# Faith, religion, and the afterlife: A form of denial **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 2, 2014, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/faith-religion-and-the-afterlife-a-form-of-denial/677713 "2014-01-02T16:57:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 26
**Author:** ![x-ray\_vision](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/x-ray_vision/32/351_2.png) [@x-ray\_vision](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/x-ray_vision)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2014, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/faith-religion-and-the-afterlife-a-form-of-denial/677713/501 "2014-01-24T00:52:29Z")
> [@cosmosdan](#): > > Why doesn’t it? Because trust often is based on evidence. Religious type faith never is. > [@](#): > > I think it also means understanding how belief systems are formed. In this case, do people in general accept that certain things they are told are true, without checking for themselves? I think they do. So how is that different than a person believing in God because the people around them have always believed. Is it irrational or just being human, or both? I don’t just accept things people tell me are true. I generally have a higher level of acceptance if the person is authority on the subject. For instance, if there is some really bad turbulence unlike that I’ve experienced before on an airplane and the person next to me tells me not to worry, it won’t help very much. If the pilot’s voice comes on the loud speaker and explains what it was and it’s not a concern, I will have a higher level of acceptance that all is fine. However, that greater level of acceptance is based on evidence I have acquired that pilots are experts in their field and they don’t make supernatural claims in regards to aeronautics. The more outrageous the claim, the less accepting I will be of it and will probably have zero belief in that claim. It’s much different than believing in God just because those around you do. I also don’t have beliefs in astrology, ghosts and other irrational, supernatural things. > [@](#): > > My only objection is the wode blankets tossed by some atheists that all god belief is irrational and delusional because there’s no objecive proof, all the while exhibiting their own tendency to insist things are factual that they can’t prove. I can’t speak for other atheists, but I don’t do that. > [@](#): > > You are incorrect in reading that into my post. My point is that human belief systems share certain things in common, and if we’re going to put religious beliefs on equal footing with all other beliefs as Harris suggests, Religious beliefs don’t deserve any special respect or protected unchallengable status, and they also don’t deserve an assumed catagory of irrational and delusional. I don’t think anyone has “assumed” that. Believing in supernatural claims without evidence is irrational. I don’t have beliefs that are irrational. > [@](#): > > Also, I’m nota theist I’m an agnostic duscussing the validity of certain arguments. I don’t know what definition of agnosticism you’re using that is mutually exclusive from atheism, but it will probably sidetrack things into a semantics discussion. I suppose you’re not a theist or atheist? I don’t know how that’s possible. If you’re not a theist, you have no belief in the existence of any gods. That would make you an atheist. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2014, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/faith-religion-and-the-afterlife-a-form-of-denial/677713/502 "2014-01-24T01:37:27Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > Also, they can usually be gotten around by an appeal to a higher dimension, a meta-universe, in which our universe is embedded. God – or the Big Bang – operates in that meta-scale “place” whereas we poor inhabitants of “Flatland” can’t perceive those dimensions. > > It’s brutal hard for common sense to cope with the idea that “time began” with the Big Bang. The inner child can’t help asking, “Oh, yeah? Well, what happened before that?” > > Modern physics has taken common sense and kicked it right in the teeth! And as we’ve seen, that space began. Zen koan for today - what is space in a universe with only one particle? (That’s from a quantum gravity book I read once.) My bet is that some grad student is responsible. Probably got an F too. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2014, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/faith-religion-and-the-afterlife-a-form-of-denial/677713/503 "2014-01-24T01:46:52Z")
