Dunno, doesn’t seem much different from explaining that you’re not an evil person, your genes and current programming made you do it, and that you can both let it go—and feel better—AND change your programming so that you don’t do similar things in the future.
Religion doesn’t have a monopoly on forgiveness, after all. In order for it to work, there has to be something there in the brain that supports that function. And nothing stops rationalists from using that same mechanism. Hell, it’s a critical part of a set of techniques I teach for altering one kind of “self-esteem”.
Now, the idea that there’s somebody who loves you no matter what, that might still be attractive. But if everybody learns at a young enough age how to use forgiveness and other methods to address their broken beliefs and judgments, they should already be in the habit of doing that.
Of course, good luck trying to teach forgiveness in schools… Religious folks will positively freak about that, because they DO think they’ve got a monopoly on the process.
“Dunno, doesn’t seem much different from explaining that you’re not an evil person, your genes and current programming made you do it, and that you can both let it go—and feel better—AND change your programming so that you don’t do similar things in the future.”
but people don’t get told that they can think along those lines. Unless they see a psychiatrist… The default is for people to suffer lots of bad feelings about themselves. Religion probably acts as a psychiatrist replacement for many people. In fact if you think about what a psychiatrist does, its a lot like having someone to pray to; though most psychiatrists are less judgmental than the Christian god.
“Now, the idea that there’s somebody who loves you no matter what, that might still be attractive. But if everybody learns at a young enough age how to use forgiveness and other methods to address their broken beliefs and judgments,”
since most people currently don’t do this, this is a good potential strategy for rooting religion out. Which was kind of the point of my original comment.
Dunno, doesn’t seem much different from explaining that you’re not an evil person, your genes and current programming made you do it, and that you can both let it go—and feel better—AND change your programming so that you don’t do similar things in the future.
Religion doesn’t have a monopoly on forgiveness, after all. In order for it to work, there has to be something there in the brain that supports that function. And nothing stops rationalists from using that same mechanism. Hell, it’s a critical part of a set of techniques I teach for altering one kind of “self-esteem”.
Now, the idea that there’s somebody who loves you no matter what, that might still be attractive. But if everybody learns at a young enough age how to use forgiveness and other methods to address their broken beliefs and judgments, they should already be in the habit of doing that.
Of course, good luck trying to teach forgiveness in schools… Religious folks will positively freak about that, because they DO think they’ve got a monopoly on the process.
“Dunno, doesn’t seem much different from explaining that you’re not an evil person, your genes and current programming made you do it, and that you can both let it go—and feel better—AND change your programming so that you don’t do similar things in the future.”
but people don’t get told that they can think along those lines. Unless they see a psychiatrist… The default is for people to suffer lots of bad feelings about themselves. Religion probably acts as a psychiatrist replacement for many people. In fact if you think about what a psychiatrist does, its a lot like having someone to pray to; though most psychiatrists are less judgmental than the Christian god.
“Now, the idea that there’s somebody who loves you no matter what, that might still be attractive. But if everybody learns at a young enough age how to use forgiveness and other methods to address their broken beliefs and judgments,”
since most people currently don’t do this, this is a good potential strategy for rooting religion out. Which was kind of the point of my original comment.
reasonable