(September 11, 2016 at 9:20 pm)Brian37 Wrote:(September 11, 2016 at 9:00 pm)bennyboy Wrote: I absolutely see benefits to religious faith. It can suspend doubt about oneself or one's circumstances, leading to more confident behaviors. I think faith, if it's strong, can really help someone "go for it" in life. The brain does wondrous things, and many of things do not require a rational world view, and are in fact aided by a suspension of critical thought.
I already said that it has a placebo affect. But no, sorry, it is only a benefit to the individual or the society, the downside is for the reasons I stated before. For all the success the ancient Egyptians had in their polytheism it still did not make their gods real. And worse and far too much when someone gets it in their head their god is real, they can also be successful in form big enough groups to murder minorities or start wars or commit acts of genocide.
Faith is not a virtue, it is a cop out. Our species gets hindered by religion as much as we think it helps.
Our morality isnt coming from old books or fictional beings. Our species ability to make discoveries, succeed or fail are in our evolution.
That's quite the irrelevant rant. I didn't talk about, nor do I care about, ANY of those things you are talking about.
The OP question is whether there are benefits to religious faith, and there clearly are. Whether religion overall serves a greater good in society is an issue of debate-- I'd say probably not, but we haven't had purely secular societies long enough yet to really see if non-religion allows us to do any better.
