HARMS OF ENCOURAGING RELIGIOUS PEOPLE TO THINK THEIR RELIGION IS A COMFORT

Today it is recognised that the problem with religion is that it idolises faith. Faith is a refusal to change your mind when new light and evidence comes up. Faith is the one bad thing that all religions have in common though the content varies. Faith is why religions that are polar opposites exist and even when their doctrines are proven to be contrary to fact the religions still persist. Opposition to truth is a high price to pay for the alleged comfort that comes from pretending you know what you don't know. If anybody gets comfort from such faith, the comfort is fragile for the faith is based on the desire to loosen your grip on reality. It is not a virtue but a vice and vice feels good but brings bad results. Pointing to the people faith supposedly comforts, means nothing if faith causes passenger planes to be flown into skyscrapers or means approving of the murders of homosexuals that God commanded in the Bible. The comfort you get from faith in a loving God amounts for very little if you also have great fear of demons and evil magical forces.

And what about the doubters? Are they suffering for they have tried God and it didn’t work and now they are made to feel bad about it? What about people who struggle to believe? Telling them that faith will help only makes it worse.

What about the heretical and doubting friends and family of a dying person who has no faith? The message that faith comforts vulnerable people makes them feel they are to blame if the person died an unhappy death. They will think they had a bad influence.

If faith is good for you, your influence and example draw people to faith and that could be bad for them.

If faith is so great for comforting the afflicted then your message of faith blames those who say it didn't do much for them. You blame those who suffer without faith for their suffering being made worse. Your insinuation and therefore your faith is a disgrace. Are you getting comforted by faith or your superior hypocritical attitude?

If faith comforts though it is not true that does not make it a good thing. It says the truth should not comfort and does not comfort. It opposes truth. Opposing truth opposes not only truth but people who work for the truth. It undermines our right to get the chance to value the truth. Something being comforting does not make it true. What it does make true is that it shows we have the resources to make ourselves feel the best we can under the circumstances and can therefore do without religious faith. It shows then that there must be many ways to do that and faith in God need not be one of them. Faith in religion is certainly not an option for doing it.

Using a doctor can be a sign of lack of faith in God.  Faith in God that whether God cures you or uses your suffering for a greater good for you that is just as good.  If faith comes first then it must be a sin to go to the doctor then! Real faith means you do things you dread in order to show and live a relationship with God. That is the "best" faith. You might say that doubters still go to the doctor. But what about what the principle says? What about that? You can't just ignore a principle.

Many religious pastors should not be allowed near sick or dying people. They may refuse to bully the sick with their nasty doctrines but they still represent and take responsibility for those doctrines. And many do bully. Christians have been known to terrorize atheists and heretics who are on the deathbed. It is the pastor's beliefs that should disqualify him or her not the actions for human nature is often inconsistent and if you believe bad doctrines there is a definite risk that you will oppress a dying person in the name of faith.

Most people believe you cannot try to correct the nonsensical or untrue faith of a dying person. Some religions believe in doing just that. Born-again Christians are notorious for it as were some Catholic "saints". But if the dying person has been misled into depending on a faith that is wrong or implausible then there are no words of disgust fitting for those responsible.

People want to believe that we have extra-sensory powers and abilities and spiritual abilities for they think it rescues us from the belief that we are simply passive which means we are controlled and treated like a thing by everything else. Some say that unless you see you are not a mere passive entity you are doomed to miss the meaning of life. People think there is a difference between somebody claiming powers and somebody who is given the gift of letting God have all the power and going along with his will. There is not. The person is claiming the biggest power of all – the inner spiritual knowledge that one should empower oneself by giving all power to God. That is not passive at all.  It is doing more to get rid of the feeling of not being in control than casting forty spells a day all your life.  There is no risk of it backfiring when you tell yourself that all evil is only temporary and not so bad in the big picture.

We conclude that those who are comforted by faith in God are comforted by countless things many of which they will not be able to put their finger on. Many lie about the religious comfort or exaggerate how important God is. The comfort is not without its risks. And religion cherry-picks the evidence for comfort in God - there is no mention of those whose agony and torment is made worse by belief.  The reality is that we can end up in very bad straits.  You don't need God or religion to try and hope for others if not yourself.   Good things happen to others and will happen when we are gone. Hope and work for a better world will go on even if you never pray again or anybody does!   You see the reality, things change for the better here and there.  And you don't need hope for that. To the religionist that disagrees, "You seem to want not faith so much as a placebo."  His or her hope is artificial - they want one hope too many for they are not content with the hope they have got.