Religion

Last edited Fri Dec 26, 2014, 09:17 PM - Edit history (1)

and believe because of that?

Basically, your explanation for all the brilliant believers in the world is that they're deluding themselves, for one reason or another. This would, evidently, include people such as Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, President Carter, and others. All these people, seemingly, have religious conviction not through some lived experience, intelligently interpreted, but simply because their minds are hobbled by self-delusion. That's what I take away from this OP, and your various explicating posts.

Nothing too condescending about that, no sir.

Perhaps your attempts to find out "what" and "why" various people believe in something beside or beyond the material world is stymied by your patronizing attitude toward them?

Just a thought.

Have you ever read William James, "The Varieties of Religious Experience?" There is an excellent edition with an introduction by Reinhold Niebuhr. If you're truly interested in the "what" and the "why" of religious belief you might want to start there.