(December 27, 2010 at 5:06 am)Kromoh Wrote: I don't see anything religion provides that can't be found somewhere else - a psychologist, a work group, a charity group, sports, a job, art. Seriously, if you think humans need faith, they can find it rooting for baseball teams. If you think they need belonging, they can find it in work groups, fraternities, etc. If you think they need someone to talk to/rely on... well, there are like 6 billion other people on the world, huh? Plus you can always count on an imaginary friend.
If you're saying people need religion, then you might as well say people need corrupted leaders, political propaganda, intolerance.... you know what I mean.
One might make the analogous argument and say that there is nothing which crime provides that can't be found somewhere else. Sloganeered succinctly, crime does not really pay. But one immediately sees why the slogan must frequently be seen to be untrue from the perspective of the would be criminal. The reason is crime often affords a realistic chance of providing gratification to the perpetrator while shifting the cost either to someone else not benefitting and/or passing the cost down the line in such a way as to worsen the overall good. That is something which anything that actually better than crime can not, more or less by definition, match. So to the unscrupulous or the very confused, honest work is unimpressive, and crime definitely can pay.
The exact same reasoning applies to religion. There is something which religion can offer which rationalism, by definition, can not. That is the opportunity to enjoy both the emotional and material delights of satisfying or self-serving falsehoods while passing the cost of indulging in such delusions onto someone else, or kicking the cost down the line. So to the morally corrupt, or the very confused, intellectual rigor is unsatisfying, and religion definitely can pay, at the expense of someone else.
Every xtian attempt to hamper stem cell research is an act of theft from those who would have benefited from the research. Every xtian attempt to trumpets biblical cosmology over diligent scientific pursuit of knowledge is an act of theft from the collective power of humanity. But just as theft does often pay those who commit it, so too religion pays those who would spread ignorance to further it. Crime will never die because it pays, neither will religion for the same reason.
