Prayer and meditation can make you calm. Even a flickering on-off half belief in a supernatural power/God/Providence/Fate can help.
If you do really really do not believe in God, then you would have to have tremendous self-belief, which to some would appear to verge on narcissism or megalomania.
Perhaps the knowledge that you are doing your best for the best possible reasons can give you a kind of serenity.
To protect one from becoming infected by narcissism and megalomania, one could play with the idea of God.
An omnipotent, perfect and unique God is the most powerful entity conceivable by Man.
What could be more powerful?
The idea that He might exist.
What could be more powerful than that idea?
The idea that He does in fact exist.
What could be more powerful than this idea?
The idea that God is perfectly moral and will right all wrongs, in the end, because He is omnipotent.
What could be more powerful than that idea?
That He does exist, loves us and will look after us.
What is supremely comforting in this vale of tears and might make us try to do the right thing?
The belief in an afterlife in which every wrong is righted ie God.
You don't even need to completely believe in God to do this, that is the thing. Many atheists believe they have to really really believe in God to have the benefit of God.
Not at all. All you have to do is entertain the idea that He might exist and wish to help you, bearing in mind that the more you follow His commandments, the more likely He is help you.
If you do all the above, then you in theory carry the ability to calm yourself down with prayer and meditation and the periodic examination of your deeds and motives. This is actually quite Confucian, for Confucius said we should always go to bed every night examining our conscience and our behaviour.
If one has done wrong and knows one has done wrong, then a lot of our dialogues with God is a kind of bargaining, and that bargaining will inevitably be a promise to God to do better in the future if one has not been up to scratch in the past.
This can be surprisingly therapeutic, effective, cheap and self-improving.
Only Pride, a deadly sin, stops us from having the benefit of faith, I would venture to say.
Only God can protect Man from Woman and Feminism
http://www.dailynexus.com/2012-10-04/feminism-atheism-unholy-tenable-marriage-2/
Feminism and Atheism: An Unholy Marriage
2 comments:
It's a nice idea, but for me there is no clear evidence for the existence of God. It would be pleasant to have a heaven and a powerful being in the sky looking after us, but it's much more probable that when you die, that's the end of everything as far as your own consciousness is concerned.
I am not asserting that God exists. My post was about why it is beneficial to believe in God *even if He does not exist*.
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