> [@cosmosdan](#): > > You are incorrect in reading that into my post. My point is that human belief systems share certain things in common, and if we’re going to put religious beliefs on equal footing with all other beliefs as Harris suggests, Religious beliefs don’t deserve any special respect or protected unchallengable status, and they also don’t deserve an assumed catagory of irrational and delusional. I agree with you. But I think the problem is this. If a man says what an imaginary friend of voices tell him, we call him irrational and don’t give it a second thought. If that man, however, is the Pope or the President of the Mormon Church calling him irrational stirs up all kinds of trouble. It is not that atheists treat religion differently, it is that the reaction is different. Another example. If a man has faith in his wife despite the fact that she is out until 2 am and draining their bank account, he is considered sad and pitiful. If a man has faith in god despite great disasters - think Job - he is considered holy. You see, we are back to special pleading. It ain’t you, it’s the believers out there. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2014, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/faith-religion-and-the-afterlife-a-form-of-denial/677713/504 "2014-01-24T02:47:30Z")
> [@cosmosdan](#): > > My only objection is the wode blankets tossed by some atheists that all god belief is irrational and delusional because there’s no objecive proof, all the while exhibiting their own tendency to insist things are factual that they can’t prove. What the heck is a “wode blanket”? :dubious: At any rate, you are using a double standard. There isn’t just no objective proof of religion; there’s no evidence at all. Nor is there any that most religious claims are even possible. _And,_ there’s plenty of evidence against religious claims where religions haven’t been pushed back into the “make on untestable claims” position; religion has a history of being nearly relentlessly wrong about any claim it makes that can actually be checked. I doubt that you’ve run into many atheists who makes claims anywhere _near_ that level of baselessness or irrationality. Goofy as it is, a claim like _“the governments of the world are infiltrated by alien lizard people”_ is far more plausible than the typical religious claim - at least it doesn’t violate the laws of physics. ---
**Author:** ![monavis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e0b2c6/32.png) [@monavis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monavis)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2014, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/faith-religion-and-the-afterlife-a-form-of-denial/677713/505 "2014-01-24T13:12:15Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > And some place for existence to exist must have existed before existence existed. > > You’re just engaging in meaningless wordplay now. > > If you can use this logic to prove that God can’t exist, then you can use it to prove that the universe doesn’t exist. > > This partakes too much of medieval proofs of God: you can’t do these things with language alone. Actual, factual, observable evidence is needed. > > (Well, okay, **Voyager** is right: you can disprove the “omniscient & omnipotent” version of God with words alone, because the two terms contradict each other. But…) I didn’t state the Universe doesn’t exist, that is a fact that we live in the universe and science has proven there is a large universe and we exist in it! The universe is in existence. There is also the thought that there could be other universes that we don’t know about ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2014, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/faith-religion-and-the-afterlife-a-form-of-denial/677713/506 "2014-01-24T22:16:07Z")
> [@monavis](#): > > I didn’t state the Universe doesn’t exist . . . You used an argument to claim that God didn’t exist, which works equally well to claim that the universe didn’t exist. Your argument wasn’t sufficiently nuanced to exclude God yet permit the universe. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2014, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/faith-religion-and-the-afterlife-a-form-of-denial/677713/507 "2014-01-24T22:25:57Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > You used an argument to claim that God didn’t exist, which works equally well to claim that the universe didn’t exist. Your argument wasn’t sufficiently nuanced to exclude God yet permit the universe. Absent evidence, you have a very good point. If only there was evidence for the existence of the universe… ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2014, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/faith-religion-and-the-afterlife-a-form-of-denial/677713/508 "2014-01-25T00:57:47Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Absent evidence, you have a very good point. If only there was evidence for the existence of the universe… That’s the joy of reductio ad absurdum: since the argument works to contradict the evidence, it would appear to be a flawed argument. ---
