<It is also in our natures, yours and mine, to harbor and cling to those delusions we find comforting or useful.>
Is it possible to rewrite this sentence substituting the word 'delusion' for 'belief'?
(I'm assuming you meant substituting 'belief' for 'delusion.')
Sure. And some of the beliefs will accurately reflect reality and some won't and lots will be partly wrong and partly right.
I absolutely know that faith in a deity is a door to comfort and, more important, to 'meaning' for many people. (They have a sizeable overlap, those nouns.)
I specified "in a deity" because of course I have faith in certain things. I know my husband would take a bullet for me [this is a metaphor, we are not under fire here!] as well as I know the sun will rise tomorrow and i suspect that having faith in that as an absolute fact probably has more effect on my life than 'knowing' there is a God has on the lives of most theists. (I am not going to tell him about the way I'm going to behave in Paradise. He hasn't mentioned the virgins, either, I note, that bum.)
I have been in a life circumstance in which a common tragedy struck a group of associated women and in which I was the only atheist in the group. I could see that their belief that what had happened to us all was somehow not a meaningless accident but an event that had happened for some good reason they didn't know but "God" did, and approved, made the tragedy easier for them to bear without going mad.
But I didn't go mad either, and am very strong now. That is the only time I almost wished I had a delusion to cling to. "Delusion" in my terms. I could have written "a belief that Somebody good albeit inscrutable had willed this pain, so it must have meaning and be for the best." |
