RE: If Life is Meaningless Anyway, then What's Wrong with Religion?
September 21, 2016 at 7:15 pm
(This post was last modified: September 21, 2016 at 7:18 pm by SenpaiNoticeMeYouBlindShmuck.)
(September 21, 2016 at 7:06 pm)InquiringMind Wrote:(September 21, 2016 at 4:05 pm)mh.brewer Wrote: OP, if you're happy being a theist then be a theist, fantasy delusion or not. Don't insinuate that non believers (how ever I/they define themselves) lives don't have meaning or are not happy just because you can't find any in yours. Don't expect to have me find it for you.
I'm not a theist, and I don't intend to be one. Atheists are usually pretty hard on religion, and I was trying to discuss the fact that religious belief does have the advantage of automatically giving individuals a sense of meaning, and I was exploring the possibility that that may not be a bad thing.
In theory it might actually be a good thing for some people. Not to be insulting but there are some humans who for lack of education or just genetics are pretty stupid. Religion is actually pretty good at spoonfeeding them a morality and motivation of some form, especially when conducted from a young age. Be good or the big bad men will roast you for all eternity is a bit more effective at getting kids to behave than just be good am'i'right?
The problem is with it however is that it leaves itself open to manipulation. Religion, in the western or abrahamic traditions at least doesn't typically allow for much independent thought, it takes on a very legalistic hierarchical approach where you just do what the man in the funny hat says. Now if the man in the funny hat is an easy going benevolent sort who just tells believers to be nice and snuggle cute animals that's all well and good, but more often than not it tends to attract fairly mercenary sorts (look no further than the apostles of the LDS church) who are less for playing pastor to a flock of dependent innocents and more for using their power of them for temporal ends.
In theory it could be a powerful source of comfort, and in many cases (especially surrounding the issue of death) it is. It's what happens as soon as religious leaders invariably start demanding special rights elsewhere, which they invariably do, we start having problems. You might be happy to throw away your own free will, but what right do you have to support an agency that wants to take that choice from others?
