Not a Bad Thing

In the essay we read this week, the author appeared to imply that all religious belief was irrational and bad.  Apparently, an ideal world would not include religion.  While I am not religious myself (I am an agnostic), I do not agree with this view at all.

While it is true that some religious beliefs stretch the boundaries of credibility, many do not.  Some deities have by their very definitions the quality of being unknowable.  Thus, the lack of evidence for their existence is in itself not evidence at all for their nonexistence.  As these deities are inherently beyond human comprehension, belief in them is not irrational, any more than belief in the infinite nature of numbers is irrational simply because humans cannot accurately imagine infinity in any manner which is not merely representational.  Belief in these sorts of deities is not more rational than atheism, but neither is it less rational.

Nor are religious beliefs necessarily bad.  While on many occasions religion has been used as justification for annoying, bad, or even atrocious actions, not all religions endorse this sort of behaviour, and even those which have directly inspired the behaviour may not be bad in themselves - the person who performs the bad acts may have warped the beliefs to fit their own ends.

In fact, religion can on occasion be a good, rather than merely neutral, thing.  In the cases of people who are stuck in a bad situation, belief can be comforting.  If a person is lonely and has no close friends, they may find it reassuring to imagine the existence of a supernatural being who loves them unconditionally.  There is of course a negative flipside to this feature of religion - faith can sometimes lessen people's will to act - but as long as a religion contains no encouragement to sit back and let events continue as they will, there is not a problem with using it to help in difficult situations.