I agree entirely. What I am arguing is that gods can be a part of “skills, qualities, attitudes, and habits necessary to handle the truth in a sane and healthy manner.”
They don’t require belief in any untruths, merely interpretation of the truth into a euphorically beautiful form. No where in my post do I advise believing anything untrue, and nowhere do I advise deliberately ignoring true things.
Except that you’re using “useful to believe” as a criteria for determining whether something is true or not. Also, if you had developed the skills, qualities, attitudes, and habits necessary to handle the truth in a sane and healthy manner, you wouldn’t need to believe in a God, because you would know how to live with the knowledge that there is no God and not be broken by it. If you truly had developed the ability to handle the truth safely, it wouldn’t matter what the truth was, you’d be able to handle it regardless. That is to say, if a God does not exist, you would be able to handle that just as well as if a God does exist.
Also, it’s not very polite to deliberately take someone else’s words out of context. I think you probably knew on some level what I actually meant by “skills, qualities, attitudes, and habits necessary to handle the truth in a sane and healthy manner,” and you also probably know what I meant by “true”. I’m not sure how someone could frequent this site without ever hearing about map-territory distinction. Correct me if I’m wrong, but map territory distinction is mentioned right on the front page of the site.
If you want others’ cooperation in avoiding breaking through your cognitive dissonance about religion so that you don’t get overwhelmed by grief or something, then just say you don’t want to talk about it and no one will question you. Not everyone needs a belief in God to deal with their grief. Furthermore, trying to persuade grieving people to join your particular religion while they’re in a vulnerable state of mourning would likely be seen as predatory in certain ways. You’d be taking advantage of someone’s pain to trick them into believing and doing things they wouldn’t normally believe or do if they weren’t in a vulnerable state.
And those on this site who aren’t religious and aren’t currently grieving won’t be convinced. They will see the flaws in your arguments and argue with you, which puts your precious belief at risk of falsification.
So really, trying to proselytize here is a lose-lose situation.
I agree entirely. What I am arguing is that gods can be a part of “skills, qualities, attitudes, and habits necessary to handle the truth in a sane and healthy manner.”
They don’t require belief in any untruths, merely interpretation of the truth into a euphorically beautiful form. No where in my post do I advise believing anything untrue, and nowhere do I advise deliberately ignoring true things.
Except that you’re using “useful to believe” as a criteria for determining whether something is true or not. Also, if you had developed the skills, qualities, attitudes, and habits necessary to handle the truth in a sane and healthy manner, you wouldn’t need to believe in a God, because you would know how to live with the knowledge that there is no God and not be broken by it. If you truly had developed the ability to handle the truth safely, it wouldn’t matter what the truth was, you’d be able to handle it regardless. That is to say, if a God does not exist, you would be able to handle that just as well as if a God does exist.
Also, it’s not very polite to deliberately take someone else’s words out of context. I think you probably knew on some level what I actually meant by “skills, qualities, attitudes, and habits necessary to handle the truth in a sane and healthy manner,” and you also probably know what I meant by “true”. I’m not sure how someone could frequent this site without ever hearing about map-territory distinction. Correct me if I’m wrong, but map territory distinction is mentioned right on the front page of the site.
If you want others’ cooperation in avoiding breaking through your cognitive dissonance about religion so that you don’t get overwhelmed by grief or something, then just say you don’t want to talk about it and no one will question you. Not everyone needs a belief in God to deal with their grief. Furthermore, trying to persuade grieving people to join your particular religion while they’re in a vulnerable state of mourning would likely be seen as predatory in certain ways. You’d be taking advantage of someone’s pain to trick them into believing and doing things they wouldn’t normally believe or do if they weren’t in a vulnerable state.
And those on this site who aren’t religious and aren’t currently grieving won’t be convinced. They will see the flaws in your arguments and argue with you, which puts your precious belief at risk of falsification.
So really, trying to proselytize here is a lose-lose situation.