In this piece from his Substack (click headline below to read), Sam Harris tells us that we’re “losing the information war with ourselves.” What he means by that is our attention to social media rather than “real journalism” is not only driving us mad. but pushing aside the things we really need to be happy, and fracturing American society as well. His main point is to tell us to get off the Internet except for that real journalism, and do things for ourselves. It’s a bit of self-help, but I think it’s quite useful, and Sam himself, having abandoned social media (except for his Substack) and being heavily into meditation, clearly takes his own advice.
A few excerpts. First, his thesis:
Since deleting my Twitter account nearly three years ago, I’ve generally ignored social media. However, in the last 48 hours I’ve spent enough time studying the response to Kirk’s death to be further convinced that platforms like X and TikTok are destroying our culture. No metaphor does the problem justice. I’ve compared social media to a dangerous psychological experiment, a hallucination machine, a funhouse mirror, a digital sewer—but nothing captures the ludicrous insults, moral injuries, and delusions that millions of us avidly produce and consume online. If the medium is the message, the message is mass psychosis—and it will send us careening from one political emergency to the next. The fact that some of the most deranging and divisive content is being created (or amplified) by foreign adversaries—and that we have literally built and monetized their capacity to do this—beggars belief. We are poisoning ourselves and inviting others to poison us.
More disturbing still, the effects are self-reinforcing. Part of the reason for this is algorithmic—these platforms have been designed to raise the amplitude on our tribal hatreds, because this maximizes engagement. But the algorithms in our brains are little better: Seeing another person (or what appears to be another person) gleefully dance on a slain man’s grave, it is easy to conclude that they represent some significant faction of American society—and to feel the outrage appropriate to such a terrible discovery.
Sam goes on to criticize Trump for his ham-handed response to Kirk’s murder, acting like what he is: an angry man making an angry tweet. Sam adds this:
It was the behavior of an arsonist, pretending to be a firefighter. Of course, some will insist that this observation just heaps more fuel on the fire. But serious criticism of President Trump and Trumpism isn’t part of the problem of hyperpolarization in America—no more than serious criticism of the far Left is.
. . . As for the frequency and character of political violence in America, we shouldn’t delude ourselves about it. It isn’t at all a common form of murder, nor is it more prevalent on the Left.
When I read stuff like this, I wonder why so many people seem to despise Sam. After all, he’s a lot saner than many people i know, like those who aren’t morally sane by Sam’s lights:
No morally sane person, Left or Right, supports political assassination—or feels anything but horror over it.
Sadly, we still hear stuff like this: ” I’m done with Kirk. He’s dead, good.” Some people apparently not only are full of hatred, but draw an audience by broadcasting it over the Internet. This is what Sam is talking about.
And his remedy? Well, he proffers four:
Get off social media.
Read good books and real journalism.
Find your friends.
And enjoy your life.
All I can say is that I try my best to do these things. I still must run this website, which takes a lot of time, but nearly every evening I spent about two hours reading good books. (The latest is Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively, which won the 1987 Booker Prize. It’s a wonderful book and I recommend it highly.) I speak to my friends daily (some I call almost every day, though my Chicago friends seem to be out of town most of the time. As for being happy, well, when people ask me that I answer, “Of course not: I’m a Jew. The highest I can go is complacency.”
But Sam is right.
Sam makes a fair point, but how does one find “real journalism” these days? Which mainstream media can be trusted to be at least attempting to be fair and unbiased?
In practice one has to curate one’s own set of reliable sources, and many of those are on Substack, and a good way of finding out about them is recommendations on Twitter (amongst all the noise).
Yes, I was thinking the same thing – where do we find real journalism?
In the UK, I used to rely on the BBC to keep up to date (and it’s free), but it’s really gone downhill lately. Any recommendations from readers of good, honest journalism?
The Economist?
Indeed, long my favorite.
