Quote Originally Posted by leo9 View Post
And I don't understand what manga fans or opera lovers or politicos get out of their particular interests, but it's variety that makes the human race so amazing.
The difference is that these are physical, measurable, tangible things, not ephemeral beliefs which cannot be distinguished from wishful thinking.
One just has to accept that there are a lot of people out there who feel intensely about things that leave us cold, and their concerns are as legitimate as ours.
I can accept that. It's the religious who want to force their beliefs onto everyone else who seem to have a problem with it.
In the immortal words of the Prophet Bokonnon, "Live by the lies that make you healthy and happy."
I prefer to live with the truth. There's generally far less disappointment that way.
It's been observed that love - the swept-away-infatuated kind - meets all the clinical tests of mental illness.
I can see that, especially for that kind of love, which is more akin to lust than real love. Having been married as long as I have, I can say that real love is much deeper, and far less intoxicating, than that. And more fulfilling.
The same can reasonably be said for religious devotion
Except that, once again, you are equating love, or devotion, of a tangible, physical person with the devotion of something, or someone, that is not provable.
which proves that psychology is still far from having a complete description of human nature.
Something else we can agree on!
as if an accountant were to ask you to prove that your atheism is profitable, and refuse to accept it if you can't.
Except that I CAN prove it. Look at all the money I save by not throwing it into some church!
If a person's religion makes them happy and useful, it's a good religion, but whether it's true or not is a null question for me: only they can decide that.
Then why does it seem so many of them want to force me to believe as they do?
That depends. If a person makes good decisions and feels secure in their life because they believe they are guided by the planets, I feel it's no worse than being guided by any of the other objectively absurd belief systems that people live by.
If they ONLY made good decisions I might be convinced that there were something to that. But it's been shown that they make just as many bad decisions as those who don't believe. And in some cases, they have failed to make ANY decisions because "the stars were not aligned."
I think it's wise to have a solid grasp of the difference between a belief system and physically verifiable facts, but that's my only caveat.
I agree.