-like things, like read their holy books and pray, but they don’t do the things a true believer would do, the things a believer would have to do.

If you believed a truck was barreling down on you, you would jump out of the way. That is belief in the reality of the truck. If you tell people a truck is coming toward you and you fear the truck yet do nothing to get out of the way, that is not belief in the truck. Likewise, it is not belief to say God exists then continue to hoard wealth while innocent folks die of starvation. When belief does not control your every decision every day of your brief life, it is not belief in any underlying reality, it is belief for the sake of the usefulness of believing.

Folks only act as if they believe because there is an earthly benefit for doing so. They create a delusion for themselves because it makes them happy. Atheists also prefer delusions. One day I’ll explain a bit more on that thought, this one is on God belief.

Jews and Muslims believe Christ is not the son of God. If they are right, then Christians are mistaken about the core of their religion. If the Jews have the right religion, then the Hindus and Buddhists and Muslims and Christians are wrong. If the Christians have the right religion, then the Jews and Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists are wrong. If the Muslims have the right religion, then the Hindus and Christians and Jews and Buddhists are wrong. Not minor details there. At some level of consciousness, everyone knows that the odds of choosing the right one true religion (if such a thing actually exists) are nil.

The best thing any human can do is pick a delusion that helps them get through the day. This is why the people of all the different religions can generally live in peace. Because, at some level, all you theist types suspect that other people really don’t believe in any underlying reality of their religion any more than you believe in yours.

The only group of people I can say with certainty actually do believe in an underlying reality of thier religion are these crazy Muslim fundimentalists. They will mass-murder and commit suicide and crash airplanes full of people into high rise buildings all in the name of their God and their religion. They are some serious theists.

28 views and not one reply/comment.

29 even.

Would you rather have me fluff post to make you feel better?

(July 20, 2009 at 5:11 pm)Faith Tester Wrote: I have asked this question to a lot of people. Why do we see tonnes of intellectuals (scientists, philosophers, doctors) who are all perfectly sane fall for ideas like birth without sex, paradise, angels, demons etc..... What are you all's view on this? Thank you

There are a few posts here and there on the forum which discuss this apparent compartmentalisation of the mind when it comes to religion. Some scientists who do believe in a god can do great work in the scientific community. They can be terrific skeptics in other fields, but just can't get themselves to either critically assess their point of view on a god as they would on any other topic, or they turn their god into a deistic god.

I have never been in that situation so I can't really tell how or why, but they probably fail to see how we can think that a god is unnessassery.

lol.

I thought the OP would garner more responses. I thought it a good question, "Why do some highly educated and otherwise rational intellegent people participate in/buy into/fall for religion?"

It was a question I pondered for sometime. Just thought it would be a question of interest to most here.

At the least I thought EV would fluff post me and make me feel better.

Can I get a fluffer here? I got this windsock thing going on!