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by exporectomy
1911 days ago
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That's a naive view that assumes people are rational but we're not, not even you. Our minds seem to need some amount of hokum (imaginary beings) to remain sane. Children who grow up with a supportive parent who reliably takes care of them carry the feeling of being cared for and the confidence that comes from it for the rest of their lives even after the parent is dead. A dead person is no more real than God, yet they're very influential in helping people cope with life. I think they serve similar purposes. Just think how much people who are not present with you still influence your feelings every day. Until we meet them again, these people effectively don't exist either. It's all in our heads, just like God. There's even a psychological technique to build confidence by imagining a supportive person helping you. That's even closer to God or Jesus than a real but absent person. |
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I'm unconvinced that remembering dead parents amounts to believing in imaginary beings.
Reality is less relative than you're making it out to be. Dead people are "real" because I can reliably predict observable effects their past actions would have had on the world and then confirm them with observation. For example, if I wanted to track down some college essays written by my grandparents, I might actually be able to find some, even though I don't have them in my memories. Or, more practically, I can ask a mutual friend, "remember when {dead person} said X?" And they will say, "yeah, and then they said Y", and I will say, "yeah".
The fact that dead people are dead doesn't make them "hokum" in the way that Zeus or Thor or Moroni are hokum. It's fine to doubt your own mind's relationship with reality, but don't doubt it so much that you become totally disconnected and consider all the people in your memories who you can't immediately re-confirm the existence of to be as immaterial as God.