samarm
Your point being?
Seriously. I could have put anything in there in place of religion, including the term “society” itself. Society doesn’t tell us how the universe is created, but it tells us to do lots of things. And here’s the kicker, if everybody in a society suddenly stopped believing in that society, it could cease to exist! Poof, just like that. America only exists as long as everyone believes in it.
So why should Christianity “justify” its own existence, any more than America has to justify its existence?
I think that the whole “it’s a crutch” thing can smack a little of superiority for my liking. Apologies if you didn’t mean it to come across this way, but, you know, years of conditioning :). Suffice it to say, if religion is a crutch, then many other things which people don’t acknowledge as such, the numerous other “beneficial delusions” such as law, language, greater common goods, etc etc, are also “crutches”. One might make the same arguments about logic, scientific method, humanism, whatever you like.
At the end of the day, all these things are means to ends. They are structures for thought and perception which enable us to not think about every little tiny detail of our lives every time something new happens. It is impossible to live life and think about it in the detail it deserves, so we find ways of explaining away the wonder of it all. These things may be true, or false, or somewhere in between. It is not for me to say which is false or true, but they are all, to a certain extent, the same as the next one over.
As a philosophy, this one tends to be fairly inclusive of other people’s worldviews. Fair enough, the guy who believes in Allah might be deluding himself. But, I’m deluding myself when I believe in enlightened self interest and the pragmatic method, so who’s counting?
I also don’t think Tomndebb’s intent was to mock you unhelpfully. I, myself, had some similar comments but didn’t feel it was right at the time to post them. However, to back up his point, I must say that the “creation vs evolution” thread is one that you’ll find on every internet message board in the world, and some of them can be remarkably informative about both sides of the argument. Your OP, although it is a question which no doubt intrigues you, is, if you will excuse me for saying so, somewhat crude when compared to the various nuances that have popped up time and time again in places like Talk Origins. For a few of us old hats at this message board malarkey, who have seen this kind of thing before hundreds of times, the question is so simplistic, with a thousand different possible answers, as to make it almost a little boggling as to how people are still asking it.
Again, not that you don’t have a right to ask it, just don’t be upset when people say that it might be more helpful for you to look over old threads and see if the information is there, before asking them to take a few hours out of their lives and write out something for your benefit.
