Posted by:
iflewover
(
)
Date: May 11, 2015 01:04AM
Good article on Salon that touches on why believers believe...regardless if it is empirically false: Because believing (for example in Mormonism) is meaningful. They simply like the effects of faith and being a believer.
This is a real eye-opener for me because I've wrongly assumed to this point that truth matters. It doesn't. Ding ding ding. For me, this really explains TBMs...they resist the truth because they prefer their delusion. And they know it's a delusion! That's what kills me.
Faith is its own virtue to many...it matters not if it's totally misplaced. That blows me away...I struggle to wrap my mind around it. When I learned the truth, there was no way I could keep pretending. No way. I left immediately.
I wrongly assumed truth is what matters most to religious people.
From the article:
"It’s perfectly rational to reject faith as a matter of principle. Many people (myself included) find no practical advantage in believing things without evidence. But what about those who do? If a belief is held because of its effects, not its truth content, why should its falsity matter to the believer? Of course, most religious people consider their beliefs true in some sense, but that’s to be expected: the consolation derived from a belief is greater if its illusory origins are concealed. The point is that such beliefs aren’t held because they’re true as such; they’re accepted on faith because they’re meaningful."
http://www.salon.com/2015/05/09/new_atheisms_fatal_arrogance_the_glaring_intellectual_laziness_of_bill_maher_richard_dawkins/