80% of Americans believe in Heaven/Life after death

https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/paradise-polled-americans-and-afterlife

Delusion: maintaining erroneous beliefs despite superior evidence to the contrary.

Start out with the egotistical delusion that we survive death because God loves 'us' more than 'them' (others, other religions, other races, other animals, other life forms) and you can convince people of anything.

"Convince them of absurdities and they'll commit atrocities." Voltaire



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/23/2021 08:17PM by schrodingerscat.

"Praying to God is a form of mental illness." George Carlin

I'm with George and Bill, it's delusional.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeWZjTMnUAA&t=31s



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/23/2021 08:18PM by schrodingerscat.

schrodingerscat Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> "Praying to God is a form of mental illness."


Don't tell that to these people (yikes!):

https://www.nami.org/Get-Involved/NAMI-FaithNet/Inspirational-and-Healing-Prayers/National-Day-of-Prayer-for-Mental-Illness-Recovery

schrodingerscat Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> "Praying to God is a form of mental illness."
> George Carlin
>
Damn you, some philosopher's feline putz.

Thy never-ending blovations promoting atheism almost daily here are delivering this formum down to something it never aspired to be.

Both you and Carlin may likely rot in real Hell.

Pray, maybe not.

I'm a dilettante atheist and I agree with your sentiment regarding the screeds The Cat insists we need to see. Recovey from Mormonism does not require becoming an atheist, although the money is damn good!!

But here's me being positive: The Cat used to be worse.

Perhaps it is more about convincing himself.

schrodingerscat Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> "Praying to God is a form of mental illness."
> George Carlin
>
> I'm with George and Bill, it's delusional.

This is a very, very dangerous notion. You may not like religion, and I do not blame you, but any system which begins to treat religion as mental illness is on its way to full blown dictatorship. Religion is historically the canary in the coalmine when it comes to human rights and freedoms.

States which promote only one religion like Saudi Arabia are repressive, as are states which have promoted no religion or persecute it. The major example of this just now is China, where religion is marginally tolerated right now but has been severely persecuted in living memory. The USA has separation of church and state which is good, but usually does not persecute religion.

In a free democracy, people have the right to do and believe stupid things. Maybe with some exceptions e.g. human sacrifice.

Seven Brides for.One Brother Wrote:
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> . . . any
> system which begins to treat religion as mental
> illness is on its way to full blown dictatorship.

Just for fun, what standard should we use to differentiate between "religion" and "mental illness?"


--------------------
> States which promote only one religion like Saudi
> Arabia are repressive, as are states which have
> promoted no religion or persecute it.

So promoting one religion is repressive and promoting no religions is likewise repressive. Exactly how many religions should the state sponsor? Two? Three?

And which are those? Should the religions that, say, Canada promotes be the same as those promoted by Israel? What about in neighboring Jordan?


---------------------
> The USA has
> separation of church and state which is good, but
> usually does not persecute religion.

What does this sentence mean? I'm particularly confused by the word "but" since "and" would make more sense.

By the way, Counting the Cost, have you mustered the courage to tell me what my grammatical error was in the sentence you challenged yesterday? You seemed so confident before everyone pointed out that there was no error.

Then you just . . . vanished.


-------------------
Now for the big riddle: what grammatical quirk do you exhibit multiple times in this thread that exposes your identity as identical to Counting the Cost and so many other banned monikers?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/24/2021 09:31AM by Lot's Wife.

At 80%, learning by personal experience seems to be alive and well.

Statistics!

100% of people born alive, DIE!

Therefore, ... I actually don't know what conclusion to draw from this verifiable (at least it's been the evidence so far) stat.

Maybe I'll be the exception?

Bethel Church where I live can pray you out of being dead. They even have a course on it at their university.

The County Coroner’s Office had to tell them to stay the hell away.

(The course ain’t cheap, in case you were wondering.)

in this thred OPie ~



is 80% smarter ~



than america ~



~\||||||/~
~(0o)
~/'o'\~


plz repent OPie ~



an turn from all of your sins ~



or just post more links ~



¸¸><((((º> ¸.•´¯`•.¸¸><((((º>¸.•´¯`•.¸¸><((((º>¸.•´¯`•.¸¸



thx

schrodingerscat Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> 80% of Americans believe in Heaven/Life after
> death
>
> https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/paradise-polled-am
> ericans-and-afterlife
>
> Delusion: maintaining erroneous beliefs despite
> superior evidence to the contrary.
>
> Start out with the egotistical delusion that we
> survive death because God loves 'us' more than
> 'them' (others, other religions, other races,
> other animals, other life forms) and you can
> convince people of anything.
>
> "Convince them of absurdities and they'll commit
> atrocities." Voltaire

The irony here is Voltaire. Voltaire supported a new, logical
France, cut off from superstition and the "ancien regime". He got what he wanted, but it was not what he hoped for.