Agreed. A couple years ago due to growing frustration I switched back to getting my news in physical copy. The Economist has been my choice since then (along with a subscription to The Atlantic) and I remain quite happy with that although I rarely read all of either. No social media. No online news. Check the internet once a day for 20 minutes or so by going to a few websites (with WEIT being one of those few). But most of my free time has gone back to reading books (physical ones) and that, along with generally opting out from the current culture, has brought endless joy back to my life.
In the last year I have resumed buying a physical copy of the Economist. What I really notice in each issue is that they cover a breadth of international issues that receive little coverage on sites like the BBC or ABC (here in Australia), two sites that otherwise are my first choice for reliable news.
The Chicago Tribune used to come close, but I haven’t read it since I left Chicago many years ago. So I really can’t speak for it now.
Maybe there is no one place to get balance. Maybe your best bet is to choose something mildly left and something mildly right.
Yes, I’d like Harris to list a few outlets that he considers “real journalism.”
I’ve bounced around for what online news web site I favor. Right now it’s Associated Press News as it has been ranked low in bias and high in accuracy. And it does not force me into paid subscriptions. https://apnews.com
The news section of the WSJ is good, and, if you’re aware of biases like the NYTs, you take that into account or else read about stuff, like science, that isn’t affected by their biases.
I don’t think it’s possible any longer to find a single source of “real journalism”. Writers and editors here and there can be found, for sure. That is, until their good journalistic qualities are discovered, then, of course, they usually get fired. I wish I could put a sarcasm tag there, but I feel it isn’t very sarcastic and isn’t far from the truth.
I used to have faith in the fourth estate; as nasty, deceitful, and ignorant as it has always been, there did seem to be many sources of (more-or-less) ‘reliable’ news one could turn to. Journalists once took pride in avoiding truthiness and they took pains to not editorialize the news. Those days are long gone, if they ever really existed; I am well aware of the golden-age fallacy and that I am not immune.
There’s ALWAYS MY COLUMN friends – even if the Boss here doesn’t always give me top billing. (ahem!) 😉
First here, variously syndicated at TheModerateVoice, forbes, alternet, and even various Jewish Newses (when I’m not being too atheist).
https://democracychronicles.org/author/david-anderson/
enjoy!
D.A.
and my loudmouthery continues, daily at https://x.com/DavidandersonJd
My main source is still the BBC, but I tend to disregard anything about Hamas, trans, or climate change. That stuff is not necessarily wrong, but usually biased.
+1
Well said. I loved Sam’s article as well. It’s almost convinced me to get off social media. (Instagram is the last account remaining). Thanks for sharing.
One could read the available sources and try to put something together, knowing their respective biases. Historians do this and teach it to baby historians 🙂
Dear Jerry, I am very grateful for the work you do.
Thank you
Well said.
I don’t think Harris’s digression against Trump belongs in that piece. It’s indicative of his bias that he felt necessary to include it. I am sure it shows he toes the Party line. Also, he, like others, alludes to “right-wing” (no one says conservative anymore) violence, but doesn’t provide examples. I’d really like to know what he has in mind.
Dr Brydon, did you read Harris’s piece? I suspect you didn’t because…well….. The piece in on the malign influence of social media on our culture and political discourse. This is what he said about the Orange Toddler;
Harris’ argument is that social media is largely to blame for this problem and is even in the title; “Log Off”.
All I can say is that if what Harris said is nothing more than a “party line, then it is one of the rarest of all beasts; one that is true.
Yes. Trump is Commander in Discord when it comes to the divisive rhetoric from the far right. He should be the Commander in Conciliation, as George Bush was (particularly after the 9/11 attacks when it came to blunting attacks against Muslim Americans), or as Obama was.
Thanks for this timely post.
