What is the Meaning of Life Without Faith?

Do delusions give life a meaning?

Franz Stassen’s illustration of Odin Hanging on Yggdrasil (1920)

What is the meaning of life without faith?

Man created language and mathematics, philosophy and art, and he also created religion.

However, apparently terrified by the creative power of his mind, man decided to create gods capable of harnessing its incomprehensible power and worshipping the creations of his mind instead of himself. This gave rise to irrational belief systems, or religions, which, in the face of the power of the human mind, are like the mythical Tower of Babel erected in the desert by the ancients, which enraged the eternally jealous God Yahweh, who, in his paranoia, decided to prevent man from "reaching the heavens".

But what is an attempt to erect a tower on the sand compared to man's journey into space, landing on the moon, sending out probes and telescopes which have reached the limits of the solar system and thanks to which man, like Tolkien's Sauron through his all-seeing eye, has insight into the mysteries of the universe?

The God Yahweh was apparently afraid that when man really reached the heavens he would learn the truth, that the true heavens are free of all gods and that they are a place mortally hostile to life. The true heavens are a hell devoid of life.

But man, like Lucifer, had to rebel against the divine will in order to show the true power of his mind.

Is religious faith therefore necessary for man because it gives his life meaning and protects him from the fear of death?

In order to better understand what faith is, I will use quotations from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Archive.

Are delusions beliefs?

According to the doxastic conception of delusions (prevalent among psychologists and psychiatrists), delusions are belief states - an important diagnostic feature of delusions is that they can lead to action and that they can be reported with conviction and therefore behave like typical beliefs.

Delusions are beliefs held with conviction, despite little empirical support. According to the glossary in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV 2000, p. 765 and DSM-5 2013, p. 819), delusions are false beliefs based on incorrect inferences about external reality that persist despite evidence to the contrary.

Delusions are not described as false, but as 'fixed beliefs that cannot be changed in light of contradictory evidence'.

Very interesting in the light of religious beliefs is a case of delusion called Cotard's delusion, i.e. the delusion that one is dead or incorporeal. Here is a description of such a case:

"She repeatedly said she was dead and was adamant that she had died two weeks before the examination (i.e. around the time of her admission on 19.11.2004). She was very distressed and weeping as she talked about these beliefs and was very keen to find out if the hospital she was in was 'heaven'. When asked how she thought she died, LU replied: "I don't know how. Now I know I had the flu and I came here on 19 November. Maybe I died of the flu." Interestingly, LU also reported that she felt "a bit weird about my boyfriend. I can't kiss him, it feels weird - even though I know he loves me" (McKay and Cipolotti 2007, p. 353).

The Christian guru Jesus apparently also believed he was dead for three days. Are Cotard's delusions not a more plausible explanation for his case than the belief that he really died and rose again?

Delusions lead to self-deception:

If we agree ... that motivationally biased treatment of evidence is a key feature of self-deception (Mele 2001 and 2008), then delusional people can be said to deceive themselves if they treat the evidence at their disposal in a motivationally biased way or if they seek evidence in a motivationally biased way.

There is a view of the potential overlap between delusions and self-deception which states that the mere existence of delusions (which shows that doxastic conflict is possible) can help us to justify the traditional account of self-deception, according to which a person has two conflicting beliefs but is only aware of one of them because they are motivated to remain unaware of the other (McKay et al. 2005a, p. 314). This description derives from Donald Davidson's theory of self-deception (e.g. Davidson 1982 and 1985b). When I deceive myself, I believe the true thesis, but I act in such a way as to cause myself to believe the denial of that thesis.

Religious self-deception is that the believer will do anything to cause himself to believe the denial of reality.

Man, through Luciferian rebellion against the divine will, has reached the heavens through the divine power of the human mind. Some, however, prefer to self-deceive and live according to their own or others' delusions because they are apparently afraid of the truth of the Luciferian divine power residing in their own inherently ungodly minds or out of fear of the truth of eternal death.

Hail Lucifer!