Yeah, for most people it is instrumentally rational to be religious. When I deconverted from Christianity, I was shocked by how many of my friends eventually reverted to some form of Pascal’s wager, which was what kept me from confronting my doubts as long as I did. With your average cherry-picked Christianity, you don’t lose much, and you gain a ton. It’s nice believing an all-powerful all-loving God who is much smarter than we are has everything in control even when we don’t understand, it’s nice believing you’re going to heaven, it’s nice socializing with your friends at Bible study, yada yada yada.
So I couldn’t help but think of religious belief when I read meditations on moloch. For the average individual, it’s great to be religious. Yet the world as a whole would probably be better off if no one were, for obvious reasons.
I saw something circulating facebook about atheists being more altruistic than Christians. I don’t know how legit the study was, but I wouldn’t be surprised if atheists were less likely to default in other prisoner’s dilemmas as well. But even so I wouldn’t fault the Christians and wouldn’t prefer they change their ways. I think there’s a lot of truth to Dostoyevsky’s saying something to the effect of “the more I love mankind as a whole, the less I love man in particular” and that it goes both ways. You can’t perfectly love individuals and perfectly love humanity at the same time.
The Christians I know love “man in particular” an incredible, incredible lot. Like my mom, who spends probably ten hours a week visiting and helping an elderly lady whose kids live in another state and don’t visit often. And who will drop everything to take drive a grumpy and entitled-acting disabled lady to get shampoo or any such random errand. I would never do these things. Or if I did, I would feel so good about myself afterward that it would eliminate the selflessness of the act. But love and connection like this on an individual level is part of what makes us human and is important too, I think. It’s good for the world to have some people of each type.
Hah, I guess I too have been making my peace with belief lately.
Yeah, for most people it is instrumentally rational to be religious. When I deconverted from Christianity, I was shocked by how many of my friends eventually reverted to some form of Pascal’s wager, which was what kept me from confronting my doubts as long as I did. With your average cherry-picked Christianity, you don’t lose much, and you gain a ton. It’s nice believing an all-powerful all-loving God who is much smarter than we are has everything in control even when we don’t understand, it’s nice believing you’re going to heaven, it’s nice socializing with your friends at Bible study, yada yada yada.
So I couldn’t help but think of religious belief when I read meditations on moloch. For the average individual, it’s great to be religious. Yet the world as a whole would probably be better off if no one were, for obvious reasons.
I saw something circulating facebook about atheists being more altruistic than Christians. I don’t know how legit the study was, but I wouldn’t be surprised if atheists were less likely to default in other prisoner’s dilemmas as well. But even so I wouldn’t fault the Christians and wouldn’t prefer they change their ways. I think there’s a lot of truth to Dostoyevsky’s saying something to the effect of “the more I love mankind as a whole, the less I love man in particular” and that it goes both ways. You can’t perfectly love individuals and perfectly love humanity at the same time.
The Christians I know love “man in particular” an incredible, incredible lot. Like my mom, who spends probably ten hours a week visiting and helping an elderly lady whose kids live in another state and don’t visit often. And who will drop everything to take drive a grumpy and entitled-acting disabled lady to get shampoo or any such random errand. I would never do these things. Or if I did, I would feel so good about myself afterward that it would eliminate the selflessness of the act. But love and connection like this on an individual level is part of what makes us human and is important too, I think. It’s good for the world to have some people of each type.
Hah, I guess I too have been making my peace with belief lately.