[Arm-netbook] Totally derailed topic

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

On Wed, May 10, 2017 at 4:33 PM, Hendrik Boom <hendrik at topoi.pooq.com> wrote:

> I'm an atheist whose basic emotional attitude is anger against God for
> not existing.

 hendrik, i have to be honest: don't take it the wrong way ok, but i
found this very very funny.  windmills?? chearrrrge!! :)  it's like,
if you _did_ believe in god you'd be castigated and Sent to Helllll
for having a negatve emotion called "anger", but *come on* man: if you
believe *god doesn't exist* what the heck are you doing damaging your
psyche by bothering to be angry!  about something that in your mind
*doesn't exist*!

 beautifully ironic :)

> But i have noticed that, true or false, a lot of people are helped by
> belief in God.

 eexactly.  it's not "hedging bets": who cares what happens when we
die, but if we *felt better about ourselves* does it actually really
matter?  no, of course not.

> So the scientific question becomes, what is it that
> actually helps them if God does not exist??

 their own belief helps them.  it gives them a sense of stability and
purpose in their own minds, which would otherwise not be there, and
there's a good chance that the exact same person would be a menace to
themselves and to the people around them if their "belief" was not
there.

> And can that, whatever it is, be replicated without belief in God?

 hmmm that's a really _really_ good question.

 now that i think about it, i believe i heard of something about 20
years ago called the humanist society (or something like that).
apparently they live their lives according to a really quite [humane]
wonderful "code"... just without the bits about "god" attached.

 so i'd say definitively yes, you can... it's just that you'd have to
choose to do so, and that can be really tough, to research, assess and
then make the decision to adhere to a particular code.  it means
making changes in your life which might cost you friends, your job
(because the company asks you to do something that is against your
newly-chosen "code")...

 now, what wasn't clear in your question was whether you were asking
about the *internal dialogue* that one might have with oneself to
replicate the same *effects* as "belief in code" or whether you could
have meant specifically the *external appearance* i.e. the
improvements in *other people's* lives that your new [atheist but
humane] "code" has.

 very cool question, hendrik.

l.