Are some people truly better off believing?

[vorlon13]

There is some humor in the useful fiction angle when we consider it is carefully crafted for the drug addled mind.

My take on it at the time back in the 80s was unique (AFAIK) and not inconsistent with where I wound up on the religious/atheist spectrum. YMMV

A 'benefit' of having a room full of people with extremely divergent higher power concepts is the ecumenical angle. Clearly, they all can't be right, and most aren't even remotely useful for myself, one will think.

(I view ecumenism as an extremely toxic concept to embrace in any religion)

[Razzle]

In the 12 Step orbit it is generally (but not universally) better if the alcoholic/addict does not attribute success in their continued abstinence to themselves. If/when they do, there is a general (but not universal) tendency to form the destructive idea that since they are developing control over their addiction, they can resume using their drug of choice, and this time, be able to control their usage.

As it turns out, that doesn't work.

So, we have the necessary fiction of a Higher Power, and if not for the serious life/death consequences of addiction, it would be humorous to go over some of the wacky Higher Power concepts I have heard over the years.

I am still of the opinion that some people are better off believing, but is there evidence of that particular claim, or is it one of the AA's own dubious massaged statistics? I don't see how believing that you abstained because of God should be less likely to lead to confidence that you can partake moderately than believing that you did it without God. Wouldn't believers be prone to thinking that God will continue to help them resist excess if they resume moderate use?

[vorlon13]

I've been sitting in meetings since '86. I've seen more fuck ups than I care to think about. The original positing of the well worn phrase, "the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result" as far as I know came straight from the 12 Step world. It refers specifically to the endless attempts by problem drinkers to at last be able to enjoy and control their alcohol consumption with their friends as their friends are able to do, and not wake up glued to the floor with their own dried vomit 2 days later when they fail at that controlling attempt yet again.

And there are many folks that manage sufficient internal intestinal fortitude to beat addiction without going to 12 Steppers, I have encountered several over the years and am glad they figured something out on their. There is an alternative to 12 Steppers, Rational Recovery. While I applaud their work, and I've been to their meetings back when they had them, they've never had the wider acceptance they deserve. Folks that have no affiliation to any group do exist. I see a spectrum of results, from high functioning, happy sober people, to miserable sons of bitches, sober, but hating every second of it.

There are also 'in house' 12 Stepper programs affiliated with specific religions, I think there was a specifically Lutheran group back where I lived in Illinois. In those groups, obviously, the Higher Power will be deemed to be the same as what everyone is coming to church for at 10AM on Sundays.

[Pyrrho]

I sort of feel like until science can say we have a cure for human aging and death, religion will continue to exist. I'm in a minority among my fellow biologists in that I believe aging should be approached as a disease to be treated (not an inevitable outcome that we accept as a foregone conclusion). 

When I was a child, about seven, I used to worry about the fact that I'd one day die and not exist anymore, and I comforted myself by telling myself that I'd somehow find a way to live forever. I now know that was the wrong goal. A much better solution to the anxiety was to stop fearing non-existence in the first place. I didn't set out to lose that fear, it just happened as a natural consequence of having the altered sense of time and self experience that non-dual philosophers, including Buddhists and Western secular philosophers, talk about. 

Ever since I realised that a continuous "self" having all of these experience was an illusion, and that "I" am only ever this moment of consciousness, with a new, separate instant of consciousness dying and being born every waking moment from this biological process called a functioning brain (not a true entity lasting over time either, just one of the universe's patterns of matter and energy), then fearing this particular brain ending one day seems just as silly as fearing that of a complete stranger ending one day. I don't fear the deaths of the thousands of people dying every day who I know nothing about. In exactly the same way, why fear the death of the brain generating this moment of consciousness right now (me) when the consciousness it generates at the time it dies will NOT be me? The person that dies is a stranger to the person who was born, and to the person who feared death in the years, months and minutes before it happens. A mere genetic clone. When the brain dies, it's no different to what happens every moment of consciousness in life, i.e. one moment later, that person is gone, dead. New consciousness that happens to be aware of very similar memories and perceptions but is NOT the same consciousness, just a clone that has the illusion of having been there to experience the events it has memories of.

