Hello Nilsen,
There are some discussions that you wish you could have in person over a good beer, because you know that there is too much ground to cover in a BB posting to ever do it justice. Trying to have a discussion here is a little like trying to communicate via alternating bumperstickers.
Anyway, you said,
Originally posted by Nilsen
I would not be suprised if religion has positive health effects.
Religion = hope for those who cant help themselves. Its a straw they can hold on to when they have some sort of problem they wont/cant deal with in real life. It can also be a substitute for other addictions like drugs or alcohol.
The argument you are using here dates back to the popularization of Freudian psychology in the late 19th century. You'll find it in the work of Marx, Russell, (and Freud of course). Basically it starts out with the assumption that there is no God, only matter, and that therefore God is a psychological projection of human ideals, wishes, and needs. He only exists in our minds as a means of calming fears and bringing a false order to what is essentially chaos. The "opiate of the masses" as Marx put it. You've extended it slightly by implying that once our stress is relieved, there may be a positive health benefit.
Several answers immediately occur to me. I wonder for instance what
psychological need for God a 24 week old baby has and how projection could have had a positive health benefit in his case. But I'll move on from that. Perhaps the argument would have more weight if every Christian believer had a uniform personality, perhaps slightly flakey and unduly credulous. Obviously they don't. I pastor a church made up of a good quantity of rational, independent, highly intelligent, "tough minded" types. The SF guys are selected and trained for their ability to survive on their wits without support in deadly environments for weeks on end. These are not a group of weak-minded ninnies looking for fairy tale answers. We have men and women from across the personality spectrum some weak some strong. Actually it was my experience that the much
smaller anti-theist community that I once moved in was far more homogenous in terms of personality.
Additionally, as far as projection goes, the God and religion of the bible is hardly the one we would project in order to feel
better about ourselves. A religion in which we are conceived of as fallen and in need of salvation from eternal damnation through a distinctly unpopular and counter-cultural belief in a crucified savior who doesn't fit our ideal model for a king and in which we are constantly called to be about the business of examining ourselves, running the race, dying to sin, and standing firm in the faith even unto death is not the projection a weak mind would create. They'd be much more likely to come up with a tame slightly-senile grandmotherly god who accepts people as they are, condemns no one, calls for no changes and no confrontations, and dispenses hugs and cookies on a constant basis.
In fact, when it comes to projection, as a number of thinkers including C.S. Lewis in his brilliant
Pilgrims Regress have pointed out, the more likely candidate for projection is the atheist who denies that there is any such thing as sin or salvation, any fallen creation, any just and omnipotent god and who projects instead a scenario where he can be autonomous and functionally act as his own god.
There are other answers that one could think of but in the end Nilsen, its about truth claims not merely psychology. If I a teacher were to say to you, "Nilsen, 2+2=4" answering "You only believe that because you are a mathematician!" doesn't actually prove anything about the statement itself. In the same way, my saying "Nilsen, there is a God" and hearing "You only believe that because you are a Christian" doesn't prove anything about the statement either. God didn't not exist merely because I didn't believe in him for 23 years and then suddenly come into existance when I began to believe. My change, indeed my belief, has no impact on God, truth, or mathematics.
- SEAGOON
