My curiosity is drawn to the nature of the benefits the woman expects. Does she get a high from the false belief or does her mental model inform her that the false belief will favorably affect external reality—e.g., she will have friends more likely to behave charitably towards her than atheist friends will be?
A very intelligent conservative Christian once gave me the latter as a primary reason she become a Christian. OTOH, Garcia thought that the former was usually the motive in the population he interacted (which was very different from the population at large though).
If all of her friends believe in God, she may very possibly be correct that her friends will be more friendly with her if she believes in God rather than not believing, and especially if she believes in God rather than going from believing in God to not believing in God.
And finding an entirely new set of friends would be a rather high cost for some people as well.
My curiosity is drawn to the nature of the benefits the woman expects. Does she get a high from the false belief or does her mental model inform her that the false belief will favorably affect external reality—e.g., she will have friends more likely to behave charitably towards her than atheist friends will be?
A very intelligent conservative Christian once gave me the latter as a primary reason she become a Christian. OTOH, Garcia thought that the former was usually the motive in the population he interacted (which was very different from the population at large though).
If all of her friends believe in God, she may very possibly be correct that her friends will be more friendly with her if she believes in God rather than not believing, and especially if she believes in God rather than going from believing in God to not believing in God.
And finding an entirely new set of friends would be a rather high cost for some people as well.