I don’t think Sam Harris toes any “Party line.” If I have my own issues with some of Sam Harris’ public pronouncements they are subsumed in my recognition of his generally good sense. (But I still think he’s misguided about…)
Regarding: ‘As for being happy, well, when people ask me that I answer, “Of course not: I’m a Jew. The highest I can go is complacency.”’ — this resonates with me, though I can think of people who aren’t Jewish with that attitude. I mean, I’m a (Mischling) but it’s paternal, so my Jew-ness is sufficient for some, but not for others. Others, not Jewish, just reality-oriented people, same attitude.
And I’m trying to think of another word besides — complacency — to describe those eddies of contentment and joy that sometimes grace my life. I will forgo, for now, description of the flip side of that.
Isn’t it awesome when you can ask a serious question, and then answer it in your very next sentence? Fundamentalists of all stripes (religious, politically right-wing, politically left-wing) don’t want to hear/listen to/respect anyone who doesn’t share their particular flavor of insanity. And Sam Harris, among others, doesn’t. Hence, the hatred directed toward him.
The Left loved Sam when he was criticizing Christianity. They started hating him when his critical attention turned to the vastly worse religion of Islam. The final blow was when Sam called Islam “the Motherlode of bad ideas” on Bill Maher’s show.
In addition to Sam’s 4, here’s a fifth: slow down! Reaction isn’t reasonable. Nor does reaction help a nation mourn properly for the loss of a citizen.
“No morally sane person, Left or Right, supports political assassination—or feels anything but horror over it.”
Not so sure this is really true as a general statement (even if it might be fitting in the context of Kirk’s death). It is only a matter of how far the politician or political figure has gone. Von Stauffenberg’s assassination attempt is officially commemorated every year in Germany on July 20, and he is widely viewed as a hero for his actions. (Of course, there are some who would even condemn von Stauffenberg’s attempt.)
In other words, somewhere between Kirk and Trump on the one hand — who in my view certainly should not be assassinated despite their reprehensible rhetoric and, in Trump’s case, actions — and Hitler, Kim Jung Un and Pol Pot on the other, to name but a few, political assassination becomes (or may become) desirable and/or laudable.
I would very much like to see Putin assassinated, e.g., as ousting him by other means currently seems out of the question. Granted, there is always the very uncomfortable and unanswerable question of what might follow such a decapitation.
Since you make it a point to bring up Putin, specifically who would you like to see assassinate Putin? Some 22 year-old putatively mentally-ill Exceptional American?
Assassinating Putin may be the answer to his extending a military alliance westward in Europe between the fall of the Soviet Union and January 2022, and Russia and/or China establishing a military alliance with Mexico and/or Canada or any other country in the Americas subject to the Monroe Doctrine. (IIRC, the Monroe Doctrine also addressed the idea of the U.S. similarly not imposing itself in foreign countries outside the Americas.)
In relation to “Real Journalism,” on at least one of his podcasts Sam Harris perfunctorily dismissed domestic criticisms of U.S. foreign policy regarding Russian security concerns as “Russian talking points.” Re: Hilary Clinton’s “useful idiots” pearl of wisdom, as if both locutions constitute rational argument and response.
Perhaps Putin should go into the Venezuelan maritime boating business or go on an open-air “Prove Me Wrong” tour of U.S. universities.
“Some 22 year-old putatively mentally-ill Exceptional American?”
Well, no, though I like the quip. 🙂
I suppose ideally it would be someone from Putin’s inner circle who would like to steer Russia toward more reasonable policies.
A big problem with changing a longstanding kakistocracy is that the rot runs throughout the whole apparatus, including the plausible successors.
All too true.
“In other words, somewhere between Kirk and Trump on the one hand — who in my view certainly should not be assassinated despite their reprehensible rhetoric…”
Kirk’s rhetoric is only “reprehensible” when taken out of context. Of course he was a conservative Christian, and believed many things I don’t. But I’ve spent a few days fact-checking some of the awful opinions credited to him, and so far they all seem to be misrepresentations.