**Author:** ![Gateway](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/dbc845/32.png) [@Gateway](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gateway)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2014, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/faith-religion-and-the-afterlife-a-form-of-denial/677713/509 "2014-01-25T01:22:28Z")
I want to jump back into this conversation real quick. I want to say that my main point is this: it is not always a denial of reality to believe in some form of spirituality. For one, many people have had something happen to them that they can’t explain, just because it hasn’t happened for you doesn’t mean it didn’t happen at all. Thus, that person in taking some sort of belief pattern based on that experience isn’t ‘blanking out reality’ in order to think a certain form of spirituality is true. For two, people sometimes look at scientific evidence and don’t conclude the same thing. Scientists disagree with each other. In looking at the evidence, one person might rationally conclude (at least to them where it is not a blank-out) that some form of spirituality is true. Kent Hovind for example, you may disagree with. But from where he is coming from, looking at evidence which he has _concluded_ is true, that is not coming from a place of cognitive dissonance. Also someone may just look at life and be like: Hey, life is a mystery. The scientists may have discovered a part of the universe but not all of it. In that not knowing, I believe that this or that religion is true. I don’t know how all this energy got here, how life started, how humans have an innate sense of morality, there seems to be a lot of depth in life that science doesn’t explain to me. In looking at this or that religion, I conclude that it is true, it makes the most sense to me. If we haven’t yet reached a point to where we can explain everything, and this is making sense, then it is not a psychological evasion to believe in that form of spirituality. If you _feel_ a religion, that can be the truth. If animals have instincts, and if there is a spiritual dimension and we have a spirit, then when we hear the right spiritual truths it might cause a reaction in yourself where you have a knowing about it. Like an instinct, or just knowing that it is so. Remember, just because this has not happened to you does not mean it hasn’t happened. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2014, 8:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/faith-religion-and-the-afterlife-a-form-of-denial/677713/510 "2014-01-25T08:10:35Z")
> [@Gateway](#): > > . . . it is not always a denial of reality to believe in some form of spirituality. . . . Well, the word “spirituality” can have a completely materialist component. We might speak of the spiritual sense of fulfillment we get from watching a beautiful sunset over the pines. It’s only when they start engaging in system building, and invoking non-human intelligences, that we really start to get fussy about it. If you want to say, “Bach fulfills my spiritual needs,” I’m right there with you. Bring on the Easter Oratorio! But if you say, “There are angels who minister to our needs, and who love us and pray for us,” I’m gonna dig in my heels and disagree vigorously. (I just had dinner with a friend who said she saw an angel once. She described the encounter in some detail. I was too polite to say to her, “Oh, you had a hypnagogic hallucination,” which is exactly what she described.) ---
**Author:** ![Gateway](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/dbc845/32.png) [@Gateway](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gateway)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2014, 8:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/faith-religion-and-the-afterlife-a-form-of-denial/677713/511 "2014-01-25T08:54:45Z")
“Everybody has ways to cope, find encouragement or inspiration in times of need, but **I see this as something, that if it were any other delusion, would be considered unhealthy to indulge, let alone encourage or enable the individual.** Especially to the point of prayer or even waiting passively for divine intervention on issues that should require direct and immediate attention.” I think this is the crux of everything, and it’s based on if you already believe or don’t believe. The arguments for the two sides will come from the idea of if they already find religion true or not (and thus always delusional in their eyes). So really we can’t see eye to eye on this issue unless we can see eye to eye on the truth of religion, which I don’t think we can universally come to. ---
**Author:** ![monavis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e0b2c6/32.png) [@monavis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monavis)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2014, 12:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/faith-religion-and-the-afterlife-a-form-of-denial/677713/512 "2014-01-25T12:27:36Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > You used an argument to claim that God didn’t exist, which works equally well to claim that the universe didn’t exist. Your argument wasn’t sufficiently nuanced to exclude God yet permit the universe. I didn’t say God didn’t exist, just that a being could not be the first cause as there had to be being( Place) before" a" being; At least that is my intention. ---
**Author:** ![cosmosdan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@cosmosdan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cosmosdan)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2014, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/faith-religion-and-the-afterlife-a-form-of-denial/677713/513 "2014-01-25T14:11:03Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > But compare god belief to other irrational beliefs. We