Matroshka wrote:mandalorian2298 wrote:
Atheists just oppose the belief that a delusion, when shared by a large enough number of people, becomes a truth.
I would also. It's the "delusion" part of your statement that is the issue.
Wikipedia wrote:A delusion is commonly defined as a fixed false belief and is used in everyday language to describe a belief that is either false, fanciful or derived from deception.
Delusion shared by most religious people is most commonly derived from one of two sources: fear of death (or of being punished in the afterlife) or from the unwillingness to investigate the true nature of the world that surrounds them.
Religious institutions install into the minds of their flock the fear of the divine retribution. The reason why priests often put emphasis on indoctrinating the children lies in the fact that people, theoretically at least, become smarter over time, which decreases the probability that they can be thought to believe in something that is not supported by evidence. Instead of evidence, priest offer promises of a pleasant 'afterlife' for the faithful and threaten those who fail to accept their teachings. Religious people are one of the most obvious examples that support
Wizards First Rule.
The other cause of religious beliefs lies in the human need to explain the the world around us. But, coming up with an explanation of the world that is based on logic and facts requires a great deal of time and effort. There are people (some of whom are religious) who spend their whole life exploring the world or contemplating the things that they know or believe, constantly testing their beliefs in the effort to separate that which could be true from that which they know to be true and discarding all that has been proven false. Those people are commonly referred called 'philosophers' - the lovers of wisdom.
On the other hand we have people who have an equal need for explanations but a far lesser amount of ability or will to deduce those explanations from facts. Those people live according to belief expressed in Gregrios' opening post: an explanation, no matter how unfounded or paradoxical is better then no explanation. As a consequence of this belief, those people attempt to hold on to the same set set of convictions throughout their lives. Not only do they fail to test their beliefs - they resent anyone who points out the logical or factual errors of those beliefs. Some of them go as far as actually trying to bend the rules of logic in an attempt to 'prove' their belief. Most recent example of this is an attempt to promote 'Creationism' to the status of a scientific theory.
"Creationism is a religious belief that humanity, life, the Earth, and the universe were created in their original form by a deity (often the Abrahamic God of Judaism, Christianity and Islam) or deities, whose existence is presupposed." (quoted from
Wikipedia) Their only 'proof' of this theory lies in the definition of God as the all-powerful source of everything that has been, is or will be. The problem of this theory is that it does not prove the existence of this God, but instead defines the term 'God' in such broad terms that he,
should he exist, would be the cause behind everything. However, the mere fact that a being of such power can be imagined does not prove it's existence (if you don't believe this, then you better look out for the dragon that
COULD at any moment appear out of nowhere and eat you
). Also, Creationism is unable to reliably predict the results of, well, anything (unlike the Theory of Evolution or science of genetics), which is a determining characteristic of a scientific theory. Despite all of this, many people are trying really hard to defend their belief in Creationism, despite the fact that they could dedicate that same amount of time and effort into exploring or contemplating the real world.
This habit of preferring to believe in something that is in no way proved to exist over believing in a less reassuring but proven facts is the reason why I described religion as a form of delusion.
Posted: Mon Jul 21, 2008 12:36 pm