He would probably have found common ground with many of us here. Of course, we’d have collectively winced when he touted the Bible! But I don’t think he was a bad guy. Certainly not the racist, homophobic monster some make him out to be.
I saw Sam speak one evening recently in Seattle. It was on the same day that Kirk was shot, and there was palpable tension in the auditorium and, clearly, in Sam. Security was evident though not obtrusive. Part of Sam’s newsletter that Prof Coyne did not reproduce describes how some of those close to Sam urged him to cancel his tour for fear of violence.
I had the sense that the talk itself had been reorganized a bit; he mentioned that he had anticipated having some sort of discussion or dialogue segment, but in the end it was only his talk. Sam claimed that this change was only because he had “too much to say”. Perhaps.
As for the substance of the talk, well, it was classic Sam, to a certain degree revising his greatest hits. Generally, he had many well taken criticisms of both the the Right (pretty obvious) and the Left (very well targeted), social media, organized religion, and other unsurprising topics. There was a substantial segment on Gaza, Israel, the Holocaust, and yes, the perils of Islam. He concluded with a segment reflecting his meditative side, a bit more in depth than the “enjoy your life” exhortation of the newsletter but in a similar vein. An enjoyable talk despite having a slightly awkward feel because of the circumstances.
I confess to being an admirer of Sam and this was not my first time attending one of his presentations. I find myself in agreement with him an almost unsettling amount of the time, but then I too find him saner than most people I come across. I would urge anyone who has the opportunity to see him speak to do so.
I’m going to need that list of Sam Harris “Real Journalism” outlets, and of course the array of criteria delineating said journalistic reality.
“platforms like X and TikTok are destroying our culture.” Culture destruction was well underway before social media made an appearance—volumes have been written on it. Moreover, I can’t help but wonder whether “our culture” here is akin to the left’s frequent use of “our democracy.”
“Seeing another person (or what appears to be another person) gleefully dance on a slain man’s grave, it is easy to conclude that they represent some significant faction of American society—and to feel the outrage appropriate to such a terrible discovery.” True, but I see no attempt by Sam to wrestle with how significant this faction might be, both in numbers and in its presence in our institutions. Never mind, it must just be our lizard brains reacting. Back to a good book.
“No morally sane person, Left or Right, supports political assassination—or feels anything but horror over it.” It isn’t true, but he can inoculate himself with the circularity of “Well, if they support it then they aren’t morally sane.”
“It isn’t at all a common form of murder, nor is it more prevalent on the Left.” True, but polling data are clear that the left, especially among the young, is far more supportive of political violence. Perhaps Sam is unaware; “real” journalists don’t cover this much.
“Kirk’s killer is now in custody, and from the details that have been released, he doesn’t appear to be the far-Left golem conjured by the Right. He is a Utah native who grew up hunting with his Republican parents.” Of course, we do not yet know, but this is the take one gets, again, from reading “real journalism.”
Does social media exacerbate people’s worst tendencies? Definitely. Would many benefit from less exposure? Certainly. But the voice it gives to the otherwise voiceless is a valuable tradeoff. Just as an earlier generation of priests worried about what the rabble would do with the fruits of the printing press, today’s secular high priests and gatekeepers wrestle with the breakdown in their narrative and the loss of control.
Welcome to democracy and people as they are rather than what we wish them to be.
The irony is palpable. Sam’s “real journalism” told him the killer was not a “far left golem” when the killer’s own mother told reporters he had become radicalized by the far left and was gay with a trans male lover. Sam’s “real journalism” told him there was no more advocacy for assassinations from the left than the right, when recent polls prove otherwise – and by very large margins. Maybe Sam needs to start questioning his sources, as it is all too easy to end up in a self-reinforcing bubble.
I agree with Sam. I worry that we have entered a phase where every public person will need an entourage of security agents. Public persons will still make appearances, but by retreating into the security fortresses that will surround them, they will become inaccessible and cease to be public.
