There’s a very nice new post on A Load of Bright about the similarities of religion and… smoking. I absolutely loved this part:
Isn’t if funny how only smokers crave cigarettes? Non-smokers don’t come out of a stressful meeting with a customer and say “I’m so stressed, I need to unwind. If only I smoked!”. Only smokers think they need to smoke, and only people who are religious think they need religion. In both cases, great harm and suffering is caused, or at least always potentially possible, while the perceived enjoyment and benefit is cheap and shallow. I don’t think people need religion. Personally, I think people are better than that.
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For sure, people don’t need a religion. But everything gets much easier when you believe in something. Don’t need to be in a religion, but in something greater than us. I don’t have a religion, but I have my principles and I believe in many things from different religions.
“If Only I Smoked!”
hmm.
“Arthur hoped and prayed that there wasn’t an afterlife. Then he realised there was a contradiction there and merely hoped that there wasn’t an afterlife.” (Douglas Adams)
[then again, this is hoping and praying that there [i]isn’t[/i] and afterlife. we were trying to find something that [i]is[/i].
i’m quite sure that more people wish they didn’t have a religion that [i]do[/i] than people who wish they do have a religion that don’t. this is probably because
a) people who don’t have a religion think more (hence the word freethinker), or
b) people want to get out of their religion because of certain biblical laws (which they probably don’t follow anyway)
I have to respectfully disagree with you on this one, Pedro. I think a lot of irreligious individuals can *want* to believe, as it makes things easier and more hopeful. They don’t *want* to die and have nothing there. They want a heaven, to see their loved ones again, to believe an omnipotence, omniscient, omnibenevolent being is watching everything and making it go right, and want to have a clear objective standard to work with. I wouldn’t want the Christian God to exist, as He seems to really be none of these things, but if a real perfect God (was possible), I would be outstandingly pleased to know of this.
Another brief example is some people might sometimes wish they didn’t have to think so much. For example, a quote from Nine Inch Nails’ antitheistic Trent Reznor says:
“There are just some things that don’t seem very fair in the world, like this fucking hypocrisy of organized religion. I just don’t understand how people can blindly believe a bunch of the shit they’re fed, to believe it so that they don’t think too hard about other issues. ‘Be a good boy and you’ll go to heaven.’ If it works for you, fine, but it doesn’t work for me and that pisses me off because I kind of wish it did.”
While people don’t *need* religion, it is wrong to think only religious individuals actually may have times they really desire it.
Ross, you have a good point (though you’re really disagreeing with the author that excerpt, not me
). Who wouldn’t want to be reunited with their loved ones again? Or to know that there was someone — and someone good — taking care of us?
Still, I think the author’s point was about how many religious people say that “they could never get through life without their faith”, or that all atheists surely lead empty, grey lives of nihilism and despair, because without God / an afterlife, there’s no point to anything. And yet we’re nothing like that.
Okay, I agree with that. I just do think atheists may crave religion more then non smokers do smoking.
Neither are actually *necessary* though, of course.