How I feel about my atheism and why I'd encourage religion
May 21, 2014 at 2:24 am
(This post was last modified: May 21, 2014 at 3:12 am by Rampant.A.I..)
Everyone experiences being a part of their own fictional narrative to some degree.
I've been writing a Sci-Fi epic for more than 10 years now, about a guy with repressed memories, and a group of friends who save the world. The main character has biomechanical armor passed down from his father, who trained him not unlike a Jedi, and is basically immortal.
It will probably never be published, even though it spans 1000s of pages, and I've planned major plot points to fill at least 5 series books.
Everyone does this, whether they fictionalize it or simply daydream.
We have this innate idea that our POV makes us so important, there is no way we are just one insignificant person out of 7.1 billion. Our POV, and the act of building a cohesive narrative that explains, often retroactively, our day to day actions creates this illusion of primacy, as part of the experience of being human.
http://youarenotsosmart.com/2014/01/07/y...less-dumb/
Erik Wielenberg did an interview on the Reasonable Doubts podcast, where he basically argued that since we cannot trust God not to lie, there's no reason to trust anything God promises, save for the fact that it might be comforting and God wants us to believe it for that reason, not unlike a parent protecting their child from a harsh reality.
Roberto Benini in "Life is Beautiful" concocts a fantastic "game" version of what is happening to his character and his son in a concentration camp during WW II.
God, as an idea, as a cultural concept, tells us that we are special and unique as individuals, above the rest of the animal kingdom, and can be immortal.
There's an episode of Showtime's "Dexter," where Dexter is talking to the memory of his long dead father about raising children. Harry has an extended monologue about the importance of religion, and while each of them know full well there is no god, Dexter has the choice to raise his children to believe what he wants them to believe.
To me, including a weeping naked John Lithgow, this is the single most disturbing moment in the entire series.
Deprive your children of a personal relationship with reality, because you think you yourself would be more comfortable believing in an afterlife, and divine justice.
And yet we see, every day, that this is exactly what's happened to western society. Parents indoctrinating their children into a system of belief they find comforting. Re-indoctrinating themselves, by rejecting contrary evidence and choosing to "have faith" and maintain irrational beliefs above critical examination, simply because they are "more pleasant" than reality.
On the other hand, it's entirely possible to give up on childish beliefs, but still approach life like a child, with a sense of wonder, even in the mundane.
We don't need an afterlife, or an ultimate struggle between Good and Evil to enjoy life, or advance as a species. Whether or not the original authors of biblical mythology realized it, the book is a collection of tropes and archetypes human beings have been subconsciously expressing over and over to ourselves for millennia.
In fact, the reason Star Wars was a successful franchise is it hits the same tropes and archetypes as the bible does.
A hero, born into nothing, discovers powers within himself he didn't think possible, rises to power through incredible adversity, colored strange lands beyond what he knew existed, and martyrs himself in some way for a greater good, and becomes immortalized as a hero.
It's the same story we tell ourselves until the day we die, and hope to reboot through our children, who we assure ourselves will succeed where we have failed, and triumph where we didn't.
Getting caught in the dogma ruins it.
I've been writing a Sci-Fi epic for more than 10 years now, about a guy with repressed memories, and a group of friends who save the world. The main character has biomechanical armor passed down from his father, who trained him not unlike a Jedi, and is basically immortal.
It will probably never be published, even though it spans 1000s of pages, and I've planned major plot points to fill at least 5 series books.
Everyone does this, whether they fictionalize it or simply daydream.
We have this innate idea that our POV makes us so important, there is no way we are just one insignificant person out of 7.1 billion. Our POV, and the act of building a cohesive narrative that explains, often retroactively, our day to day actions creates this illusion of primacy, as part of the experience of being human.
http://youarenotsosmart.com/2014/01/07/y...less-dumb/
Erik Wielenberg did an interview on the Reasonable Doubts podcast, where he basically argued that since we cannot trust God not to lie, there's no reason to trust anything God promises, save for the fact that it might be comforting and God wants us to believe it for that reason, not unlike a parent protecting their child from a harsh reality.
Roberto Benini in "Life is Beautiful" concocts a fantastic "game" version of what is happening to his character and his son in a concentration camp during WW II.
God, as an idea, as a cultural concept, tells us that we are special and unique as individuals, above the rest of the animal kingdom, and can be immortal.
There's an episode of Showtime's "Dexter," where Dexter is talking to the memory of his long dead father about raising children. Harry has an extended monologue about the importance of religion, and while each of them know full well there is no god, Dexter has the choice to raise his children to believe what he wants them to believe.
To me, including a weeping naked John Lithgow, this is the single most disturbing moment in the entire series.
Deprive your children of a personal relationship with reality, because you think you yourself would be more comfortable believing in an afterlife, and divine justice.
And yet we see, every day, that this is exactly what's happened to western society. Parents indoctrinating their children into a system of belief they find comforting. Re-indoctrinating themselves, by rejecting contrary evidence and choosing to "have faith" and maintain irrational beliefs above critical examination, simply because they are "more pleasant" than reality.
On the other hand, it's entirely possible to give up on childish beliefs, but still approach life like a child, with a sense of wonder, even in the mundane.
We don't need an afterlife, or an ultimate struggle between Good and Evil to enjoy life, or advance as a species. Whether or not the original authors of biblical mythology realized it, the book is a collection of tropes and archetypes human beings have been subconsciously expressing over and over to ourselves for millennia.
In fact, the reason Star Wars was a successful franchise is it hits the same tropes and archetypes as the bible does.
A hero, born into nothing, discovers powers within himself he didn't think possible, rises to power through incredible adversity, colored strange lands beyond what he knew existed, and martyrs himself in some way for a greater good, and becomes immortalized as a hero.
It's the same story we tell ourselves until the day we die, and hope to reboot through our children, who we assure ourselves will succeed where we have failed, and triumph where we didn't.
Getting caught in the dogma ruins it.
