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Hello, I have a question regarding religion.

What if I think that believing in a god, or some supernatural being will benefit me and make me stronger, even if it may not be rational. Like believing in a god that is looking over me would give me strength and confidence. What is wrong with thinking this way? How would this way of thinking not be to my benefit?

Thank you

GanonV

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What if I think that believing in a god, or some supernatural being will benefit me and make me stronger, even if it may not be rational. Like believing in a god that is looking over me would give me strength and confidence. What is wrong with thinking this way? How would this way of thinking not be to my benefit?
You said it yourself: it is irrational. How can being irrational benefit you? If your basic choice is to stop living, why not just end it immediately?
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To be a little more accurate, this is in regards to a friend and not me. Of course I believe that it is irrational and not to my benefit. But when we were having the conversation she thought that even if it was considered irrational, that it made her feel better and at ease. If it makes you feel better and more confident then why not believe it? That was her way of thinking. I really didnt have anything to say in regards to that, and it bugged me. In other words, I wonder if there is a more comprehensive way to explain it than just saying that it is irrational.

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To expound on what DavidOdden said: it is never in your self-interest to act irrationally.

To the extent that your friend acts rationally she lives, to the extent that she acts irrationally she dies.

If your friend was standing in the road and a bus was speeding toward her: acting rationally saves her life, acting irrationally kills her.

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If she's of any value to you, give her a piekoff taped introduction to Objectivism (this is streamable for free from the Ayn Rand institutes website), he's persuasive, emphasis, rhetoric, art, it's all beautiful.

"things are what they are, ayyyy is ayyyy"

repeat after me

"things are what they are, ayyyy is ayyyy"

I find emphasis on articulating your Objectivist metaphysics through rhetoric eventually changes peoples minds about God (rather than replying to their nonsense) -- the only hard part is getting them to listen to you.

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If it makes you feel better and more confident then why not believe it?

To be a little more specific than the (correct) responses above:

If your friend is feeling scared or lacks confidence, these are indications that an actual problem exists. Emotions are automatic value judgments, based on our conscious and implicit beliefs. If the world scares her she can choose to understand why and to act to change that, or she can choose to embrace faith and evade the problem. Choosing reason will solve the problem, choosing irrationality might fix the emotional issue, but the emotion was only a symptom not the problem itself.

mrocktor

Edited by mrocktor
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Hello, I have a question regarding religion.

What if I think that believing in a god, or some supernatural being will benefit me and make me stronger, even if it may not be rational. Like believing in a god that is looking over me would give me strength and confidence. What is wrong with thinking this way? How would this way of thinking not be to my benefit?

Thank you

GanonV

I have no disagreement with anything above, just an add-on.

I would recommend pointing out that her believing that her faith makes her stronger does not make it so anymore then her belief in god causes him to exist. Believing something you have no knowledge about(and worse, no way to gain) is a bad habit to start. It typically will bleed through to other aspects of life. It causes you to be dependent on other people in a very fundemental way. That is, you require their oppinions to make decisions for your own life, which is primarily the sort of person churches are interested in. Jesus may have been his most accurate when he called his followers sheep.

Independence of mind; your independent judgement is what makes you strong in reality, not placebos.

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If it makes you feel better and more confident then why not believe it?
Is your friend posing a hypothetical question, or is she really able to think along the lines of: "I know God does not exist; but, He will help me achieve this"?
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mrocktor worded best what everyone is saying, but I'll add my own spin/metaphor.

Lets say your poor and have no home. You could either get a job, work hard, save your money, and buy a house or you could forget your problems by getting drunk. In both scenarios you forget your problems, but only in one of the scenarios do the problems go away.

Drinking is like believing in god, and becoming a Christian is like becoming an alcoholic.

Toby

Edited by tobyk100
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Welcome to the forum, GanonV. Nice name :)

What if I think that believing in a god, or some supernatural being will benefit me and make me stronger, even if it may not be rational. Like believing in a god that is looking over me would give me strength and confidence. What is wrong with thinking this way? How would this way of thinking not be to my benefit?
It might become a bit of a crutch. At some point in time your friend will not feel as strong or confident as she normally does. Will she then put this belief in the closet's shelf until it's beneficial again, or sit there and wonder why she isn't feeling strong/confident?

If your friend realizes that her "belief" is merely a spruced up motivational tool, then I say let her have her visualizations.

On the other hand, if she has true belief, she (hopefully :worry: )won't just shrug off the fact that her belief is contradicted by facts. She'd question whether she had properly recognized the extra strength/confidence she'd been given, or whether she was believing strongly enough, or whether her god was demanding more than passive belief.

IMO seriously pursuing any of those lines of thought is detrimental enough to remove any other possible advantages.

...It made her feel better and at ease. If it makes you feel better and more confident then why not believe it?
"There's no such thing as a free lunch" may be apt.
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Hello, I have a question regarding religion.

What if I think that believing in a god, or some supernatural being will benefit me and make me stronger, even if it may not be rational. Like believing in a god that is looking over me would give me strength and confidence. What is wrong with thinking this way? How would this way of thinking not be to my benefit?

Thank you

GanonV

What you should do is demonstrate to your friend that, ultimately and as a matter of principle, she has no interest in believing in something, anything, that she knows to be false, i.e., not the facts. Going with a tiny cliche here, would she stand in front of an incoming truck if the belief that it was manna descending from above instead alleviated her then-burning desire for a (heavenly) snack?

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I dont think the issue with God can be resolved that easily, personally.

