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Any religious person who is doing good things could do it better if unencumbered by bullshit.

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Originally posted by H. Humbert

Well, Marf, if the ideas behind religion are false, then any comfort religion brings is false comfort. I think most of us realize that the only reason someone would purposely keep their ideas on religion vague is so they can't ever be proven wrong. Doubts sail through their faith like arrows though fog. If there's nothing substantial there, then there's nothing to hit.

What's the harm of faith like that? Well, it encourages cowardice, in my opinion, and wrongly teaches people that any gap in human knowledge may be filled in with whatever crazy idea one finds comforting. It implies that reality needn't be accepted on its own terms, that it's fine to blur the lines between fact and fiction wherever the lights are dim enough to allow it. And it teaches that the happiness of individuals is more important than maintaining a clear, truthful, collective understanding of our World to the best of our abilities.

But my guess is that you would find these objections mere abstractions and remain unswayed.

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You and I just have different ways of looking at this issue.

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I drink because I enjoy it.

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Self medicating is often better than no medicating. People who self medicate with alcohol or other drugs often do so because they don't have the health insurance or wherewithal to obtain psych meds which might be more helpful. Of course no psych meds are cures. So my point was that often self medicating is a good idea because at least it is doing something about a real problem.

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Originally posted by marfknox

Halfmooner wrote:

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Any religious person who is doing good things could do it better if unencumbered by bullshit.

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The more I read this sentence over, the more I disagree with it. There really is a time and place for good bullshit.

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But my guess is that you would find these objections mere abstractions and remain unswayed.

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That's as dumb a statement of bullshit as I've read recently. I'm flabbergasted, I am.

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Originally posted by marfknox

If there was no practical benefit to the occasional self delusion, humans in general would not have evolved such a strong predisposition for it.

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And while many of those practical purposes might be gone in modern day society, to say they are all gone is a bit naive and premature IMHO.

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No one "needs" cigarettes. No one "needs" supersition. They "need" to tell themselves that they do.

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Moderate, or liberal, or whatever you want to call them believers are contributing to the harm done by lunatic religiosity by helping to create a culture where the belief in bullshit is acceptable. When cancers like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell spew their latest hate-filled, bigotted bilge, does society treat it like the garbage that it is?

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and the majority of the "liberal" believers won't call them on it.

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In recent decades, the party advocates civil liberties, social freedoms, equal rights, equal opportunity, fiscal responsibility, and a free enterprise system tempered by government intervention (what economists call a mixed economy). The party believes that government should play a role in alleviating poverty and social injustice, even if that means a larger role for government and progressive taxation to pay for social services.

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In real news here on planet Earth, we have seen the real harm done to people who believe in bullshit.

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Originally posted by marfknox


Halfmooner wrote”

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Another thing occured to me: It seems to me that for an atheist to accept unreason in others, other people whose weaknesses "require" that they have nonsensical beliefs in order to get through their lives, is both arrogant and dangerous.

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I knew quoting Garafalo would come back and bite me in the ass. Look, I used that quote in order to try to get my general point across in another way since it seemed that it was being misunderstood. I do not hold these opinions with the same view that Garafalo implies with her “crutch” metaphor. The crutch metaphor, and the drug metaphor, both imply that religious people are psychologically sick and that religious belief is treatment for that sickness. But I do not think of it that way at all. I think that religious belief evolved in the human animal for very practical reasons (and evolutionary psychology is really starting to back up that conclusion) and that many of those reasons still exist. I don't think that religious belief can be helped in many individuals, but I also do not view religious belief in-of-itself to be any kind of deficiency. For all practical purposes, religious people can be just as skeptical and rational as atheists. In no way do I see religious folks as “lesser intellects” to atheists because I don't Rationalism as the end-all, be-all of intellect and wisdom. There are many kinds of intelligence, and to judge the intellect of someone not only by one kind of intelligence, but on one set of questions (questions that often don't even have a baring on real life!) is ridiculous. You are falsely assuming I make this judgement. And since I am a practical person, I got no beef with faith itself at all and I think it wastes a lot of time and energy to be critical of faith itself at least in the political arena. (I do think it is enjoyable and important to be critical of it in the area of civil philosophical debate among the minority of people who are smart enough and interested enough to take part, but that is an intellectual luxury IMO.)

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Originally posted by marfknox

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And it's dangerous because by accepting their magical thinking without argument, we would abandon them to the whole spectrum of bullshit that makes up religion. They would be left intellectually weaponless among the more predatory True Believers within that spectrum.

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I never said it was always or even mostly a good idea. I merely implied that sometimes it is a good idea. That was my point. And apparently you agree with me. (Now apply this to the whole religious faith thing.)

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Self medicating is often better than no medicating. People who self medicate with alcohol or other drugs often do so because they don't have the health insurance or wherewithal to obtain psych meds which might be more helpful. Of course no psych meds are cures. So my point was that often self medicating is a good idea because at least it is doing something about a real problem.

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Other than some over the counter medicines, I doubt that it's ever a good idea to self-medicate, and even with them it ought not to be done to excess.

You may be correct about medical marijuana, but I think you'll agree that, again, this is talking about what seems to be a last resort rather than a "good idea."

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