don’t have powerfully placed astrologers telling astronomers that they should teach the controversy. When Nancy Reagan consulted an astrologer it was pretty much universally laughed at. When George W. Bush said Jesus advised him it wasn’t. > There are tons of astrological systems. Have they all been falsified? If most children got taught it was correct, if political leaders said that they would make decisions only after consulting their charts, then we might have a similar problem. > People have followed astrology longer than they have followed Western religions, and it has been more consistent. Why not give astrology equal footing to religion? > No, most would think that this is silly, but most have not been brought up imbued with astrology, and astrology isn’t treated with the respect that religion gets, but does not deserve. > Why the special treatment of religion? Horoscopes go on the funny pages, with the comics and the Jumble. Religion news should go there too. Have we ever had powerfully placed atheists who were bad leaders? Have we ever had velievers who were good leaders? ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2014, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/faith-religion-and-the-afterlife-a-form-of-denial/677713/514 "2014-01-25T20:04:12Z")
> [@monavis](#): > > I didn’t say God didn’t exist, just that a being could not be the first cause as there had to be being( Place) before" a" being; At least that is my intention. Since God is often said to be the first cause, my objection stands. Your argument could just as easily prove that the universe doesn’t exist, because there has to be a place for it before it can exist. Your argument is unworkable. That’s all I’ve got against it…and, just to repeat, nothing against you. I actually agree with most of what you say. It’s just this one thing, which you’ve said rather a number of times, I ain’t gonna let go. It’s badly constructed, and susceptible to reductio ad absurdum. Nothing personal, but, to me, it’s as if you’re saying “2 + 2 = 5.” It motivates me to say, “Nuh uh.” ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2014, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/faith-religion-and-the-afterlife-a-form-of-denial/677713/515 "2014-01-26T00:32:21Z")
> [@cosmosdan](#): > > Have we ever had powerfully placed atheists who were bad leaders? Have we ever had velievers who were good leaders? Not any who ran things based on what they thought their god was telling them. As for atheists, I don’t know how atheism could inform any political program. Atheism wouldn’t even cause anyone to oppress religion - just to keep religion from setting rules, which I know would probably be considered oppression. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2014, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/faith-religion-and-the-afterlife-a-form-of-denial/677713/516 "2014-01-26T02:15:59Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > . . . Atheism wouldn’t even cause anyone to oppress religion . . . Alas, it might. It would be a sad and extreme form of atheism – “anti-theism” – but such extremes do exist. There probably isn’t any body of thought that hasn’t engendered a virulent and diseased form of itself. You’re certainly right that atheism, intrinsically, doesn’t lead to oppression. But an atheist government, by mandating that people not engage in aggressive proselytizing, might err in forbidding all proselytizing. (In the same way, a Christian government would probably leave the principles of Christianity far behind in their zealotry. Moderation is a difficult ideal!) ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2014, 3:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/faith-religion-and-the-afterlife-a-form-of-denial/677713/517 "2014-01-26T03:07:35Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > You’re certainly right that atheism, intrinsically, doesn’t lead to oppression. But an atheist government, by mandating that people not engage in aggressive proselytizing, might err in forbidding all proselytizing. > > (In the same way, a Christian government would probably leave the principles of Christianity far behind in their zealotry. Moderation is a difficult ideal!) It’s not at all the same. Moderation and tolerance are deeply un-Christian ideals; it’s the Christians who practice tolerance who are leaving the principles of Christianity behind (and are slowly killing it, fortunately). Christianity has for two millennia been about aggression and tyranny; about forcing everyone to conform to it, and destroying anyone or anything that doesn’t. _Those_ are the central principles of Christianity; they are intrinsic to a religion that believes that it follows the One True God and that everyone who disagrees with it will be tortured forever. As for atheism; you can’t do anything in the name of atheism without going beyond atheism. Atheism is a _single_ postulate, that there are no gods; it’s not a belief _system_. Mandating atheism is not an atheistic position; atheism only has one position. