On Medium: Should Atheists Respect the Placebo of Religion?
Here's an article about whether religion is needed to maintain mental health, and whether atheists are foolish for spreading the “disease” of harsh existential truth.
''In other words, maybe it’s just foolish to argue publicly for atheism, to lead folks to doubt their religious traditions since doubt would counteract the placebo effect and thus religion’s subjective benefit.''
In a way, it is, because it is based on the assumption that religious belief expresses something deeper, difficult to reverse or eliminate, in many human minds...
The only usefulness of maintaining atheist discourses in public spaces is, at most, not letting religious discourses predominate.
''Still, LW could reformulate his argument, posing it as a point of history: Was “modernity” itself wise? That is, was it wise or overall beneficial to transition from medieval, feudal theocracies (complete with slavery, patriarchy, stifling conservatism, religious wars, and economic stagnation) to liberal, capitalistic, progressive, rationally enlightened democracies?''
With very low fertility rates, very high cost of living/Absurd social inequalities with a mass of modest salaried workers and a very rich super''elite'', mass immigration and encouragement of miscegenation based on supposed truths, it is far from being rational.
I understand religious belief, especially when sincere, as a kind of homeopathic self-therapy, in which, in order to avoid an ill, one takes moderate doses of it.
Religion is just a form of ideological fanaticism, a mental disorder not categorized for political reasons. But I also think so, for philosophical reasons... Therefore, I prefer to approach this paradigm in a multiple way, so as not to reduce especially those good-hearted believers to schizotypical.
Ever since, the biggest problem with religious belief is the sheer extent of its political and cultural power and not that there are many people who are psychologically-biologically wired for it. It is not the followers, but the ones who order/control and organizes them.
''In other words, maybe it’s just foolish to argue publicly for atheism, to lead folks to doubt their religious traditions since doubt would counteract the placebo effect and thus religion’s subjective benefit.''
ReplyDeleteIn a way, it is, because it is based on the assumption that religious belief expresses something deeper, difficult to reverse or eliminate, in many human minds...
The only usefulness of maintaining atheist discourses in public spaces is, at most, not letting religious discourses predominate.
''Still, LW could reformulate his argument, posing it as a point of history: Was “modernity” itself wise? That is, was it wise or overall beneficial to transition from medieval, feudal theocracies (complete with slavery, patriarchy, stifling conservatism, religious wars, and economic stagnation) to liberal, capitalistic, progressive, rationally enlightened democracies?''
ReplyDeleteWith very low fertility rates, very high cost of living/Absurd social inequalities with a mass of modest salaried workers and a very rich super''elite'', mass immigration and encouragement of miscegenation based on supposed truths, it is far from being rational.
I understand religious belief, especially when sincere, as a kind of homeopathic self-therapy, in which, in order to avoid an ill, one takes moderate doses of it.
ReplyDeleteReligion is just a form of ideological fanaticism, a mental disorder not categorized for political reasons.
But I also think so, for philosophical reasons...
Therefore, I prefer to approach this paradigm in a multiple way, so as not to reduce especially those good-hearted believers to schizotypical.
Ever since, the biggest problem with religious belief is the sheer extent of its political and cultural power and not that there are many people who are psychologically-biologically wired for it.
It is not the followers, but the ones who order/control and organizes them.