When this new scientific did emerge, it introduced logical changes such as the metric system which is still used to this day, and is very practical. But there was a very dark side. The new "scientific" goverment started executing large numbers of innocent people, and there was the Great Terror under Robespierre. They also did away with juries for a while, because they were inefficient and illogical - instead three judges decided cases.

Then there was the decimal week... It was a logical decision on paper. Ten days is much easier to work with mathematically than seven. Yet when it was introduced people started breaking down from exhaustion and dying. They were lucky to get three days off a month.

It turned out a seven day week wasn't so illogical at all, since somehow it reflected most people's needs. So after an experimental period, revolutionary France had to revert to it.

There is NO empirical evidence that there is an existence after this one.
So live this one the best you can.

"Science has now created the egotistical delusion that we can survive death because, Computers!"

See, Cat, death is a scary mo-fo and different people develop coping mechanisms. The atheist way is through fatalism.

It's annoying to have you present your screeds on your few revolving topics as if only you know who to quote for The Truthfully True Truth.


"Convince them of necessities and they'll commit atrocities."
--Some scientist who took a humanities class in college reflecting on the development and deployment of the atomic bomb.

I feel that there is an afterlife, but not as a reward or punishment, but because that's how it works.

Don't you feel a bit like you're letting your team down by failing to find a famous name to which to attach a brief, but pithy, utterance supporting your view, along with suitable demagoguery condemning those who do not agree with you?

How do you expect to get people to reverence you, to be in awe of you?

elderolddog Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Don't you feel a bit like you're letting your team
> down by failing to find a famous name . . . ?

Well put, Jesus.

Next is the hammer toss!

Hurry up and get dressed for work, EOD. Disneyland just wouldn't be the same without Snow White by the Wishing Well.

Ha!

LW, mind if I steal that ?

Disneyland?

Ha! Good luck!

You're dressed up as Snow White but not going to Disneyland? Is this some sort of cosplay thing?

What's mine is yours, Kathleen.

Myself, I have my own set of beliefs and even as a mormon, I knew I saw mormonism different than most people I knew in mormonism so I didn't get up and bear testimony of what I believed or share it.

If there isn't an afterlife, so be it. For now, it gives me some sense of peace. I remember a SS teacher (who had been inactive a long time) say, "Can you imagine no longer existing after this life? Well, what about that you've always existed?" He blew my mind as I can't imagine always existing. So this life is limited to for me probably about 76 years, but what comes after and how long does it last? I don't want to live multiple lives over and over again. I don't want to do something like this again.

I do feel connected to my parents, other family members, my pets, etc., and it does give me peace to feel they still exist. I haven't a clue in reality, so I don't worry about it. As I said yesterday, I don't know "God." I know my parents. I want to believe they live on. I'm close enough to death that I will continue to hang onto that at least for now.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/24/2021 09:33AM by cl2.

I am an atheist. And I listened to the George and Bill show linked here; and have read most of the more systematic anti-religion literature offered by skeptics like Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion) and Dan Dennett (Breaking the Spell). All of this rhetoric is intended to demonstrate, or argue, that belief in a personal God is an irrational delusion, which means essentially a mental construct that is demonstrably not supported by reality. But, if we are going to denigrate religion--which I am all for--let's at least do so fairly and logically.

One has to start by identifying just what it is that the traditional religious believe in when they subscribe to a belief in God. Well, in a nutshell, and perhaps minimally, they believe in the existence of some form of a superior intelligence, who is personally interested in (a) the world generally; (b) their own personal well-being; and (c) the well-being of others; and who is capable, and often does, intervene in the world, and individual lives upon supplication through prayer. Let's ignore all the other baggage that often comes with religious dogma.

Now, let's agree that there is no "objective" evidence for the existence of such a Being. There are no scientific experiments to support such existence, and no material facts that point to the existence of such a Being. So, does that automatically make the belief irrational and delusional? In short, is there a *logical* problem with such a belief? No.

