This is beautiful. My only problem with it is that I can’t show it to anyone who’d be able to directly benefit from the cognitive dissonance, because they would be too offended about being compared to Nazis to glean anything useful.
I think you, perhaps, miss the ideal target audience of this post. What Yvain presents here is in effect a counterargument against people who argue that religion isn’t all that bad, even if it’s false, because of the other benefits it gives people. Anyone who is reduced to defending religion on these grounds is likely not a typical theist.
This isn’t an argument against theism, it’s “opiate of the masses” vs. “just say no to drugs”.
Hmm… I think the argument against objecting when people don’t dislike religion enough is a lot stronger than the argument against objecting when people actually spread false statements minimizing the harm from religion.
It’s kind of an argument without an audience, if you ask me. Nobody who cares about being wrong in the first place believes the thing that Yvain’s elaborate allegory is supposed to refute.
Really it amounts to a long and self-indulgent way to say something simple: “the comfortable lie ultimately does more harm than good”.
Then again, 2000 words about how “religion is like nazism!” is certain to win a lot of fawning and back-patting from, well, the sort of people who you see posting comments here.
This is beautiful. My only problem with it is that I can’t show it to anyone who’d be able to directly benefit from the cognitive dissonance, because they would be too offended about being compared to Nazis to glean anything useful.
I think you, perhaps, miss the ideal target audience of this post. What Yvain presents here is in effect a counterargument against people who argue that religion isn’t all that bad, even if it’s false, because of the other benefits it gives people. Anyone who is reduced to defending religion on these grounds is likely not a typical theist.
This isn’t an argument against theism, it’s “opiate of the masses” vs. “just say no to drugs”.
Sure. But I wouldn’t be inclined to try to convince those people because I’m inclined to tolerate tolerance of religion.
I think it’s bad to punish people for their tolerance, but it has to be OK to try to change their mind?
Hmm… I think the argument against objecting when people don’t dislike religion enough is a lot stronger than the argument against objecting when people actually spread false statements minimizing the harm from religion.
It’s kind of an argument without an audience, if you ask me. Nobody who cares about being wrong in the first place believes the thing that Yvain’s elaborate allegory is supposed to refute.
Really it amounts to a long and self-indulgent way to say something simple: “the comfortable lie ultimately does more harm than good”.
Then again, 2000 words about how “religion is like nazism!” is certain to win a lot of fawning and back-patting from, well, the sort of people who you see posting comments here.
Yeah, I think I’m just going to link it anyway. See what happens.
I’d be interested to see what kinds of results you get, from brittle and less brittle recipients of the link.
Posted to my personal journal here, so we’ll see if any angry comments turn up.
Besides, these comments are (currently) at the top of the page—if they’ve read all the way through, there’s no reason they couldn’t self-report =)