For my honors course, "Does God Exist?," we read a piece from Ludwig Feuerbach's book, "The Essence of Christianity." It's a chapter called, "The Essence of Religion Considered Generally," and it talks about what religion is and why religion exists. Essentially, says Feuerbach, religion is just reflective worship. We find our own best qualities, project them onto a diety, and worship that. We're just worshipping ourselves. Feuerbach says that is we can know a man's God, we can know the man; and also if we know the man, we know the man's God. It's a really interesting critique of God and religion. Whether or not I agree with it is a different issue. What I want to talk about is the ethics behind sharing that kind of information. Lets do a little thought experiment to get at what I want to say. Nothing here is meant to be taken literally.
Suppose I have a friend who has a devout belief that there are purple unicorns which reside just beneath the earth's surface. These unicorns have crafted laws of conduct, making my friend, who believes in them, a very upstanding person who is very content in the way she lives. She is indeed a very happy person due to this belief which she builds her life upon. Now suppose that I am an earth scientist who knows that such unicorns do not, in fact, exist. They are a figment of the imagination and I know with 100% certainty that they are not real. Should I share with my friend the findings I've made to prove with absolute certainty that these unicorns do not exist? I, because I know my friend very well, know that she will believe me when I present her with the evidence and she will thus abandon her belief in the unicorns, who are her source of happiness in this world.
Is it better for her to live in blissful ignorance which causes her to be a good person (not that she couldn't be a good person without the belief in unicorns, but they are where she gets her motivation and knowledge of conduct), or is it better for her foundation to be stripped away but she knows she's correct?
