simulatedworld
Freshman Member
- Joined
- Nov 7, 2008
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- 5,552
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- ENTP
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- 7w6
- Instinctual Variant
- sx/so
I've noticed this. I don't necessarily think that all of those world views are mutually exclusive though.
The difference is that a lot of world views don't have obvious practical impact. For example conservatives or liberals might have highly elaborate political world views, but I haven't yet seen much benefit from these world views upon the people that hold them. The world views seem to benefit the politcal parties, but I don't see how they benefit individuals who aren't running for office.
I do know that "faith" is practical, because I've seen it have a practical impact on quite a few people (myself included).
(Referring to the bolded part) I guess it depends on what you mean by rational or illogical. For me rational is not what is important. What is important is if something is true. There are a lot of logical belief systems that are based on false ideas. (I'm not necessarily talking religion here, just ideas in general.) For example the idea of phlogiston was logical, but it wasn't true.
I don't believe that something can be useful and based entirely on false ideas. Even if some of the details are wrong, the usefulness comes from the details which are true. Something which is useful must at the very least be partially true. For example which catapult would be more effective, one based on the idea that a projectile travels in a line, or one that assumes a projectile travels in a parabola?
I was referring, essentially, to the fact that religion makes people happy because closure and certainty make them happy, and therefore it doesn't really matter, for most people's purposes, whether or not it's true...but it does for mine!
Belief in the flying spaghetti monster might be based on totally false ideas, but if someone really believed in it and it made him happy, what would be wrong with that?
I set these questions aside, of course, when I participate in a purely rational debate about the logical integrity of religion. I understand that it has its purpose, that it's important to many people, and that it's not going away. I am still curious to hear any supposedly rational justifications people can offer for it, and I'm willing to discuss these in a hypothetical sense, despite the fact that I acknowledge that religion has a use regardless of its inherent truth value (or lack thereof.)