A bad thing.

PZ Myers is an intelligent guy, what he writes is pretty much always worth reading even when it's tempting to find what he writes offensive.

His recent rant, Viewing Religion Through Panglossian Spectacles is a pretty direct attack on a common defence for supernatural beliefs and the points he makes are mostly fair (I'm not going to give a detailed critique, you can read it and reach your own conclusions), but as is so often the case he immediately ties religion into it as if he'd never met anyone else who is religious but doesn't feel the need to believe in the unobservable or the simply untrue.

I get tired of constantly repeating that religion doesn't imply theism and it doesn't imply supernaturalism either. I've repeated that many times.

But that's not quite how Myers phrased it:

Religion is a bad thing. It encourages people to believe in things that are not true. It really is as simple as that; we'd be better off if people valued truth over comfortable delusions.

That's the bit that really bugged me, of course I value truth, I'm a Quaker, that's what we do. I value truth because I have faith in it's merits. It's a consequence of religious upbringing that I have always been encouraged to value truth. Sure an irreligious upbringing could encourage the same values but that doesn't mean religion can't.

I tried thinking of things I believe that are not true but the testimonies are all too subjective, matters of opinion that whilst I'll stick to them with some zeal, no-one is to say if they are true or not. I don't think that can be believing in something that is not true.

Then there's that thing that early Quakers called that of God in Everyone, if you have plenty experience with Quakerism then you know what I mean and if you don't then I can't really explain without stumbling over semantics and getting lost in redundant mythology or something. A Friend called it "Shared Humanity", that'll do for the sake of discussion. I suppose this could be a kind of comfortable delusion, that's kind of worrying and I have to admit that maybe Myers is on to something. I don't think he is, I don't think my faith is comfortable and I don't think I'm deluded. If I am, I'd be grateful for someone telling me.