They’re not insane. They’re just desperate for answers to life’s great questions. They’re afraid of death and can’t cope with life. They’re affraid to face reality that this is just what it is and death is just death. This is their way of dealing with all that, hiding reality behind a fairy tale to give it some artificial mean, because “life cannot be just an accident. We…I am too important for that”
It’s not simply insanity, they don’t have an affliction, it’s a very conscious, well thought out decision to run and hide. It’s, at best, a fault of emotion, not a fault of mental capabilities.
No, most religion is people who don’t have the capacity to understand the universe looking for answers to the great questions.
It is also people defending that they were indoctrinated into when they were kids. Looking this if you remove the people who end up non-religious there is a 86% chance that you will match the religion of your parents; if they are both of the same faith. There is a good reason that we indoctrinate kids; it works…really well.
I indoctrinate (instill into) my kids into; thinking education is important, reading is fun and questioning and critical thinking is right and proper. We all push our beliefs onto our kids, it is nice when we see it reflected back to us.
Exactly this. Some people are afraid of the idea that the universe is indifferent, void of meaning besides that which we create, and that when you die your neurological processes stop and your identity and consciousness wink away, leaving the you who lived your life as nothing but memories of those still living. I basically explained this to a girl once who asked about my beliefs and she said, that’s scary I don’t like it
I would say cowardice is an affliction. Also that the percentage of religious people who have thought this out and made a conscious decision to choose fantasy over reality is tiny; the majority (at least from my experience of Christianity in America) don’t even have the brain function to consider fantasy vs reality due to lifelong indoctrination.