Losing the normal illusion of the nature of self at least once is beneficial, and even better is honing the ability to...FAIRLY easily slip back into that state of consciousness at will, in which there is no emotional anticipation of the future because "I" won't exist in it just as "I" didn't exist a moment ago. I still experience anxiety, due to OCD, but only ever of a "what if [my intense philosophical fear about the true nature of humanity] is true" kind of anxiety. Never about the future. I could never develop an OCD fear about germs or anything like that anymore, because they involve fearing future consequences. The only source of obsessive anxiety to me now is my intense emotional reaction to "timeless" ideas that aren't tied to the future. When those thoughts cause me to think about suicide, getting back into that state of consciousness stops me, because again, "i" won't be suffering in the future, it will be someone else with the same genes, personality and some of the same memories, that's all. Suicide for me now would only be an act of compassion for the conscious moments this brain will generate in the future, and because it wouldn't be compassionate act until relatives are all dead, that probably won't happen for quite a number of years.

I don't know if that is clear at all, but the details don't really matter, the point is that losing the irrational fear of death (whether by believing what I tried to explain above, or less controversial ideas like "I won't be around to know I'm dead or miss being alive", and "The billions of years before I was conscious weren't so bad"), is better than a pipe-dream of immortality.

That is more complicated than it needs to be.  Before you were conceived, you did not exist.  Think about the year 1800.  Was that a bad year for you?  Did you suffer in any way at that time?  That is like what 2200 will be for you.

This is not something new, and is a very old idea.  Here are the words of Epicurus:

Accustom yourself to believing that death is nothing to us, for good and evil imply the capacity for sensation, and death is the privation of all sentience; therefore a correct understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not by adding to life a limitless time, but by taking away the yearning after immortality. For life has no terrors for him who has thoroughly understood that there are no terrors for him in ceasing to live. Foolish, therefore, is the man who says that he fears death, not because it will pain when it comes, but because it pains in the prospect. Whatever causes no annoyance when it is present, causes only a groundless pain in the expectation. Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not. It is nothing, then, either to the living or to the dead, for with the living it is not and the dead exist no longer.

http://www.epicurus.net/en/menoeceus.html

[Razzle]

That is more complicated than it needs to be.  Before you were conceived, you did not exist.  Think about the year 1800.  Was that a bad year for you?  Did you suffer in any way at that time?  That is like what 2200 will be for you.

This is not something new, and is a very old idea.  Here are the words of Epicurus:

Accustom yourself to believing that death is nothing to us, for good and evil imply the capacity for sensation, and death is the privation of all sentience; therefore a correct understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not by adding to life a limitless time, but by taking away the yearning after immortality. For life has no terrors for him who has thoroughly understood that there are no terrors for him in ceasing to live. Foolish, therefore, is the man who says that he fears death, not because it will pain when it comes, but because it pains in the prospect. Whatever causes no annoyance when it is present, causes only a groundless pain in the expectation. Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not. It is nothing, then, either to the living or to the dead, for with the living it is not and the dead exist no longer.

http://www.epicurus.net/en/menoeceus.html

I agree and mentioned this line of reasoning as another possible means of losing the fear, but as I said, there's also for those so inclined, a much more profound perspective that can liberate you from not just the fear of death, but the fear of ANYTHING in the future, and from regrets of anything in the past. I'm sure the above, simpler concept is also enough to completely comfort at least some people about death, though.

[henryp]

The whole question is a math problem.  You have the favorable and unfavorable biological responses.  What results in more favorable than unfavorable tipping of the scales?

If religion leads to a happier life, super duper.  If ignorance leads to a happier life, super duper.  There is no hindsight.  You will never learn you were wrong.  So the idea of valuing knowledge and truth by themselves is just silly.