We think we are scientists discovering truth when we are really just lawyers who are arguing for positions we arrived at by other means, wrote Jonathan Haidt, and if you doubt this, he continued, just look around and realize we think this is the case with everyone else, and everyone else thinks the same thing of us.
We are NOT primarily rational beings, is the point Haidt is making, despite the attempt by theologians to addict people to the logical porn of philosophy while condemning all those who prefer sex to sophistry. Sex, in fact, is no less an addiction to the same endorphins released in our brains from arguing we are "right" about something, whether that something is God, our political positions, the superiority of our sports team, whether our pessimism is more warranted than optimism, and virtually everything else.
God, in this respect, is an idea that addicts us to our own endorphins as much as any video game or gambling addiction (which Pascal's wager capitalizes on), or even porn, sex, or heroin addiction, etc.
And yet, even as every other addiction we can think of, from drugs to opioids and so on, is considered to be a "disease," and thus a "vice," our society champions an addiction to God or a religion as the greatest virtue of all!
In this respect, religion and god are just ways of addicting us to the very same "organ" as every other addiction, even as it claims that being addicted to the one between our legs is evil, even though it produces all life, while claiming that being addicted to the one between our ears is the greatest good, even as our "beliefs" have started every war and driven us to create technologies that allow us to destroy the planet 100 times over, but has yet to find a cure for the common cold.
We are NOT primarily rational beings, is the point Haidt is making, despite the attempt by theologians to addict people to the logical porn of philosophy while condemning all those who prefer sex to sophistry. Sex, in fact, is no less an addiction to the same endorphins released in our brains from arguing we are "right" about something, whether that something is God, our political positions, the superiority of our sports team, whether our pessimism is more warranted than optimism, and virtually everything else.
God, in this respect, is an idea that addicts us to our own endorphins as much as any video game or gambling addiction (which Pascal's wager capitalizes on), or even porn, sex, or heroin addiction, etc.
And yet, even as every other addiction we can think of, from drugs to opioids and so on, is considered to be a "disease," and thus a "vice," our society champions an addiction to God or a religion as the greatest virtue of all!
In this respect, religion and god are just ways of addicting us to the very same "organ" as every other addiction, even as it claims that being addicted to the one between our legs is evil, even though it produces all life, while claiming that being addicted to the one between our ears is the greatest good, even as our "beliefs" have started every war and driven us to create technologies that allow us to destroy the planet 100 times over, but has yet to find a cure for the common cold.
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