When believing false things is comforting

[Anomalocaris]

My experience is that it is very much NOT true, of either atheists or religious people. 

Commitment to an ideological position nearly always takes precedence.

That depends on the degree of kinship they feel to those purposes which are better served by discovery of facts than by contingent expediency.    

Basically, their fundamental honesty.

Theism is an outgrowth of the privileging of contingent expediency over discovery of facts, and depends on wide spread lack of fundamental honesty to survive.

However, atheism can certainly also serve contingent expediency and be embraced by the fundamentally dishonest.

But to draw equivalence between what can be used by the dishonest with what is dishonesty itself is, how shall we put it, as unscrupulously dishonest as religion itself.

[Belacqua]

Please detail the ideology of atheism.

Atheists, like theists, may subscribe to a wide variety of ideologies. 

Any human being who says "I think the world should be this instead of that way" has an ideology, including atheists.

---

Theism is an outgrowth of the privileging of contingent expediency over discovery of facts, and depends on wide spread lack of fundamental honesty to survive.

This is your own belief, based on such an oversimplification as to be false. You believe this false thing -- perhaps because it is comforting to you.

[GrandizerII]

Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr are examples here.  

It may be relevant here that in English there are two kinds of belief. 

One is: intellectual assent to a proposition. "I believe that the world is round." 

Another is: commitment to a principle. "I believe in equal rights for women." 

We don't have equal rights for women. Currently they don't exist. But I believe in them. For many Christians, belief in Christ acts in this way, I think.

For Christians, belief in Christ acts both ways. They still believe it is true that Christ exists.

[Anomalocaris]

It may be relevant here that in English there are two kinds of belief. 

One is: intellectual assent to a proposition. "I believe that the world is round." 

Another is: commitment to a principle. "I believe in equal rights for women." 

We don't have equal rights for women. Currently they don't exist. But I believe in them. For many Christians, belief in Christ acts in this way, I think.

For Christians, belief in Christ acts both ways. They still believe it is true that Christ exists.

Claiming pious belief in the noble principle that such an evil thing as gravity can't exist does not excuse those who pushes other off of tall buildings.

[Belacqua]

They still believe it is true that Christ exists.

There's a hymn my niece put up on her Facebook page, called "Christ has no body now but yours." Many modern Christians think that Christ "exists" when we do Christlike things, and in no other way. William Blake says something similar.

---

Claiming pious belief in the noble principle that such an evil thing as gravity can't exist does not excuse those who pushes other off of tall buildings.

Ooh, deep. Completely irrelevant, but deep.

[Succubus]

They still believe it is true that Christ exists.

There's a hymn my niece put up on her Facebook page, called "Christ has no body now but yours." Many modern Christians think that Christ "exists" when we do Christlike things, and in no other way. William Blake says something similar.

---

Claiming pious belief in the noble principle that such an evil thing as gravity can't exist does not excuse those who pushes other off of tall buildings.

Ooh, deep. Completely irrelevant, but deep.

William Blake?

[Anomalocaris]

They still believe it is true that Christ exists.

There's a hymn my niece put up on her Facebook page, called "Christ has no body now but yours." Many modern Christians think that Christ "exists" when we do Christlike things, and in no other way. William Blake says something similar.

---

Claiming pious belief in the noble principle that such an evil thing as gravity can't exist does not excuse those who pushes other off of tall buildings.

Ooh, deep. Completely irrelevant, but deep.

And how would you recognize what is really deep?    

After all it would bear no resemblance whatsoever to the imaginary profundity you conceive to convey with your name dropping references to this philosopher or that.

[Belacqua]

There's a hymn my niece put up on her Facebook page, called "Christ has no body now but yours." Many modern Christians think that Christ "exists" when we do Christlike things, and in no other way. William Blake says something similar.

---

Ooh, deep. Completely irrelevant, but deep.

William Blake?

Blake was a Christian. He was deeply knowledgable about the traditional theology which doesn't hold that God is a mean sky-daddy who lives on a cloud. Studying his work gives us access to other religious thinkers, like Buber, Weil, etc., who disagree with the dumb sola scriptura literalists.

[GrandizerII]

William Blake?

Blake was a Christian. He was deeply knowledgable about the traditional theology which doesn't hold that God is a mean sky-daddy who lives on a cloud. Studying his work gives us access to other religious thinkers, like Buber, Weil, etc., who disagree with the dumb sola scriptura literalists.

From the little I have read of him just now, in terms of belief, he's closer to the typical atheist than he is to the typical Christian. He identifies as a Christian but it's a very nonconventional type of Christian. Reminds me of "Christian atheists" actually.

[Belacqua]

From the little I have read of him just now, in terms of belief, he's closer to the typical atheist than he is to the typical Christian. He identifies as a Christian but it's a very nonconventional type of Christian. Reminds me of "Christian atheists" actually.

He spent a lot of time criticizing mainstream Christians of his time, often in the same terms that we use on this forum. Of course he thought they had completely forgotten Christ's real message. 

How "nonconventional" he was is an interesting topic. There was a long-lasting stream of British antinomianism in which he fits very nicely. Ranters, Diggers, Muggletonians. These people were always a bit underground, both because they didn't want trouble from authorities and because by definition antinomians eschew any kind of formal organization. 

Maybe it's best to say he was the last great exemplar of an ancient but non-mainstream Christianity that runs through Eriugena, some aspects of Cusanus, and certainly into the work of Lutheran mystic Jacob Boehme. 

In other words, every time some Christian-hater on this forum says "Christians believe X," it's almost certain that great Christians like Blake didn't believe X.

If he were posting on this forum, the regular posters would savage him, because of his views about the limitations of science, among other things.