Letters to the Editor
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belief and pleasure
I mostly agree with thinkers like Dawson and Dennet, but one angle they don't get, that I think writers like Armstrong and Numbers do, is that there is pleasure to be had in the 'suspension of disbelief,' and that to deny such pleasures is, well, a bit puritanical. I don't believe in God any more than I believe in Santa, or gnomes, or aliens, but I get the occasional rush of pleasure from letting myself believe in such things, for moments, sitting in my backyard looking at a night sky. That pleasure is an evolutionary endowment, as some have pointed out. It is the pleasure we get from fiction, and movies. What kind of life would we have if we were not allowed to enjoy any idea that did not have substantial scientific evidence to support if?
To those who wonder where Zeus and Odin went, they are both still with us. Zeus became Dios, and Odin/Wotan became Gott, or God. Monotheists didn't reject the entire pagan pantheon, they just picked the most powerful as a keeper (and the pantheon has crept back in: satan, 'the Son,' madonna, archangels, and demons).