Read Penelope Lively’s MoonTiger in 1996 and loved it!
The blowback against Sam Harris in the last 5 years (for objecting to Trump, mainly) is curious to me. (witnesseth Exhibit A: Gad Saad who for some reason HAAATES him!)
Sam has talked a lot about how addictive and destructive social media can be (as a recent twitter addict, like a crack who-ah, I’m… familiar). This seems wise.
Sam rallies against the scourges of our times: the retarded right and mentally ill left.
Plus: it is emotionally destabilizing to consider that the last decade has seen more social change than… (sorry boomers)… even the hallowed and hairy 1960s. This is the hill I die on. Prove me wrong WEIT friends….
There are few people whose worldview is more aligned to mine as Sam. I intellectual clinch with him in many areas – as I bet PCC(E) and our friends Pinker and Dawkins do. There’ll always be slight differences – reasonable gentlemen/ladies can quibble.
But the gravity of Sam, our boss, and my own modest column… is that magical thinking is wrong, empirically wrong, and can be extremely harmful.
This goes for the Middle East, effin’ Trump, general ethics, “God”, lying, etc.
for a change… that’s all I have,
D.A.
NYC
— no. wait….
https://x.com/DavidandersonJd
…took the bait & clicked on your X link. Intriguing. I’m tempted to join X just to see all of JKR’s trenchant commentary but I can’t settle on a name & I’m behind in my reading anyway.
“No morally sane person, Left or Right, supports political assassination—or feels anything but horror over it.” – Sam Harris
What about tyrannicide? Should I feel horror over Stauffenberg’s attempt to kill Hitler or the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich (1942 in Prague)? I don’t think so.
However, the murder of Charlie Kirk is neither a morally justified case of tyrannicide nor a case of tyrannicide at all, because he was not a tyrant like Hitler and Heydrich.
I’m sorry, but the way I see it, Sam Harris is a massive liar. Going away from social media is all well and good. I haven’t used Twitter for longer than he did, and I’ve been on and off from the Fediverse (and I’ve been on a break now, including during these ghastly events). But where exactly is the real journalism? Where exactly is the normal mass media that doesn’t send out stochastic terrorism every other day, that doesn’t use inflammatory language against Trump and his closest supporters? That doesn’t call every straight white man, that didn’t prostate himself in front of “social justice”, a racist, sexist, homophobic, Nazi, white supremacist, deplorable scum? Where do I find this magic real journalism?
I’m sorry, but Harris is deadly wrong. The man dancing gleefully on a grave IS a wide spread real world problem, they do represent a big portion of society. The shooter was an average boy, from an average republican family. And it seems quite clear that he got radicalized in an university. That happened in the real world, by real teachers and real colleagues that started these radical sentiments. That is a real world problem that we’re not gonna fix by burying or heads in dirt, and pretending the insane haven’t taken over the asylum.
It’s all well and good to demand of people to ignore what is going on, when someone like Sam is himself either completely blind to the radicalism that surrounds him, or is aware and favors it, and his ideological enemies ignoring it would just work in his favor.
This is why, even though I admired Harris long ago, and I still find value in his Moral Landscape, I think Sam is a liar now, most of all to himself, by closing his eyes to the reality that the left has long abandoned everything it claimed it valued.
While I used to listen to his podcast, I’ve stopped listening to episodes that have to do with AI because the topic bores me, as the exact same things get said and repeated all the time, and I’ve stopped listening to episodes in which he mentions Trump or MAGA. And guess what the effect was? I’ve stopped listening to Sam altogether. This is all he’s been talking about for a long time now. He’s not the solution, or a part of the solution. He’s part of the problem. He’s just as obsessed as the people he criticizes, while pretending he’s above it all because he quit Twitter or something.
