The arogance of youth is something I find utterly disdainful... we're all such idiots when we're young. [Spirituality & Religion]

@GlassDog: Because people's feelings aren't a reason to believe in a lie. Your feelings are not important to reality. It doesn't care what you believe in, or about your feelings. Having faith in fallacy is not "what it means to be human."

@GlassDog: You know i'm the same, I do agree with Dawkins but he seems so willful in his need to make it a pick this side or pick that side that he completely overlooks the fact that the church and even faith itself is an evolving concept/institution adapting to find a place so it can survive in changing environments

@BlueMetalChick: actually feelings are intrinsic to survival

@BlueMetalChick: That's not really how I meant it, though. It was more the callousness of forcing someone to believe a certain thing, even if the belief in a lie gives them comfort during terminal illness. While I do always seek the truth for myself even if it's overwhelmingly bleak, I think there's essential humanity in letting people do otherwise.

@xCoinx: Fair point, he has a very black-and-white attitude.

@pandora: Actual feelings are intrinsic to survival? No, no they're not. And even if they were, it doesn't matter because this isn't about whether or not emotions should exist. This is about whether or not lying to yourself about something makes you human.

@GlassDog: We look at people who believe in elaborate lies as being incredibly unintelligent. Take those for example who believe in convoluted conspiracies, like the 1969 moon landings being faked, that the Earth is flat, the theory that extraterrestrial aliens built the Pyramids of Egypt, or that George W. Bush was responsible for the September 11th attacks (well that last one might be partially true actually). We see them as crazies and crackpots and schizoids who believe ridiculous and stupid things. Why would faith in the church or any other religious institution be any different? Just because it brings you comfort does not mean it isn't a lie. Maybe I am entirely too hardcore of a person who has an extreme hatred of "white lies" and "sugarcoating" and using fallacy to help people feel better, and I know I have too little regard for people's emotions.

@xCoinx: He also doesn't ever admit that religion and science have evolved from the same root and it's not entirely impossible (although it's unlikely) that they could reconverge. I know he probably thinks he's giving people a slap in the face to wake them up from a delusion, but he's deluded himself if he thinks that's going to happen.

@GlassDog: Evolved from the same root? How so? Do you mean, like, attempts to understand the world around us? I guess, to an extent. Although religion also evolved from schizophrenic French girls who thought they could speak to otherworldly beings with godlike powers. Which sounds like a really hard DMT trip.

@BlueMetalChick: BMC i too believe in what Dawkins believes but I disagree with that. Evolutionary, feelings are intrinsic to survival, even down to affecting ones immune system and coronary health. Emotions control our hormones.

@GlassDog: Just so, and the science or religion was never a part of the churches stance. Yes perhaps to some extremists it was but really the church always made an attempt to fit observable scientific truth into religious understanding.
I personally found his The God Delusion a very hard book to read with a straight face, and I am speaking as an atheist here

@pandora: That still does not mean lying to oneself and believe things that aren't true is intrinsic to our survival. And by no means is it "the meaning of what makes us human."

@BlueMetalChick: we lie to ourselves countless times a day. Think of it this way.. you know how you have been lying about who you are on here and EP for years, to the point you almost believe it? and it must make you feel good otherwise you wouldnt still be doing it. Like 2 years ago you were an asian girl who was a famous singer and then last time i looked you were some white Romanian or something. Basically having faith, if it makes one feel good, does effect our physical health.

@BlueMetalChick: Very early religion, yes. An attempt to explain why crops grew well some years and not in others. As soon as there was a schism between it being down to the power of deities and the general forces of nature, science started to branch off.

As for your other point, I think there's a difference between accepting that people believe in what we think are lies, and absolutely forcing them to share our viewpoint and divest themselves of what looks, to us, almost fantastically nonsensical.

We're in a minority on this planet who can cope with the fact that there is no afterlife, no deity looking out for us while we are alive, that life is cold and hard and bad things can happen to anyone for no good reason. For the sake of truth, would you prefer a world where the majority really aren't able to cope? While I understand where you are coming from because our mindset is generally pretty similar, there are practicalities that would arise from denying people their delusion.

@pandora: I'm a Roma. So, yeah. I'm ethnically Asian, or of Asian origin at least. Last time I checked, India is in Asia, is it not? And I was a singer. I've never been a White Romanian but I am a Romani. Show me where the lie is in that please? Telling people what my ethnicity is and what I had done in the past in my music career is "lying to myself about who I am?" I guess telling the truth means lying now, huh?

@GlassDog: I suppose in my strength I have found a distaste for those who are not as strong as me. Strength in all forms is a quality I value above almost all else. Which is why I argue about it so much.

@BlueMetalChick: Come on lets de-escalate here, pandora's example was a bit tactless but think about it like this. We all chose to believe in some things we cannot know for a certainty, we believe it because it gives meaning to our lives, an example might be I chose to believe in his own way my father does love me (my folks are divorced, and I've never had much to do with my father, and I may be wrong, it is very possible that he has no feeling towards me whatsoever, but I chose to believe he does love me in his own way)

@xCoinx: I suppose you have some point or another. There is truth in what you say even if it is hard to directly see it. Although Pandora was not looking to support your point, but rather just to slander me and talk shit like he's already done in the past by calling me a catfish.

@BlueMetalChick: I used to think very much like that. I thought there was strength in truth and that truth sets people free. I still do, but I also put an equal amount of stock in understanding people. You can't make them do what you want, but you can work out what they're going to do and why.

@BlueMetalChick: here's another example that may be less abstract, for instance, many people choose to believe that justice exists, how can they believe this when the world is so full of injustice?
They believe it because they chose to believe it because it gives their lives and world meaning.

@BlueMetalChick: actually the opportunity suddenly presented itself.. but my example was apt. I do think most catfish have a better grasp on the power of belief than most of us.

@GlassDog: Truth I suppose is partly idealistic, just like John Locke's social contract, or communism, or ending world hunger. In an ideal world, it would be attainable and the best solution, and the obvious choice. But because we don't live in an ideal world, there is realism to deal with.

@pandora: That would not apply. I am not a catfish. Even if I were a fake, pretending to be someone I am not, a catfish is someone who tries to get others to meet them in real life, or befriend them in ways like long distance relationships. Which I have never done.

You still haven't told me how my explanation of my ethnicity makes me a liar.

@BlueMetalChick: The way I see it is that we're becoming slowly more socialist as time progresses (apart from the current right-wing pushback). We might end up with no concept of money, no land borders, no poverty, no hunger, and fair conditions for all, but no revolutionary attempt to bring it about has been successful enough. I suspect, and hope, we'll just drift towards it.

@BlueMetalChick: Just so and to add the words (or as best I remember them) of Thomas Hobbes another important inventor of the social contract: All nations and governments and human institutions are but worms in the entrails of Leviathan