Making Light: All Religions are UPG

[MellowDem]

14. Sure, on some things...

for most things, I'd have to say I don't know, or have to resort to probabilities based on limited evidence.

I understand that others have different ideas of what is "true". I am saying that how they arrive there is less useful, and indeed, in some cases harmful, according to my preferences, and that the way I and many others go about it is better. It's my opinions and my preferences that inform what method I use to find the truth.

Once again, I am not saying the "experience" itself is not true. Just the explanation of the experience. I have no way of knowing whether someone is lying about their experiences, and I don't care. But the explanation of those experiences, on the other hand, is as open to me as to anyone else.

I think I need to prove claims I make to others if they are to reasonably believe me, and vice versa. That's why I require proof before I will just automatically believe explanations for experiences. Unfortunately, many people who choose "truth" based on faith, or gullibility, are indeed infringing on the rights of me and others every day, throughout the world, precisely because of the method of thinking they use. I think attacking these methods of thinking as harmful and bad is therefore a good thing for me to do, according to my preferences.

Rationality isn't a double edged sword. It just is. What is subjective are preferences. The vast majority of people have very similar preferences, due to evolution. I understand some people are willing to be gullible on some subjects in exchange for perceived comfort, or more often through childhood indoctrination, social pressure, social rewards, and fear of punishment of some sort (financial, by the state, losing your family ties, etc.). I just prefer truth over all of those things, but then again, I am relatively privileged. If I lived in Iran, I'd be lying to myself with the best of them most likely. I wouldn't want to lose my life, my family, my friends, etc. etc. by renouncing Islam, for example.

The fact that many of the preferences of the religious are through coercion of some sort or other (mostly cultural) diminishes them to me though, and makes me think that they are the leftovers of a type of society humans are moving on from. Not to mention, religion is not required to have a community, to be close with family, or to even not fear death. But in many cultural contexts, it is impossible to have those things due to the nature of religion. Which is why I'm glad it is slowly dying off. It's not needed for all the positives it brings and is the source of a lot of negatives in the method of thinking it requires.

As for the mental illness thing... it's common knowledge, not my "opinion" that religions have long used supernatural explanations for experiences that are not supernatural:

http://www.cmf.org.uk/publications/content.asp?context=article&id=619

From the link:

Anthropologists, psychotherapists, psychologists and psychiatrists see beliefs about demonology as being culturally or socially determined explanations for problems which can otherwise be fully explained in sociological, psychodynamic, psychological or psychiatric terms.

The fact that I have to link you to "common knowledge" sources that you or anyone else could easily find thanks to the internet seems to make me think you're not very serious or like engaging in semantics.