And to conclude, yes it is absolutely the left that has driven the political violence, and it is what has stopped me long ago from calling myself on the left, or even liberal anymore. Now these labels shame me for ever having used them. And anyone claiming the inflammatory environment isn’t the fault of the left, is a liar. You can’t have popular actors demand the bombing of the White House, universities burning over a Milo speech, antifa rioting in countless cities, any many other such incidents, all of which defended by “real journalism”, and then claim the left didn’t being us to this disaster.
Melissa Hortman, Democratic member of the Minnesota House of Representative, former speaker of that House, and her husband were murdered in their home in a political killing in June 2025.
As I understand it, he was at uni for 1 semester and then went to trade school.
I think you have been led astray by whatever sources you use.
This article from the definitely-not-left Cato Institute gives some numbers that corroborate what liberals like me have always known, Politically Motivated Violence Is Rare in the United States.
A graph from the article.
https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/8LVlq/with-logo.png
Note the difference in politically motivated murders between murderers that are ideologically on the right versus those on the left. 63% by those on the right and 10% by those on the left.
Even when limiting the time frame to “Since 2020” (another table in the article) right aligned murderers have murdered more than twice as many people as left aligned murderers.
Oh, and Sam did not recommend that people stick their head in the sand. He recommended that they stop immersing themselves in sources that tend to detach people from reality.
1) I talked about political violence, you changed the topic to political murders. You think I wouldn’t notice? You think the only way to create terrorism is through killings? You think university professors bashing people on the head and breaking their skull with a bike lock is perfectly fine as long as the person didn’t die? You think summers full of riots don’t matter to the well being of a society? You think celebrating drug addicts and violent criminals as saints sends a welcoming message to people? You think you’ll achieve peace and a prosperous society in this way?
2) When I accuse of Sam sticking his head in the sand, it’s because he is intentionally ignoring the rot on the left, not that he’s not using Twitter or whatever. The insane taking over the asylum is a reference to the left and what they’ve done to society. Sam is obsessed about Trump, but he completely missed the part where Trump is a symptom of the left-wing rot. The only reason he popped up, is because the left lost touch with reality to such a degree, that society felt the need for a massive correction. And they voted Trump of all people. As long as the likes of Sam Harris ignore these facts, and keep going forward in this direction, not only will Trump-like figures keep reappearing, but people who are actually worse then him will pop up and win. J.D. Vance is already arguably worse than Trump, at least ideologically he seems to be categorically more right-wing than Trump is, and he is more capable politically than him. Do YOU want a J.D. Vance in office for 8 years? Or maybe do you consider it’s time that the left stops lying its ass off, stops promoting political violence, and starts going back to the principles it so easily abandoned, that it at least claimed to care about 15-20 years ago? Cause I want to see a left wing that is actually not racist, that is actually for free speech, that is actually calm and civil, that is actually reasonable and open to discussion, that is actually doing and promoting good science. I forgot when I last saw that. “God” knows the right isn’t really any of that. But right now they are actually fucking closer in most of those aspects (definitely not the science part. “Jesus” is science ever fucked right now). And I hate the left for screwing things this bad, that this has become the status-quo now.
If you think politically motivated murder, which is what the article/study you didn’t read is about, isn’t political violence then I’ve wasted time trying to talk to you.
Have a good day.
And if you don’t understand that substituting “murder” or “assassination” for “violence” can be a rhetorical sleight-of-hand to avoid accountability for the larger category of violence, then you wouldn’t be a valuable conversation partner on this matter.
“And anyone claiming the inflammatory environment isn’t the fault of the left, is a liar. You can’t have popular actors demand the bombing of the White House, universities burning over a Milo speech, antifa rioting in countless cities, any many other such incidents, all of which defended by “real journalism”, and then claim the left didn’t being us to this disaster.”
Odd, then, that the FBI (and the DoJ more broadly) have found over and over since at least 1990 that right-wing violence and terrorism is far and away more common and a greater threat than left-wing violence. Heather Cox Richardson noted yesterday that the 2024 report from the DoJ documenting this has now been taken off of the DoJ website, apparently because the facts contradict the narrative coming from the Administration.
