> It turns out that there's a big God-shaped spot in the human psyche. I am > happier, more centered, and more stable when that spot is filled, even though > I firmly believe that most of the effects are psychological. > This was absolutely beautiful, thanks Heather.
The concept of god, to me, is an private, personal thing. The problem is only when some people attempt to make other people believe that their imaginary thing should be everyone's imaginary thing. Or if not having an imaginary thing is somehow irrational. I know most of us here would not attempt to do this, but the concept of collective belief has far more downsides than upsides. My view: In effect the difference between religion and god is just that. It's the difference between a multi-person imaginary thing and a private imaginary thing. A religion defines god as one thing (or like in Hinduism, many incarnations of that one thing) and how to live to a god's expectations and all of that stuff. A religion attempts to help you understand what should really have been the realm of science - so there was a god of thunder and a god of rain and a god of tangled shoelaces and all that. Maybe it was a makeshift thing, like the stuff I tell my son when he asks me "where do babies come from?" after a long exhausting day about 3 seconds before in he's finally asleep. I lie, and I make it sound good, and he believes in the god of rockets that drop babies to deserving parents. For a couple days until I invent something else. I love the concept of God, even though I might not believe in one. But I don't love the concept of religion. Science can also be strange, but like Heather said it's mostly fact. Not fully, because you can "invent" fact, by using terms such as "proxies" for data that doesn't exist (like temperatures in 1000 AD). In many cases, science is religion too (like in Climate Change where scientific people who change their views are called disgusting things) And of course, religion has some scientific background like it's possible that ash on the forehead was designed to stop sweat from dropping into your eyes or something. The clashes come when one fellow is inflexible even if the other fellows case is better.
