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Originally Posted by milo
Believing in something because you find it comforting seems a pretty valid reason to me.
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Valid in what context? If a person's ultimate justification for believing something is that they want it to be true, then they really have no place in rational debate. I think the world would be 87% more awesome if unicorns existed and I'd quite like to own a magical one, but I dont really think this creates an obligation for biologists to take seriously my insistence that they live undiscovered in the amazon rainforest.
Perhaps from a personal point of view a false belief can be useful in some contexts. But really, given all that people in other times and cultures have claimed to derive from religion - the sense of transcendental awe, of being at unity with the universe and the divine, the extremes of emotional experience that have inspired so much great art and caused many to devote their lives to the pursuit of an ideal - is being 'comforting' really the best that religion can do these days? If youre going to practice self-deception, at least set your sights higher.
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Is it any different than people who find comfort in the belief that one day the revolution will come and make everything ok?
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Yeah, unjustified faith in revolutions certainly led to some of the high points of the 20th century.