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Notes -
Is religious faith necessary for maximizing happiness in a utilitarian framework? Consider these two thought experiments:
Two people are on a deserted island without food or water. Logic tells them that they will surely die, and there is nothing they can do. One of them has faith, the other does not. The one with faith will believe in an ultimately good final destination, and may even believe (in the face of reason) that God will find a way to save him if He so pleases. Of the two dying men, only one man can maximize his happiness in his last days. The atheist, even the most poetic and nostalgic atheist, could not be as happy without a fully fleshed out and trained belief in a final ultimately good hereafter. Maybe he will remember the good in his life, but human happiness is optimal only with hope and desire (the happy man is the man desiring to meet his wife, not the man who remembers the wife who passed away).
A man can bear extreme pain with positive feeling if he believes his pain is for a reason. For example, a soldier who knows that his death will save his loved ones and protect his community will die with a certain gladness, which exists in spite of and alongside the pain. Given this, consider a society in which everyone believes that all of their pain and misery is for an ultimate heroic purpose. This is a society in which everyone’s suffering is turned into something positive, and hence a society with greater sum total happiness.
I'm much more skeptical about the New Atheist "you can have all of the beauty with none of the falseness" view. Been that way for a while now. There are clearly places where a religious worldview would be more comforting.
But you are leaving out all of the downsides here by picking examples with very limited options. What about people who self-deny for no purpose at all, since many of the original reasons for those strictures no longer matter?
What of the people who say the words but receive scant comfort but can't seek alternatives because their culture expects them to be satisfied?
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