Given what we know about consciousness, intelligence, and our feeling of free will merely from personal experience, it is NOT "out of the realm of possibility" to magnify such intelligence to a high level of cognitive capacity, and postulate the existence of some Being having 'super' intelligence. Moreover, just as human beings have personal interests, it is not "out of the realm of possibility" that such a Being--if in fact she exists" would have some connection or involvement with the affairs on Earth. So far, then, the most we can say is simply that someone is believing in something highly improbable, but not logically or even empirically impossible. (Unless, of course, one engages in the mystical, incoherent, language of traditional theology.)

Now, suppose that along with the above beliefs, the believer claims personal "spiritual" experiences that confirm for him or her the existence of such a Being. Perhaps answers to prayers, revelations, paranormal experiences, etc. Such personal facts of experience, although not contributing to objective evidence for the existence of God, *do* contribute to subjective "reasons to believe" in God. (And rationality is always adjudicated by what one believes considering the information, and experiences they have, and the reasoning process they go through to form their beliefs from such information.)

Now, suppose the believer looks at the order in the Universe, the laws of nature, etc. and concludes--as have many scientists--that such order, and the underlying laws, cannot have arisen spontaneously, by happenstance; that some form of intelligence is at least suggested by such facts.

Finally, suppose that the believer just finds that belief in God provides a meaning and purpose to life that they cannot otherwise get through atheism. So, *for them* there is a practical benefit by such belief.

If you put all of the above together, you may have a belief that is not supported by objective evidence; and that makes all manner of improbable assumptions about the nature and scope of reality, but nonetheless is a reasoned view; it is not per se irrational. And it is only delusional if one can show that *in fact* reality is other than what they believe it to be, which cannot be conclusively shown. (Compare such religious faith to the beliefs of the schizophrenic who may have a rational basis for his beliefs based upon experience, but whose beliefs are manifestly contrary to demonstrable facts.)

Given the above, belief in God is neither inherently irrational, nor per se delusional. But that, of course, does not mean that in any given belief system; it *could* be irrational based upon incoherence, or inconsistency with other beliefs.

In short, the George and Bill show is rhetorical, and only seems compelling because there was no one their to effectively argue as above. The same applies to the Richard and Dan show. The conclusion that there is no God may be *obvious* in the context of a scientific worldview; but it is certainly not *definitive* in the boarder context of a humanistic worldview, where one's personal experiences, values, and preferences are part of the equation as to what one rationally believes.

As a dilettante atheist, I have read and approve of your support of godless causality.

I would like to chime in that while there is a lot of anecdotal evidence that something called "Love" exists, science cannot prove its existence.

The one claim I see made continually has to do with women, i.e., mothers, rushing into burning buildings to save their children. A view contesting that it is done out of love is that its motivation is selfishness.

I know that there are people willing to do "...a far, far better thing than I have ever done before..." but there is no science that will identify them. Maybe some disciplines of psychology can produce them, but the same results, via the same means, can be had with mice and cheese. Maybe... I don't really know. I just like to type.

From one old dog to another:

> I would like to chime in that while there is a lot
> of anecdotal evidence that something called "Love"
> exists, science cannot prove its existence.

Yes; but oh hard hard it tries! And in the effort it manages to take all the 'feeling' out of it. But then, we have a limbic system, what more do we want?

________________________________________

> The one claim I see made continually has to do
> with women, i.e., mothers, rushing into burning
> buildings to save their children. A view
> contesting that it is done out of love is that its
> motivation is selfishness.

Right, the old altruism is really just a manifestation of our selfish genes argument. God save us from the evolutionary psychologists and sociologists who are intent upon destroying our humanity; logic and evidence be damned.
_______________________________________

> I know that there are people willing to do "...a
> far, far better thing than I have ever done
> before..." but there is no science that will
> identify them. Maybe some disciplines of
> psychology can produce them, but the same results,
> via the same means, can be had with mice and
> cheese. Maybe... I don't really know. I just
> like to type.

There is no neurological experiment to identify who will act altruistically, and who will act in whatever manner it takes to acquire a little more cheese. Maybe *we* as individuals; that is, our acquired character and free choices, have something to do with it.

This veers from the somewhat narrow pedagogical road we're traveling, but what about western society's creation (or erection...) of a host of illogical responses on the part of human males to exposed female bosoms?

As I point at others, three fingers point back at me ...

In an old Jose Philip Farmer Sci/Fi novel (really old!) he created a society that became fixated on hiding the act of consuming food from the public eye. You had to be on extremely intimate terms with someone in order to see that person put food in his or her mouth.

So naturally ... food porn!


Why is there 'porn'?


Whew! I've been carrying this observation around for decades! Thank you!