Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Apr 23, 2021 4:06 am
Lacewing wrote: ↑Fri Apr 23, 2021 3:27 am
I was saying I don't care that I
"haven't convinced you".
That much, I can readily believe.
Likewise, this particular thread doesn't seem to be directed toward the advancing of any rational proposition. Having started with a rather bizarre outlier case, and having hastily generalized it to all "religion," it seems instead merely a flogging post around which can be rallied all those who wish not actually to think about "religion" at all.
The use of the prayer by a "Doctor of theology," as an example of the product of the insanity produced by religious belief was not a generalization of anything. The premise is, "religion is a form of mental defect." The example was only a sample of the product of that particular form of psychosis. No one has to accept the premise anymore than one has to accept the premise, "there is a supernatural realm," for which you provide what you think are examples all the time. I don't think you provide those examples as, "proof," of your religion but as examples of the consequence of not believing as you do.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Apr 23, 2021 4:06 am
But I wonder why anybody would think philosophy was worthwhile if they came into the conversation already incapable of being convinced of anything they didn't already believe.
Frankly, anyone who takes anything that goes by the name, "philosophy," today seriously entertains a variety of insanity, as serious as, if not worse than, religion.
I totally agree with Mencken:
1. "So long as there are men in the world, 99 percent of them will be idiots, and so long as 99 percent of them are idiots they will thirst for religion ..."
2. "The costliest of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.
The first pertains to religion. The second pertains to philosophy.