Will :
I agree with everything you said...but the title card over the video says "Belief is emotion not reason". I just think it's not a great take because it implies that there are separate modes of thinking called emotion and reason. Emotion couldn't exist without reason, if you think of emotion as a response we reach that response (even if subconsciously) by processing memories and predicting possible future outcomes in order to build that emotional conclusion. I do like that you mentioned being overwhelmed in our feelings, and I think that is a much better framing of what's going on, because it isn't that these folks are acting unreasonable, it's perhaps more accurate to say being overwhelmed is informing their reasoning process. To put this in perspective, a person with PTSD is not acting upon an "emotional belief", they are presumably acting within reason to something they have perceived as a threat. This is not to let religious folks off the hook or to imply they all have PTSD or something, it's just to point out that emotion and reason are inseparable, they evolved together as survival mechanisms, it's not just that neither can operate in a vacuum, neither of them exist in a vacuum. Lest anyone think I'm excusing the religious folks behaviour, I will also say that if your belief is a coping mechanism that is causing harm or creating justifications to ignore harms and their root causes, stop it, because you also have a moral responsibility to your fellow humans to challenge harmful beliefs, irrespective of how you arrived at those beliefs.
2026-09-11 20:02:39