Why do we deliberately fool ourselves?

@fresco,
Quote:
Atheism can only be justified by the catalytic status of religion in promoting social pernicious, not by appeal to logic.


Would you please justify atheism, "by the catalytic status of religion in promoting social pernicious" (sic) ?

If you are looking for depth of argument, you might consider further that what I see as the key question....that of the nature of "existence" itself....pre-empts all discussion of "logic" or "evidence". If we assume (like Kant) that we have no direct access to any "external reality" we surely surely come to the phenomenological position that such "a reality" is at best a cognitive construction acquired through that interactive behavior which human's call "language". Further, we can argue that is the abstract persistence of "words" rather than the known dynamic flux of physical entities which serves our psychological requirement of a stable "world" relative to our human activities of planning and prediction. When you think about it, today's "tree in the yard" is only the same as yesterday's "tree in the yard" by virtue of its continued functionality denoted by the word "tree". In essence that "tree" is physically/biologically changing all the time. What persists is merely what functionally matters to particular human interlocutors. And what can be argued for the word/concept "tree" can be argued for "rock" or"self" or "God". Their existential status is as temporary as the value of tokens of monetary currency like dollar bills. And that value is determined by social functionality nothing more. Of course deists will tend to counter this by evoking a nebulousexceptional permanence to the status of their "God" but this is merely equivalent to a faith in "the Gold Standard".

This re-focusing of philosophical questions about ontology towards linguistic issues ( what Philosophers have called Die Kehre ...the turn) comes from the understanding that (post the rise of psychology) language does not so much represent "reality" as construct it. Those interested might refer to Rorty (Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature) as a seminal work.

Human beings are mortal, and we know it. Our sense of vulnerability and mortality gives rise to a basic anxiety, even a terror, about our situation. So we devise all sorts of strategies to escape awareness of our mortality and vulnerability, as well as our anxious awareness of it. This psychological denial of death, Becker claims, is one of the most basic drives in individual behavior, and is reflected throughout human culture. Indeed, one of the main functions of culture, according to Becker, is to help us successfully avoid awareness of our mortality. That suppression of awareness plays a crucial role in keeping people functioning--if we were constantly aware of our fragility, of the nothingness we are a split second away from at all times, we'd go nuts. And how does culture perform this crucial function? By making us feel certain that we, or realities we are part of, are permanent, invulnerable, eternal. And in Becker's view, some of the personal and social consequences of this are disastrous.

I would say that Becker has "overthought" the matter. My experience of history and culture is that there are no "one size fits all" explanations for human behavior.