He will *decieve* us.

This is going to get nuts.

Said the leaing Christian deist

Not really.

I'm thinking about the implications, right now.

**Shrug**

I want to believe in God, but its just so nuts, intellectually.

Religious mythology guards against the nihilism that the recognition that there is an end causes

@bread#0708 I agree with this.

But it's really hard to guard against something that you know is rational.

Aquinas tried his best to salvage the rational aspect of religion, but his arguments are based on Aristolean logic. Not the most empirical methodology.

well that presumes that there is only value in what you do that is everlasting

the finite effect of something shouldn't impact if it has any value or meaning

im not sure if nihilism is rational

Value and meaning is a separate thing to the material universe. It's a subjective reflection, a physiological response. Nihilism is rational in an objective way, but not intuitively or experientially.

These things can misfire. Like when you think God did something, but it is demonstrated and explained materially by mundane physical processes, like the Sun rising and setting in the sky.

Religion has never providing more explanatory power than science, for instance.

But science cannot hold in it absolute meaning like God can, which is why people keep going back to it.

However it is rooted is physiology, not reason.

The trauma of knowing that there is an end is severe. Maybe consciousness in the self-aware kind is an evolutionary mistake, and humanity is just a passing blip.

This has been one of the solutions posed to the Fermi paradox. That any species who becomes sufficiently advanced to be self-aware always destroys itself being unable to deal with the existential dilemma.

Biological evolution could very well be dependant on blind process and ignorance to succeed.

we've had the knowledge of our own existance for thousands of years

why do you think that it hasn't become destructive yet

We have had the safety net of religion for thousands of years. But only recently has man become objective and rational enough as to realise the shortcomings of mythological explanations. And not even yet on a large scale, most humans still believe in fairy tales, which is the only thing between humanity and the abyss.

you act like the belief in "fairy tales" is a detrimental thing for human development

atheism has no tradition

Well, here's why. Sure, religion keeps you from existential crisis, but it also keeps you irrational. If you want humans to develop they have to be rational, and this is incompatible with religion without being schizophrenic.

It doesn't keep you irrational at all, where do you get this

Innovations is haulted by intellectual luddites called 'devout religious people'.

If you believe in God, you believe it has rational basis.

to describe religion as oppressive you'd logically apply the same to all human culture

You believe that God has explanatory power.

You believe that God causes you to travel into the afterlife.

It is no co-incidence that society has been moving into a secular post-cultural mode.

The vast masses of people dont need to be rational in the scientific sense

The masses are not naturally atheistic

Yeah, the masses of people don't need to be, but regardless religion is still irrational

It's broken down to having zero evidence, and purely being based upon "faith"

What doesn't have evidence?

God, afterlife, the whole bit...