Does Religion Provide Comfort to those Suffering?

Religion is commonly believed to provide some kind of psychological benefit to people’s lives. This may be true some of the time but the argument can easily be turned on its head. When something really really bad happens, an atheist can simply say “this is fucked”. They might learn from it or they might not not. Either way, they’re not burdened by the Goodness of the Fabulous Traffic Cop. The religious person must often try scramble in:

• explanations for why this was all part of some grand plan, that it was all best in the long run
• visions of a benevolent god hiding his face
• finding some fault (sin) in themselves (or others)
• thoughts about some ultimate reconciliation

Even if religious people believe in the infamous free will defence, this would be only an intellectual response. They’re still likely to have emotional struggles like those listed above.

Take an example, my high school teacher thought Hitler’s purpose was to show the world the extent of human depravity. My counterexample: I punch you in the face. I tell you “it was to show you of the kind of evil people are capable of, so that you’d be better prepared against some hypothetical other evils in the future”. Plus I’ve taught you the value of forgiveness-reconciliation-and-all-that. In other words I did you a great favour. Thank me!

Talk about religion providing meaning! People’s deepest emotions are trivialised; they become a farce, a puppet theatre with all the brutality but none of the fun. Here religion creates a pseudoproblem (since people must go on a frantic search on how to reconcile ultimate meaning with the terrible nature of what happened). This causes much discomfort and diverts focus from actually trying to prevent bad things.

All religions bar a few proclaim some kind of ultimate justice (even eastern ones), but this actually makes them less meaningful. When we try to reconcile the harshest of realities with justice, the meaning of those words becomes inverted in a religious system. Meanwhile, the Nihilist Atheist Boogeyman gets the greater spiritual peace! To paraphrase Hitchens in his debate with Boteach: would anyone actually want it to be true?