If Life is Meaningless Anyway, then What's Wrong with Religion?

[henryp]

So maybe religious people aren't that crazy.  They have meaning.  Even if their sense of meaning is rooted in fictional beliefs, at least they have a sense of meaning.  And if life is meaningless anyway, then why does it matter whether a person's sense of meaning is based on fact or fiction?

They are crazy.  But that's the beauty of life being meaningless.  You don't get more points for not being crazy.  

The complication of shedding religion, is that you pull off one veil, and think "This is it!  Now I'm seeing things for what they really are!"  But people have been slapping veils on us since we were born.  And on top of that, evolution slapped a few on there as well.  That's why the immediate responses are filled with rational arguments about the Truth and how that's why religion is dumb.

But if you continue down the rabbit hole, you also stumble on the idea that the Truth and Rationality are also meaningless.   Those are tough to shake, because there is 0 pushback to the idea that you should seek the truth and behave rationally.

But those things are no different than anything else.  Of course, knowing that doesn't magically allow you to accept things that aren't the truth or are irrational (that you know of).  Still plenty of stuff we all think that aren't the truth and are irrational that we don't know of.  So unless you are a master self-deceiver, you can't get back in on that religion stuff. 

In the end though, I'd say it doesn't matter whether you find meaning in fact or fiction because the meaning we attribute to everything that says we shouldn't find meaning in fiction is also fictional.