[dangus]

As someone who isn’t religious, it’s really, REALLY hard to remind myself that not only do people still believe this stuff, but MOST people in the western world still believe in the Judeo-Christian God and all the underlying mythology.

I feel like the rational outcome would be that only a small minority of people would still buy into these ideologies. But I guess economists already know that people aren’t rational.

Obviously, I’m aware that this website represents an orthodox minority. Most religious people don’t go to these lengths.

Religious rules and practices are just so annoyingly easy to pick apart. For example, doesn’t the change from the Julian and Gregorian calendars throw a wrench into what day we are actually on?

It’s hard for me to buy that God created billions of planets and galaxies with each planet having different orbital properties and that somehow the arbitrary days of the week that weren’t even set to their present status until after Moses was dead for 3000 years are important to him.

This nonsense affects my daily interactions in the sense that I can’t run around questioning obviously arbitrary traditions, it’ll just insult people and it’s just generally mean.

So, I’ve given you more than enough of my opinion, and this isn’t exactly constructive, but to me the sooner you exit the denial stage of grief the sooner you and move on to accepting the reality of life.

That means specifically accepting that the only two roles of religion are:

1. A social construct and group (with legitimate benefits of fellowship and social interaction like a club)

2. A coping mechanism for death, one that prevents its adherents from reaching the painful stages of grief beyond denial.

[rsynnott]

> but MOST people in the western world still believe in the Judeo-Christian God

This is probably no longer literally true; in polling a majority of Europeans who identify as Christian don't usually believe in a personal god, and significant numbers who identify as Christian don't believe in the supernatural at all.

> and all the underlying mythology.

Believing in _all_, or even most, of the mythology, as something that actually happened, is unusual; you're basically talking Biblical literalists, who are a small minority of Christians.

> For example, doesn’t the change from the Julian and Gregorian calendars throw a wrench into what day we are actually on?

For most Christians, the only one that's particularly important that it be on the right day there is Easter, which is dealt with. The Gregorian shift, in any case, was seen as a _correction_; from the point of view of those who initiated it the problem would have been the time that went before.

[dangus]

I think you make a good point, even in Bible Thumping America I bet a lot of people who identify as religious don’t deep down believe any of it.

At my most recent “church session to satisfy family” the preacher talked a lot about handling doubt. I found it very revealing that, on any given Sunday, you might find a preacher feeling the need to re-convince the congregation that the thing they’re there for is “real.” It made me think, “But I thought this was obvious truth to you? Haven’t you moved beyond this point?”

Interestingly, the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches don’t agree on which day Easter falls upon!

[cik]

The problem with that thinking is that neither belief nor disbelief in a deity is rational. Ultimately the existence (or non) of said deity is a leap of faith either way, given the inability to prove the existence of G-D.

I fully understand the complete belief or disbelief in a religion. That's the assumption of a system surrounding G-D, but as an Orthodox Jew I don't pretend that there's 100% proof that G-D exists, rather the proof exists for me to maintain my beliefs.

[dangus]

Where I disagree here is the idea that my view is “disbelief.”

To me, believing or not is irrelevant. I don’t call a lack of evidence “disbelief,” it’s simply a lack of data.

I wouldn’t make decisions based on not knowing.

I wouldn’t plan to drive on interstate 90 to get to my destination if I wasn’t sure it existed.

I don’t consider the rationality of assuming something is to assuming something isn’t to be equal.

If my friend says “I have a million dollars in my trunk, but I can’t open it to show you” I can safely dismiss the remark as “unlikely“ without investing a lot of hope into the unlikelihood of my friend actually having a million dollars in their trunk. I certainly wouldn’t start telling all my friends and relatives about the money in the trunk that I have faith in being there. Could my friend be telling the truth? Sure! But I see no reason to take those words at face value. And disbelief of that story isn’t on an equal level of rationality of belief in it.

Now, if my friend opened the trunk and showed me the money, I could absolutely accept that reality, even though the outcome was extremely unlikely.

Essentially, I don’t agree with the religious that faith as a concept is a desirable human trait.

[cik]

Religions don't necessarily have the idea that faith as a trait is desirable. That very much depends on the religion.

However, every single day we make decisions based on not knowing. We make those decisions with the best available evidence at hand, both observable and non-observable. To wit, in your example I'd never drive on the interstate 90 to a non-existent destination, but you'd take the drive not knowing what you might encounter along the way; hence the road trip.

I can't prove the existence of a deity. Equally I can't prove the lack of existence. Today I can prove certain phenomena that in the past we were unable to prove. That didn't stop belief, it merely asterisked it.