More insight into religion: logical and emotional beliefs

[robvalue]

I came to a realisation during a very enlightening chat with one of my friends recently. It seems to me it's entirely possible to hold two different beliefs about the same subject. One is the emotional belief, and one is the logical belief. One may simply be stronger than the other, and wins out in a crucial situation.

I was talking about the way I view the pets I have had in the past who have now passed away. Logically, I believe (I'd even say that I know) that they are gone. They don't exist in any meaningful sense anymore, except in memories. However, emotionally I believe they are still here. I talk about them in the first person. I think about them being somewhere else, rather than not being alive at all. I can see that this is how my brain copes. If this belief drops out, which it sometimes does, I'm overwhelmed with sadness. My brain seems to know this. So it keeps me happy, keeps me going, with the emotional pretense that they are still here. It repaints reality for me, and I let it do that.

Also, my depression makes me hold irrational beliefs. Much stronger ones. Ones I know are irrational, but it doesn't matter. The emotion is so strong that I believe it overall, even though I know it's not true. If powerful emotion and logic butt heads, emotion often wins. As the emotion gets more and more extreme, it drowns out the logic. The internal logic, that is. Instead, logic becomes a rationaliser. It is used to explain why the emotional belief is actually rational. It fails to do so, but it makes the person feel better about holding the belief. I try to logically explain why I am worthless, because I feel worthless. I even hear all the logical fallacies I'm making ringing up, but I don't care. It feels true, so it must be justifiable.

Religion seems like the extreme of this. It's where emotion has totally taken over, and has drawn conclusions for you before you've even realised there is anything to conclude. Logic is not involved until afterwards, when the person tries to rationalise the belief they already know to be true. These rationalisations aren't important, as they are strawmen, hiding the real reason for belief which the person may not even know. If they did realise the real reason for the belief, they'd probably lose it.