But the FBI / DoJ / Deep State were rife with wokeness and thus virulently anti-American.
/s
I love that some of the replies literally went: “actually, the left investigated itself, and concluded that the left did nothing wrong”. Brilliant. Meanwhile, you didn’t say jack shit about all the antifa rioting, celebrities directly asking for Trump’s assassination, etc. Things we’ve seen everywhere on the news for the last decade. These aren’t fringe elements of the left. They ARE the left. Democrat politicians literally bailed antifa members out of prisons. Meanwhile, your “statistics” include the most fringe people that have nothing to do with mainstream right-wing politics into “right-wing political violence”, and then you pretend it’s the Charlie Kirk level conservatives that are guilty. You have no clue how skewed the statistics are being tracked. You’ll find sovereign citizen types marked in the right-wing category, when they’re so far removed from the normal political discourse, that this categorization makes little sense. Or you’ll see anarchists being put there, despite a good portion of them being anarcho-communists, and again they don’t actually fit either the left or right-wing labels. I mean for fucks sake, people are still running around desperate to claim this kid was right-wing. And you think your statistics accurately track this? Fuck statistics. Open your god damned eyes! Look at the real world, not a piece of paper written by god knows who, who has god knows what biases. As people keep saying everywhere, when George Floyd died, there were riots, and people feared for their lives and businesses. When Charlie Kirk died, people had vigils. There’s a real contrast there. I still hope that nothing happens, but I’ve yet to hear of a riot happening in his name. But I guess you take 1984 as a manual, and you don’t trust your lying eyes. I should know better than to try to talk to someone who still sticks to these labels like a cult member.
I agree, you should know better. Maybe you should stop now.
Re: “the things we really need to be happy”
I’m assuming that most people reading these comments are very committed in their souls to naturalism or agnosticism, but I would like to share the view point that trying to be sustainably “happy” without an experienced relationship with God is going to be futile. How will you do it?
The good news is that God actually does exist and loves us. It is our rebellion and wrong doing that have separated us from Him; but He calls for people to return by faith and repentance. He will be found by those who seek Him!
I am asking you to provide evidence that God exists–eveidence that a naturalist will find convincing. If not, it’s useless to base your life on such a supernatural being. What would convince you that there is no God
Finally, which God are you touting: Yahweh, the Christian God, the Muslim God, the beings of L. Ron Hubbard?
If you don’t come up with some good evidence for your god, I am not going to allow you to proselytize on this site. See #5 in the posting rules here.
I agree with our host about the need for evidence. I also try to be generous to folks like Travis. It could be empirically true that on average humans can’t be as sustainably happy without religious belief in a god as they would be if they adopted a religious belief in a god. That still wouldn’t be evidence that “God actually does exist blah blah blah”.
Also have to admit it’s a bit of a let-down to conclude that natural selection didn’t quite finish the job on our brains, and seems to have left us with this primitive neurological link between our imaginary fear of surveillance and our practical sense of contentment.
I guess one solution is to give in and believe in belief, but that seems dishonest. I think a better solution is learning to embrace the inevitability and finality of death, and live accordingly before it finds us. To borrow from Travis, an experienced relationship with God is just a futile (and tbh juvenile) way to avoid reckoning with death. I like to think Canadians are a little bit ahead of the curve here because of our excellent ’70s pop music traditions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We%27re_Here_for_a_Good_Time_(Not_a_Long_Time)
Many people are happy while having no belief in God, even some religious ones 🙂
I think it is true that a belief in a god, as defined by some theology (and there are many), gives some people meaning, a code of conduct, and a reason to be good (or bad). The belief need be one that survives rigorous analysis. It need not even qualify as one that could be described as true or false.
It might well be that ‘How can we be happy without God?’ is the same as asking ‘How can we be happy?’