Quote:
Originally Posted by craig1120
You went off on a tangent, so I’ll try restating the question. Is the belief in a transcendent God (or transcendent good) beneficial? Is the embodiment of that belief beneficial to the individual?
That's not what you asked before. What happened, did the answer to your actual question undercut your "you just gotta believe" position?
So now you have a new question which perhaps you'll be honest enough to admit is different. We'll see. Your new question is the tangent away from the essential material in my post.
If you are okay with god is finding me parking spaces, helping me win contests, looking over me benevolently (having killed like no other entity in history), while others starve to death, are tortured, are slaughtered, are abominations ... etc. etc. etc. ... then the belief I have a magic parent in the sky, whoops Hubble didn't find heaven yet ... can be falsely reassuring to you. Just like all the other belief in gods can be. If on the other hand, you care whether or not it is a just so fairy tale, like the Tooth Fairy, then it is deluding.
Is the belief in all the other gods beneficial to the person who believes it?
Anyway, isn't such an attitude kind of selfish? Is this belief beneficial to me? Is that the spirit of the religion?