Transcription
I will accept your premise wholesale that religion is good, maybe even necessary for society. What do you want me to do if I just don't think it's true? Might just lie to my children, raise them believing something that I, I don't believe is the case.
Sure, you can act as if God exists, and that's what someone like Peterson says, that people do already. But ultimately, when push comes to shove and you really have to make a moral sacrifice, if you're not actually a Christian, you're probably not going to do the actually Christian thing.
I've been thinking a lot recently about stuff that is figuratively true but literally false. It's a bit like the gun is always loaded. It's not true that the gun is always loaded, but we're just going to pretend that it is, and that's much better, at least to a good society, if we really false but figuratively true. But you can't actually act like it's true, like if you ask me to put money on, like, opening the gun and seeing if there's a bullet.
So this only works in low stakes situations, using the act as if the gun is loaded thing. You do not point it at anybody. You do not leave it around the children. If a robber breaks into your house, you don't go downstairs with said gun acting as if it's loaded. Exactly, exactly right.