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2014, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/faith-religion-and-the-afterlife-a-form-of-denial/677713/518 "2014-01-26T04:16:56Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > . . . Moderation and tolerance are deeply un-Christian ideals . . . Well, some Christians hold to the nicer ideas espoused by Jesus. Turn the other cheek, give them also your cloak, walk with them two miles, forgive them, etc. > [@](#): > > As for atheism; you can’t do anything in the name of atheism without going beyond atheism. Atheism is a _single_ postulate, that there are no gods; it’s not a belief _system_. Mandating atheism is not an atheistic position; atheism only has one position. Yeah, pretty much. I was talking about a debased, diseased, extremized form of the idea. As you say, it would be going beyond atheism per se. Like Islamicism and Christianism, it would be – what – atheisticism? We live in a world where there are violent Buddhists: any idea can be perverted! ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2014, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/faith-religion-and-the-afterlife-a-form-of-denial/677713/519 "2014-01-26T05:17:35Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > Well, some Christians hold to the nicer ideas espoused by Jesus. Turn the other cheek, give them also your cloak, walk with them two miles, forgive them, etc. It doesn’t matter. There’s never been enough of such people to really matter (and such beliefs are _self_ destructive, anyway). And the aggressive and tyrannical behavior that has been exhibited by Christians throughout history is a direct result of the Christian worldview as I said; if someone actually takes such ideas as unbelievers going to Hell seriously then conversion by the sword and slaughtering heretics not only make perfect logical sense, they are _moral imperatives._ Tolerance, freedom and moderation are in the long run poisonous to Christianity, among other reasons because they require a rejection of its basic view of the world. They are an implicit admission that Christianity is _wrong._ ---
**Author:** ![YoungKusher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/3e96dc/32.png) [@YoungKusher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YoungKusher)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2014, 5:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/faith-religion-and-the-afterlife-a-form-of-denial/677713/520 "2014-01-26T05:24:40Z")
> [@x-ray\_vision](#): > > I don’t just accept things people tell me are true. I generally have a higher level of acceptance if the person is authority on the subject. For instance, if there is some really bad turbulence unlike that I’ve experienced before on an airplane and the person next to me tells me not to worry, it won’t help very much. If the pilot’s voice comes on the loud speaker and explains what it was and it’s not a concern, I will have a higher level of acceptance that all is fine. However, that greater level of acceptance is based on evidence I have acquired that pilots are experts in their field and they don’t make supernatural claims in regards to aeronautics. Well your not most people then. I would venture to say that you probably have a higher IQ than most people which allows you to rationalize better. Cosmodan has a point that the average person probably isn’t going to be too concerned with verifying religion, or most things, on the level that a lot of us do. Is that irrational/delusional? No I don’t think so, it’s probably just conducive to that particular persons lifestyle. > [@](#): > > I don’t think anyone has “assumed” that. Believing in supernatural claims without evidence is irrational. I don’t have beliefs that are irrational. It’s pretty well assumed in the OP. In fact, it’s a prerequisite to the entire main topic. _Whether or not the delusion of god belief is just as unhealthy as other delusions_ > [@](#): > > I don’t know what definition of agnosticism you’re using that is mutually exclusive from atheism, but it will probably sidetrack things into a semantics discussion. I suppose you’re not a theist or atheist? I don’t know how that’s possible. If you’re not a theist, you have no belief in the existence of any gods. That would make you an atheist. Okay, I hate to beat a dead horse here, but why would the term agnostic even exist if it wasn’t mutually exclusive from both theism and atheism on some level? There are hybrid forms that I mentioned that are more specific in belief, but if you just say _agnostic_, as opposed to just saying _atheist_, it can be pretty well assumed that the person just hasn’t dismissed the ideas of deities to the extent of an atheist. There is a distinct difference, especially for a discussion such as this. Atheists are considerably firm that there are no such things as deities, and agnostics probably hold ideas about deities that can’t be entirely dismissed. There are areas where they overlap, which I think is what your talking about, but there are also areas where they are mutually exclusive. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/faith-religion-and-the-afterlife-a-form-of-denial/677713.md?page=25) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/faith-religion-and-the-afterlife-a-form-of-denial/677713.md?page=27)