L
Larsen B
Guest
I in no sense want to promote any religion here. But it suddenly struck me, that many people do seem to get a great deal of satisfaction out of their beliefs. So that being whatever religion you can think of - Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism and so on.
I think this video perfectly illustrates my point
There is definitely a sense i get, that it is possible to better oneself, to attain "miracles" of transformation by believing. Being an atheist, it might be a strange thing for me to say, but there does seem to be some truth in this. But, explaining it rationally, perhaps humans need focus and purpose, because without it we are open to the vagueness and the vast emptiness of not knowing anything. This cold reality can be quite depressing and, more importantly, unsatisfactory. It seems necessary to have something that lessens our insecurity.
But i want to concentrate on the benefit of belief to the individual. Is any interpersonal benefit gained from a religion special to "belief", or are there other facets of life that could, potentially, do as good a job? Why does one have to believe in order for, seemingly, miraculous personal transformations to occur? Although, again, i don't doubt that such transformations do occur because of faith.
And this begs the question, what is wrong with faith if it helps an individual so profoundly? Well i don't want this to dominate the topic, but there are many reasons why having faith and, therefore, following a religion are bad. For example, believing something so strongly that it blinds you from all other possibilities and, perhaps, leads you towards extremism.
Anyway, like i said, i don't want to digress too far. You tell me now, what good is religious belief?
I think this video perfectly illustrates my point
There is definitely a sense i get, that it is possible to better oneself, to attain "miracles" of transformation by believing. Being an atheist, it might be a strange thing for me to say, but there does seem to be some truth in this. But, explaining it rationally, perhaps humans need focus and purpose, because without it we are open to the vagueness and the vast emptiness of not knowing anything. This cold reality can be quite depressing and, more importantly, unsatisfactory. It seems necessary to have something that lessens our insecurity.
But i want to concentrate on the benefit of belief to the individual. Is any interpersonal benefit gained from a religion special to "belief", or are there other facets of life that could, potentially, do as good a job? Why does one have to believe in order for, seemingly, miraculous personal transformations to occur? Although, again, i don't doubt that such transformations do occur because of faith.
And this begs the question, what is wrong with faith if it helps an individual so profoundly? Well i don't want this to dominate the topic, but there are many reasons why having faith and, therefore, following a religion are bad. For example, believing something so strongly that it blinds you from all other possibilities and, perhaps, leads you towards extremism.
Anyway, like i said, i don't want to digress too far. You tell me now, what good is religious belief?