It depends on one's view of God. Christians, who believe in a God that can actually interfere with there lives, a God that performs miracles and that's counting all the sinning you do will be stuck more in a pattern of self-defeat than for example a Deist would. If you believe that there is a God, but that He has for some reason abandoned us, or isn't able to do anything for us, then there is, I'd say, no harm in believing in God, since you'll have to take care of yourself. One might ask what use it is to believe in a useless God, but there is some sense of relief in believing that the surpreme exists and is, indirectly, the driving force behind all living things. There is a form of strenght to be derived from that, at least, I find myself deriving strenght from it.

What harm is the idea of God when you strip religion away from it and look at the idea from a rational perspective like for example Descartes did?

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What harm is the idea of God when you strip religion away from it and look at the idea from a rational perspective like for example Descartes did?

What harm is there in believing in a race of hyper-intelligent purple space goats? There's just as much evidence to support believing in them (none). To what end do you seek to believe in that for which there is no reason or evidence to believe?

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One might ask what use it is to believe in a useless God, but there is some sense of relief in believing that the surpreme exists and is, indirectly, the driving force behind all living things. There is a form of strenght to be derived from that, at least, I find myself deriving strenght from it.

I agree with this....I too find comfort in the thought that there might be a supreme "force" out there. Maybe it's as simple as "good" will prevail. "Good", of course, meaning, "that which furthers life." Therefore, in a Darwinian way, the suicide bombers and other cultures who do NOT value life, will die off and the world will evolve into an Objectivist world. Maybe its not so much religion, but a sense of optimism we are looking for when things get bigger than we can control.

I sheepishly admit to finding an occasional guilty pleasure in toying with concepts of "what if" there is some kind of force? What if there is a race of purple space goats swooping down on earth with a master plan to save us from destruction? If there was a ton of compelling claims and evidence about the goats, I might find it interesting, and I might WANT to believe that the goats were coming to spread Objectivism....especially if times are hard and government has gotten so big that there is not much I can personally do about it. But, in no way will I ever allow my recreational intrigue in the supernatual be the driving force behind my self-confidence, nor will I ever make any decision based on such whimsical thoughts. It is something that I might keep in the back of the mind when things oustide of my control get really bad to help maintain a level of comfort, hope and/or optimism....but when it comes down to it, I realize that I can only do what I can do, so I might as well make the most of it.

The key is that I will NEVER EVER act or base any decisions on the concept of purple goats until their existence is a proven reality.

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IMHO one of the great advantages of mastering Objectivist epistemology is the freedom of imagination it gives you.

You have such strongs tools for telling true from false, that you can safely imagine things without ever worrying that you will confuse it with reality. Whereas someone with a less disciplined epistemology, there may be a danger.

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The key is that I will NEVER EVER act or base any decisions on the concept of purple goats until their existence is a proven reality.

justkariann,

I would ask you to re-read your post and look for a contradiction to the sentence above. If you look closely, you find that you already admit to basing a decision and essentially acting on those arbitrary concepts.

Edited by RationalCop
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I agree with this....I too find comfort in the thought that there might be a supreme "force" out there.
OTOH, one might feel a constant fear that there's this supreme force out there that can undo all the good you're accomplishing, and against whom one has to be constantly vigilant. ;)

As such there is no harm in day-dreaming "what if there was a friendly force" and taking pleasure in how it would be vanquishing your enemy. It wouldn't be much different from any kind of day-dreaming. The problem would be if one let's it evolve into secretly hoping that it might be true, and if that causes one to take less positive action toward an acheivement than one otherwise would.

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Its not a matter of whether it is irrational to believe in a god, but why she cant find strength, security, comfort or what as a result of her own ability to live. Confidence is derived from ones efficacy in dealing with reality. They are trying to derive it from nothing at all.

Bingo. My first thought was "Sure, if one understands rationality and independance, then it doesn't hurt to contemplate a God, but WHY would one want to?"

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Its not a matter of whether it is irrational to believe in a god, but why she cant find strength, security, comfort or what as a result of her own ability to live. Confidence is derived from ones efficacy in dealing with reality. They are trying to derive it from nothing at all.

You stole my thunder.. :thumbsup:

That was the direction I was going to head to in an earlier comment, but you have said it well.

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Its not a matter of whether it is irrational to believe in a god, but why she cant find strength, security, comfort or what as a result of her own ability to live. Confidence is derived from ones efficacy in dealing with reality. They are trying to derive it from nothing at all.

Well it is irrational ..... nonetheless great integration - Bravo!

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What if I think that believing in a god, or some supernatural being will benefit me and make me stronger, even if it may not be rational. Like believing in a god that is looking over me would give me strength and confidence. What is wrong with thinking this way? How would this way of thinking not be to my benefit?

Confidence comes from your knowledge, your preparation, your practice, your knowing what you are doing. It doesn't come from an irrational belief. I seriously doubt that there is a single guy who built up the courage to ask a girl for a date by thinking to himself: "I can do it because I believe in a god that is looking over me." And even if there are some guys like that, where was god all those times when the girl said no, or when his girlfriend cheated on him? If you're going to give god credit for the good things that happen to you, then you better be prepared to give him credit for all the bad things, too.

To characterize what your friend is doing as "thinking" is ridiculous. She is not thinking. She has stopped pursuing a rational belief. She is evading. Face it, she doesn't want to think seriously about the existence of god. A serious, reason-seeking person does not sacrifice the truth or the facts for something as secondary as a sense of "confidence." Again, confidence doesn't come from irrational beliefs. Someone who truly wants to be confident would be honest enough to pursue the truth wherever it leads.

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