Coping: A Big Tool for Religions

[zebo-the-fat]

As far as I can see you can be either alive or dead, 200 years ago I was not alive so I must have been dead, the same state I will be in another 200 years, I don't see why there should be a difference in the two situations.

[Mister Agenda]

After writing one of the 20th century's most influential books on ethics, Alasdair MacIntyre converted to Christianity.

Here is an essay by him. You can decide if this is "cope."

https://letter.otherlife.co/p/catholic-i...-macintyre

Also, I'm curious about your screen name. You know that sophistry and sophists have kind of a bad reputation, right?

Converted to Catholicism from what?

[Mister Agenda]

I don't see how believing in a place of eternal punishment is not depressing. And there are many theists who constantly fear that they will be forever tortured every hour of their lives. It is even more depressing than thinking there is no afterlife.

So it seems that saying how atheism is depressing is just another religious sound bite.

Sounds like it ought to be depressing even if you believe that you, personally, will not go there.

[Mister Agenda]

I am convinced that most people have a leverl of happiness or depressiong that is their 'baseline' and though that can easily be disrupted, over time they go back to their baseline. If they're usually a little depressed, after something makes them happy they'll get back to their usual level of depression. If they're usually on the happy side, they'll get back to it after taking a blow that makes them sad for a while.

I've been depressed, but am fortunate that I've never had to stay depressed. As a rule, I don't experience life as an 'existential nightmare'. I take pleasure in the little things. That's no credit to me, I didn't earn my disposition, but I wonder if those depressed ex-atheists are happy in the long term now that they're theists.

Also, the phenomenon of people thinking they used to be atheists when they weren't or even just claiming to have been atheists when they weren't is real. You can usually suss the less sophisticated ones out in conversation on a case by case basis when they have no idea what an atheist really is or why they were one beyond 'I just wanted to sin'.

[The Grand Nudger]

To me, this validates the phoniness of religion...

I mean....some of them do think there's a prelife, and past lives, and all that.  I don't know if that inclusion makes them seem any less phony.

[Belacqua]

After writing one of the 20th century's most influential books on ethics, Alasdair MacIntyre converted to Christianity.

Here is an essay by him. You can decide if this is "cope."

https://letter.otherlife.co/p/catholic-i...-macintyre

Also, I'm curious about your screen name. You know that sophistry and sophists have kind of a bad reputation, right?

Converted to Catholicism from what?

atheism

[The Grand Nudger]

That's a weird way to spell "presbyterianism". He passed through anglicanism as well. In retrospect, you can see the arc of his life easing into catholicism like catholicism easing into...well...you know.

[Fake Messiah]

After writing one of the 20th century's most influential books on ethics, Alasdair MacIntyre converted to Christianity.

Here is an essay by him. You can decide if this is "cope."

https://letter.otherlife.co/p/catholic-i...-macintyre

Also, I'm curious about your screen name. You know that sophistry and sophists have kind of a bad reputation, right?

Converted to Catholicism from what?

Let's just say that it tells you everything you need to know about a person's ethics when he willfully joins a pedo club.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Here is my thinking on the "afterlife".

What about the "BEFORE LIFE"?

A living being "emerges" from a non living state....or an "egg".

What comes before the egg.

We are all going  back to the state of affairs we "emerged " from..what ever that is....

If the religious are so confident of an afterlife why is there no discussion of a "before life".

To me, this validates the phoniness of religion...

(Bold mine)

In what world is an ovum ‘non-living’?

If you think religionists don’t discuss ‘a before life’, you’ve clearly never met a Hindu. Or a Buddhist. Or a Jain. Or a Sikh. Or members of a host of other religions that can’t seem to shut up about it.

Boru

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

It's not depressing because very few believers in eternal damnation believe that they themselves will be one of the eternally damned.

Sartre said, 'Hell is other people.' The devout tend to think 'Hell is for other people.'

Boru

They do fear hell; I mean, just look at the lengths they'll go to endure those boring masses. And they also fear hell for others.

Watch this Catholic priest comfort believers that it is OK that their child burns in hell while they're in heaven and that it'll all make sense once they meet god. That their parents and/or children will be so grotesquely deformed by their sins they'll look like monsters, and that is why they won't feel pity for them and will be happy to see them burn.





I mean, how comforting is this? Obviously not very much.

When it comes to Sartre, he literally thought that hell was other people. And you could easily argue that being alone in a room for long periods of time is much better than being with someone irritating. Anyway, he explored this idea more in his play/movie "No Exit" (1962). I would warmly recommend that movie; it is one of my favorites. I remember when I first watched it as a kid and was blown away by how someone can use something like hell as a metaphor.

They fear Hell they just don’t expect to end up there. This is the whole concept of salvation (not to mention proselytizing).

You seem to be developing a habit of responding to things I didn’t say, and I’d like you to stop it.

Boru