Thanks for making a stab at it anyway!
You're welcome.
We all look for "The Answer" to this question at some point in our lives. I certainly did. And finding that there was no Answer didn't make me invent one which would make me feel comfortable.
Hold on, now. There's a huge difference between saying "Science can't establish that there's an answer" and "There is no answer". Again, the question is one for philosophy, not science. I imagine many people aren't looking for "the one answer", anyway, but consider the thought about the question as the reason for asking it in the first place. Something like "it's the journey, not the destination", or what have you.
It certainly is, just as believing in any wishful thinking is nice.
Yes, and that's the point. It's nice to believe that sort of thing, as compared to facing the idea that death is the end of everything you are. That's a bit of a bummer.
Name one that isn't idiotic.
I named two. Whether you choose to view them as idiotic or not isn't relevant, which I'll get to momentarily.
As there is no reason at all to think their wishful thinking in this regard is any different from wishful thinking in general, yes they are idiotic.
No, they aren't, and it's obvious you can't see why. These beliefs are, from a scientific perspective, baseless. There is no evidence indicating that any of these things reflect a quantifiable reality. That in no way makes them idiotic, however, because their accuracy has no bearing on why these beliefs have value to our species.
You have to understand, DD, I agree with you in principle. I would like evidence of claims before I put stock in them. I also have real issues with people who deny the reality of the evidence (in cases like Young Earth Creationists, for instance), simply because they expect the universe to function according to their beliefs. However, I appreciate why people could have faith in things that have no scientific explanation, and I don't fault them for it.
Think about it for a minute. Why
would otherwise sensible people believe in such things? For many of them, it's because
not believing in them is simply too difficult. Death is a terrifying reality for most of us, and the notion that we will simply cease to exist is too much to face at times. From what I've seen, people engage in certain irrational behaviours that allow them to function despite their impending doom. We learn to ignore what awaits us, to forget it most of the time. If we couldn't do this, most of us would have great difficulty functioning.
I believe that is precisely what religion is. These beliefs are a manifestation of our brains protecting us from stress. People created mythologies to explain the world, to make sense of things they couldn't understand, and to give them something to look forward to after their physical lives ended. All of this as a form of survival mechanism makes perfect sense to me. In fact, I'd argue that being able to believe in spite of the lack of evidence could be an evolutionary advantage; no matter what the individual discovered about the world, he or she could still believe in a higher power, reincarnation, the afterlife, etc., and gain the benefits of both belief and knowledge.
