A psychological approch to how religion works

[Zen Badger]

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guilt, conviction and repentance have little to nothing to do with delusion. They are basic human responces to experiential stimuli. What causes the guilt/conviction or the reasons behind the repentance can be based in delusional concepts or real concepts. That's dependant on what you term "real". For instance : Would you feel guilty killing a kid? Of course, would you ask for fogiveness from the parents and seek restitution and attempt to justify your actions? That has nothing to do with any kind of delusion. Emotions and intellect are not mutually exclusive, but one can overide the other when it's overemphasized.

As far as a Chrisitan perspective on pitting an ideal self versus a real self, it's not exclusive to religion, nor is it always detrimental. Don't olympians have an ideal performance they're aspiring to? The fact that most religions hold that ideal self as an absolute value just means you don't have to continuously move the bar. Failure to attain an ideal doesn't depress the average individual, nor does it in most Christians I know. It lends no power to becoming overly emotional about failure to attain then the contrast between ideal/real self being opposites you're describing. In fact seeing that the bar is at a constant level (absolute value) it's easier , IMO, to keep it in focus for betterment of one's self. It's dogmatic in Christianity that you can't attain the goal, but it's never been about attaing it. It's about the struggle of betterment and an ideal. That ideal is absolute and a far better test than a finite bar set by human intellect. The struggle can get cumbersome at times, as can any self-imposed goal, but most religions have that built in hope thing called salvation for encouragement.

Just my thoughts on the matter.

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But religion convinces you that you are a sinner from birth.

That you should feel guilty just for being alive.

Which is strange when when you think about it, god created you as a sinner. So he's set you up to fail before you're even born. Unless you beg for forgiveness from him because he made you that way in the first place.