Is Christianity just cope? Is all life just cope?

[Wootah]

All life is cope for death.

Articles on this
https://clayjones.net/2022/07/teenage-depression/
https://clayjones.net/2013/08/if-youre- ... christian/

Is all life cope? Is Christianity just another form of cope?

[Miles]

I should think all religion helps people to cope with something if only the need for some to have a religion.

Religion indeed helps people cope with meaninglessness, not just death.

Religion also helps people cope with the idea of morality. It doesn't help everyone, but whatever helps, helps.

Fortunately, more and more people are finding their coping skills need not depend on the fictions of religion.


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[Wootah]

[Replying to Miles in post #11]

I don't think you understand the thread.

If they are coping then they have a religion. Those not coping are depressed and suicidal because they see reality as it is.

[Miles]

[Replying to Miles in post #11]

I don't think you understand the thread.

You may be right in my not understanding your thread, but I do understand JehovahsWitness's remark and Purple Knight's reply, which is what I was addressing. If people are coping it isn't necessarily because they have a religion. Millions upon millions of people cope every day without leaning on religion---take myself, son, and daughter as three examples---and as my accompanying chart shows it hasn't prevented the number of "nones" from dramatically increasing since 1940 by about 500%, all while Protestant Christianity affiliation, with its valuable coping tools, has dropped from about 64% in 1940 to about 35% in 1995---that's close to half. The "nones" must have something going for them that has eluded the Protestants. Could it be Protestant coping tools have gotten rusty? Hmm

If they are coping then they have a religion.

If this is true then I expect you have proof of this direct, invariable correlation. I await your evidence that only those who have a religion can cope.

Those not coping are depressed and suicidal because they see reality as it is.

All of them? The ability to see reality as it is, is the only reason non-coping people end up depressed and suicidal? You've got to be kidding. Right? So what do you suggest for those not coping and who can't buy into religion, live in fantasy land with Peter Pan and Wendy to avoid becoming depressed and suicidal?

.

[Wootah]

[Replying to Miles in post #13]

I suggest they examine themselves in light of what I said.

The best I can offer is that we are in an extremely unusual time in history of extraordinary wealth and that wealth can buffer a lot of people.

I don't think the need for God is so apparent but then again the rise of coping drugs rises and rises.

[JehovahsWitness]

... I do understand JehovahsWitness's remark and Purple Knight's reply, which is what I was addressing. If people are coping it isn't necessarily because they have a religion.

This does not address my point which is, that religion helps those people that have a need for religion, cope with that need.

I should think all religion helps people to cope with something if only the need for some to have a religion.

Ignoring any hopes and dreams for a yet unproven future world in which such people do not exist (which arguably are of interest only to those that share such beliefs, whether through childhood indoctrination and/or socio-familial pressure or otherwise), unless you suggesting that such people are fictitious, my point stands.

I wish you and your family an excellent day,

JW

[TRANSPONDER]

Where I have a problem is with the Religious mindset. Just as with the Last Days scenario. At best, it is a bothersome cult that spreads a tale as irritating as the endless end of world prophecies, but at worst you have a politically influential lobby that is willing to have a nuclear war to see it happen.

So here, though they aren't that dangerous, but are irritating, you have the vale of tears cult. Sure, there's a lot wrong (and we are going through a bad patch at the moment, but I can see the light at the end of the Thicktatorships, and the war of the extremists.

Yes, I never give up hope, and I would feel sorry for those who have no hope and do not want any because the only Hope is in an imagined next life. But I withhold sympathy because they try to tell us that we don't have hope either.

The world is not perfect; in one that was, traducing atheists would be a hate crime, with a hefty fine on conviction going into the secularist think - bank.

[Wootah]

[Replying to TRANSPONDER in post #16]

You have hope for an afterlife?

[TRANSPONDER]

[Replying to TRANSPONDER in post #16]

You have hope for an afterlife?

No. In fact, if I was offered one at passing over, I'd scroot the brochure, consider the options, with an afterlife to suit every individual before asking whether there was an opt - out clause.

"Sorry, no, this is eternal or nothing". before regretfully opting for oblivion. Because not even a psychotic could endure the Christian heaven for eternity unless their brain was removed and they ceased to be themselves anyway. So Oblivion (or Nirvana as the Buddhist call it) seems to be the prime option and atheism at most can say that IF there is an afterlife (there probably isn't) it's for Everyone and natural and no one religion has the ticket window. You know it makes no sense that one religion is given the keys to the afterlife.

So atheism at most supposes an afterlife that is not aligned with any religion and doesn't even have a god. That is if it is not equivalent to the Taoist Way or Buddhist Nirvana - the self vanishes and the bod is absorbed into the cosmic stuff whence it came. Atheists is some deep religious philosophy, let me tell you and you can do it without hours of cross -legged chanting too, which is only self -delusion to make these bods feel they are accomplishing something.

So the atheist option is that there ain't no afterlife on the evidence and nothing worth worrying about anyway. So it behooves us to make this life the best it can be, for ourselves and others, and the sooner we stop squabbling about illogicalities like politics, creeds, ruling dynasties, resource boundaries, banners, Dogmas and creeds and understand that we are together fighting to survive on a planet that would kill us all without a thought, and it is the finity of human life that gives it value at all. It is a strange concept, is it not, that an inevitable death is supposed to render human iife meaningless, but eternal existence supposedly has 'meaning'. What? Other than escaping the fear of death?

[Wootah]

[Replying to TRANSPONDER in post #18]

You literally have no evidence that dying is the end but you have lots of evidence that there is something outside the room you are in.

[TRANSPONDER]

[Replying to TRANSPONDER in post #18]

You literally have no evidence that dying is the end but you have lots of evidence that there is something outside the room you are in.

'Literally' is an interesting epithet. Amd I far wrong if it disguises a demand that we produce a negative with positive evidence? Rather like evilooshun is denied unless it happens 'before our werry eyes'? The logic of the disbelief is the usual - burden of proof on the afterlife claim. You have to produce convincing evidence of an afterlife (indicated by the rather loose 'something outside'. I won't let you equivocate to wangle an appeal to Unknowns.

Human desire for another life is not evidence. Human claims of messages (pretty much dubious if not dead wrong) are not evidence. Common human beliefs in Ghosts prove nothing, no more than Magical Beasts, magic spells and answered prayer.

Until you can produce credible proof of an afterlife, it remains a Faithclaim and nothing more.