[squirrelicus]

I want to be extra clear: All the things I believe about religion are rooted in a belef in neurochemical reactions in meatbrains in a purely, exclusively, hard-materialistic perspective.

I also want to state that I'm trying to see what you're written in the best possible light. I mean that. But I might fail, and for that I apologize in advance. I'm not trying to straw man, and if you think I am, know that's not my intention and feel free to clarify.

> Could you list some of the truths of being human? Also give some examples of psychological realities of the human brain?

Sure. This is going to take quite a bit of effort to unpack. But first, let me address the remainder of your post because I think it's important context. But my answer to this question is at the end.

> The only ones I know of are biological in nature, as we are living, breathing, conscious, sentient organisms. I used to think us humans were all skeletons, but in reality we're just brains. And our brains, like all matter, are made out of atoms. The body parts are just the physical layer. Think about that next time you talk to someone face to face, you're two brains communicating with each other.

Indeed. In fact, while the center of our perception might be our brains, what we are at a deeper level is worms. Coelemates, to be precise. We are incredibly sophisticated survival systems for a digestive tract. In any case, the things you said are probably true, and I do accept them as true with a high degree of confidence. All things I think religion has to teach me are biological, or more accurately, mental. But to be clear, I believe mental things are merely emergent from biological things and non-supernatural.

> See, the above statements are what I mean when I talk about seeking objective reality. I analyzed us as creatures and stripped it down to the bare bones characteristics, no metaphors involved.

What you've done is the easy part. All mentally capable people can trivially get where you arrived with minimal thinking. And they have for millenia, since the first body was literally and metaphorically carved up by makeshift spears and knives.

> When you speak of fulfillment and having an aim, it's an attempt to rationalize a meaning to life.

I do not think I'm rationalizing anything, but...

> But the premise may be false, that people assume there is a meaning to be found in life in the first place.

I think what you're trying to say is that people try to construct unbelievably false narratives, like "this life is a test" or "God will judge you in the afterlife", so you can attain a level of comfort that "everything has a purpose". These are comforting thoughts. And by the way, who are you to say people shouldn't have these comforts? Or that you shouldn't have these comforts? Maybe you shouldn't have a couch because the ground under it is hard. But in any case. It's extraordinarily unlikely that these comforts accurately describe reality. But there's much, much more meaning to life than believing fairy tales. Ever helped a struggling child solve homework problems? Ever helped an old lady across the street? Ever contributed to a project where you solved what seemed like an impossibly complex problem at the outset? That feeling is good. And it's meaningful.

If what you're saying is that there is no personal meaning to your actions, then that is exactly what nihilism is. Nihilism is stupid. It's worse than heroin. And it's empirically known to be a gateway to unncessary suffering including depression, anxiety, malicious behavior, suicide, and other undesirable things. Is it objective that those things are undesirable? No. But that doesn't matter. If you do not want these things, then you ought to find meaning, because meaning is the only weapon you have to fight nihilism.

As Jordan Peterson was struggling for over a decade to find a singular axiom, one from which he could begin to understand the human condition at a fundamental level, as he was deeply studying totalitarianism with the aim of preventing it from ever happening again, he found it.

The reality of pain. Everyone feels it. You can say it has no meaning, but you're wrong. Goddamnit when you are in pain, your life suddenly has an aim, a meaning: Stop the pain. You cannot dispute this (yeah yeah masochists, but they have a relatively low ceiling for "pleasurable" pain compared to what you can do to them). The reality of pain and the meaning behind it is universal, a fundamental axiom. And, to your earlier point, it's nothing but nerves and brainmeats passively doing their neurochemical thing.

> And supposedly the answer to what our aims should be are found in a book known as the Bible, which we should interpret as deep, grand metaphors.

Supposedly, they say. I didn't. Now I do. It took me a long time to take the Bible seriously. Once I did, it started to become more clear, with the guidance of Jordan Peterson's study. I can say you'll never see it if you don't look yourself. Or, actually, take the easy way out like I did: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-wWBGo6a2w

> Religion and the Bible give people an easy way out of asking the tough questions about the nature of our reality ...

I'm not sure what you mean here. What you say sounds dramatically incorrect in a way that you must be completely ignoring (or ignorant of) the philosophical shoulders on which you stand. But, maybe I'm reading that incorrectly. Text is hard.

Theology and philosophy in general has always been the practice of asking the hardest of questions about the nature of our existence. But you said nature of our reality. I think you might be referring to facts that we believe with a high degree of confidence like "We're alone in the universe" and "The Earth is the center of nothing but itself". I think history does a pretty good job of showing that religion prevents neither the investigation nor acceptance of such extraordinarily likely facts. Here we are in a religious world, after all. However, I do think that religious tradition has caused quite a large minority of believers to unfortunately reject many facts in lieu of purely religious explanations, such as Young Earth Creationism. But these things die, even if they die slowly.

> ... preventing critical thinking and logical thoughts. ...

Again, I think what you're describing is a minority of believers, even if the minority is large. And it's shrinking over time. These things take time. And the record of history pushes us in the right direction.

What I hope you're not saying is that religion actually does prevent critical thinking and logical thoughts in general. Clearly this is not the case. The scientific method, and most all scientific discoveries in history, have been due to religious people -- largely Christians and Jews specifically. So that's just empirically wrong.

> It provides comfort for the aimless, lest they have to confront existential dread.

I don't know what you mean by aimless. But I am certain that everybody (above a rather low level of mental capacity) confronts existential dread. There are two things I learned about faith prior to being converted: (a) everybody, everybody who believes struggles with faith. Everybody, even the faithless, have times in their life where they confront the question of whether they're wrong about everything, "maybe nothing has any meaning", and the dread that follows. There is no blind follower. Merely people who, for a short time, aren't considering the question right now. And (b), there's a large number of believers who have never had a spiritual experience, no "special knowledge". Merely people who have reasoned their way into their beliefs for one reason or another.

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