Religion
In reply to the discussion: Religious Oregon teens wear ‘Gay Is Not OK’ shirts to school to protest lack of ‘straight day’ [View all]el_bryanto
(11,804 posts)OK - what are the coherent benefits of believing in God, that you can't get through secular means. In order to answer this question one needs to address a more fundamental question - is there or isn't there a God. I believe that there is a God, and you don't.
Since I believe that there is a God, I believe there is benefit to drawing close to him and trying to understand my place in his plan. I think it's valuable to consider how he wants me to behave (I usually characterize this as he'd like me to be less of a jerk). I have found that it's beneficial to have faith that there's more to this life than just a birth, death, and oblivion. I found that particularly beneficial when I lost my parents a few years back.
Now, all of those stem from the initial proposition, which is the existence of God. I can't prove the existence of God to you, of course (and I doubt you can prove the non-existence of God to me) therefore on that particular issue we are just going to disagree.
That said, do you really feel it necessary to slam into me for going to lunch and not responding to your post quickly enough? What's that all about?
Bryant