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Is Religion Intrinsically Bad?

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It is good that the fictions of religion give people meaning I suppose.

It is bad that people need fictions to feel the universe and their lives are meaningful.

Perhaps we could change "fictions" to "unfalsifiable possibilities"? Fiction seems to smack of the known-to-be-false; much of religion is constituted by the unlikely-to-be-true. It would be pretty bad if people needed fictions in this sense. Even believing in falsehoods or logical impossibilities (e.g., a loving God who sends people to eternal hellfire) is above believing in fictions.

Ultimately, though, it's a completely open point -- despite how much it's taken even on faith by thinkers to be otherwise -- that truth is a flower that grows in the same garden as goodness. To my thinking, an unfalsifiable possibility that makes you happier is infinitely better than a known truth that depresses you. In other words, the secret assumption of people who shout "truth at all costs" (myself among them) is that the more truth we uncover, the better off we'll be.
 
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