Even if theism is a failure, it's still superior to atheism

[arewethereyet]

Here, I hope I made the title as provocative as possible, I'll attempt to show that it's really more than a clickbait, it's true.

All religious people who work on defending their religion rationally are bound to face the difficult question : but why do you really believe ?

There are of course well-known reasons that motivate religious conviction : indoctrination, fear, sense of community, to name a few. But the thread won't be about those : there really are distinct reasons for preferring a theistic worldview over an atheistic one, even when all philosophical arguments fail. I'll cite just two for now, as I think the topics raised here are incendiary enough.

It's a horrible world out there:

Let's face it, the prospect of death wonderfully forces the mind to find pragmatic answers to all kinds of struggles. Firstly, it's important to see the difference between this fact and the simple emotion of fear : the awareness of the finitude of our lifetime is a stone cold fact that has nothing with our emotions. In other words, whether we fear death or not, we're still going to die. Secondly, it's common knowledge in philosophy that anything a man does is an attempt to "live in the moment" while they can do so, and that the full awareness of the finitude of our lives necessarily leads to a descent into absolute powerlessness, when the individual can longer find the inner momentum to move forward. Some psychologists speculated that all mental disorders are a form of weakness in one's character or mask of personality that makes them directly exposed to this awareness.

The late Ernest Becker in his award winning book The denial of death, brilliantly expressed this idea : "when the awareness dawns that has always been blotted out by frenetic, ready-made activity, we see the transmutation of repression redistilled, so to speak, and the fear of death emerges in pure essence. This is why people have psychotic breaks when repression no longer works".

But all people are also driven by the desire to stand out, to make a unique contribution to the world. An impossible dilemma : all your ready-made activity, everything you do, is the result of complex psychological mechanisms shielding you from the awareness of your own death, and at the same time, you want this same activity to be inherently valuable and cosmically important, you want it to transcend death.

Religion or theism offer a clear solution to the dilemma: there really is a Great being who guarantees that everything you do has cosmic justice, He created you so that you can accomplish it. All non-religious worldviews clearly fail or at best offer far less appealing alternatives to solve the problem.

The insoluble problem of sex and lust:

A woman constantly, and subconsciously, asks for assurance, that the man wants "me" and not "only my body", women are painfully conscious of the same dilemma above : they want to fully express their inner personality and, at the same time, are aware that all men ultimately only want the sexual act. And here it's important to note what I'll call a regress of symbolic lies to get sex : the evolving brain of the man managed to create a symbolic world of lies for the woman, he'll eventually convince her through an elaborate web of lies and sophisticated illusions that her beauty, or that the beauty of her personality, really transcends space and time, whereas his brain only aims the sexual act. What's commonly called love happens when this regress of lies becomes too sophisticated for the man, or the predator, himself : he starts to really believe that pursuing his loved one has some nobility and heroism in it, that his loved one is cosmically important, even with the full knowledge that, under naturalism, all her revered beauty is bound to decay and disappear irreversibly. The male predator eventually comes back to his senses and no longer feels the cosmic importance in his pursuit of lust, when the numbing feelings of arousal are gone.

This simple observation is enough to deal the blow to any prospect of feminism. Women can't be more than an object of lust and animal desire under naturalism. Religion, again, clearly has the upper hand here : the criterion for ultimate or other-worldly success has nothing to do with how dangerously seducing her body parts are, it's really her inner personality, the inner strength of her religious belief that ultimately determines her cosmic fate. Religion makes feminism possible as it inherently values women, whereas competing worldviews offer nothing in this regard.

Shouldn’t this be an entry under “stupid things religious people say” rather than its own thread?

  Fair point.

[Angrboda]

[retracted]

[The Grand Nudger]

OH IDK, it's salvageable - and I think Root is actually getting closer and closer to an accurate expression of his own beliefs and reasons for belief.

I was babbling about something similar not too long ago, but, briefly, if a person yearns for a thing - in this case deserved immortality- but understands that they have not (or perhaps fears that they cannot or will not or could not) attain it through the usual means...fame, merit, heredity, - then they might want to posit some agent capable of manifesting that desired object by other means for all of the rando joes of the world whose lives have amounted to little, if anything, of note - so as to be deserving.

[polymath257]

So.....

Theism is better because it soothes your fragile ego when you fail to do anything useful and is an excuse for not being able to have an adult relationship?

[The Grand Nudger]

-an excuse for being able to have an adult relationship, more accurately. It's only belief in theism standing between him and sexual predation, only belief in theism that affords a woman value - we're told.

I mean, I wouldn't say that to a date...but I guess I'm rusty. That's a pretty aggressive neg, maybe it would work on somebody?

[Angrboda]

-an excuse for being able to have an adult relationship, more accurately.  It's only belief in theism standing between him and sexual predation, only belief in theism that affords a woman value - we're told.

I mean, I wouldn't say that to a date...but I guess I'm rusty.  That's a pretty aggressive neg, maybe it would work on somebody?

He's looking for a sympathy fuck, as that's all that's left for him. Maybe if he can appear sufficiently loathsome to some poor gal, they'll take pity on him and fuck his brains out.

[arewethereyet]

-an excuse for being able to have an adult relationship, more accurately.  It's only belief in theism standing between him and sexual predation, only belief in theism that affords a woman value - we're told.

I mean, I wouldn't say that to a date...but I guess I'm rusty.  That's a pretty aggressive neg, maybe it would work on somebody?

He's looking for a sympathy fuck, as that's all that's left for him.  Maybe if he can appear sufficiently loathsome to some poor gal, they'll take pity on him and fuck his brains out.

Bold mine

It shouldn't take long.

[Jehanne]

-an excuse for being able to have an adult relationship, more accurately.  It's only belief in theism standing between him and sexual predation, only belief in theism that affords a woman value - we're told.

I mean, I wouldn't say that to a date...but I guess I'm rusty.  That's a pretty aggressive neg, maybe it would work on somebody?

He's looking for a sympathy fuck, as that's all that's left for him. Maybe if he can appear sufficiently loathsome to some poor gal, they'll take pity on him and fuck his brains out.

Was this your "redacted" post?

[Angrboda]

He's looking for a sympathy fuck, as that's all that's left for him.  Maybe if he can appear sufficiently loathsome to some poor gal, they'll take pity on him and fuck his brains out.

Was this your "redacted" post?

No, I sniped at Neo, and then realized he had a point. Good old "fast thinking mode" had me assessing Neo's response as something similar that did deserve some snipe, when Neo's actual position probably did not.

[Jehanne]

Was this your "redacted" post?

No, I sniped at Neo, and then realized he had a point. Good old "fast thinking mode" had me assessing Neo's response as something similar that did deserve some snipe, when Neo's actual position probably did not.

So, it's a case of hating the sinner and not the sin?