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by empath75 3818 days ago
> Ultimately, secular thought (agnosticism and atheism included) is just an inferior product compared to religions. It doesn't provide out-of-the-box answers to these really hard questions and as a result can be a very scary and lonely ideology.

I'm not sure that it's the job of philosophy to construct comforting fairy tales, if it actually is the case that life has no inherent meaning or purpose.

At best, it can give you a guide to construct your own meaning.
1 comments
hsitz 3818 days ago
Yes. To the question of why is the world here religion answers, "Because God created it." But no religion deals with the obvious follow up question, "Then who created God?" That question is not allowed in the religious framework. Science does not allow for such questions, either, but doesn't purport to answer the final question of why the world exists.

So do we go with religion, invent God, and take satisfaction in child-like explanation of why the world exists? Or do we go with science and merely acknowledge the mystery of what we humans are unable to fully understand (i.e., the world).

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munchbunny 3818 days ago
It works because most people don't think about these questions on a daily basis. So if you don't think about it except when somebody explicitly brings it up, then whether I believe God created the world doesn't really matter.

So religion works because on the rare occasion that I do wonder "how did this world come to be?" there's an easy answer, and I move on with my life.

Obviously if you find this question very interesting and make it your goal to investigate the matter, then this is an unsatisfactory answer, but the vast majority of people only pay attention to this question every once in a while anyway.

Religion tends to cover a lot of topics in this category - I'll blindly accept the answer because the question is insignificant to me most of the time.

It's not satisfying, but it's not dissatisfying either. It gets the question out of the way.

Obviously this doesn't move humanity forward, but from the perspective of the individual believer, a religion can be a very attractive package compared to the ambiguity of secularism.

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