(July 10, 2017 at 11:20 pm)*Deidre* Wrote: I've just had an epiphany. And it's basically how can something that I honestly don't believe in from a logical/factual standpoint, bring me comfort? How can something that my mind doesn't really accept anymore, bring me emotional comfort? So maybe, all this time, it's been me...comforting me. And calling it god. Why was it so hard for me to give myself credit? Idk.Bingo!
I've never seen myself as that strong, honestly...but I must have been. Pardon me while I sit here in awe over this revelation lol, I didn't even feel this way when I identified as an atheist a few years ago, but this is something. I've been capable all along.
"Me ... comforting me. And calling it god."
Similarly, I've often said that the only morality that exists is societal morality -- the net corpus of explicit and implicit negotiations between people about how to coexist and collaborate. But religion claims to have invented it, and to sustain it -- and even there, they use god as a proxy. God invented it, god sustains it. Yet the only morality a Christian has is the same morality a non-Christian has. They just ascribe a different origin story to it, and add extra features and prohibitions and such, so that "outsiders" can be accused of being licentious for not being as strict in some areas as the religion is.
Same thing here ... the only comfort is what you make for yourself or receive from other humans ... you have just been assigning that to god and assuming you can't obtain it anywhere else. It's just operant conditioning.
Another parallel is Christians thanking god for, say, eradicating cancer in someone -- when all along it was the doctors, the medicine, and their immune system that did the job.
Have a GREAT day ... bask in the revelation!
