Is Religion An Irrational Optimism?

Is religion, like sports psychology, an irrational optimism which seeks to banish the skepticism that is so useful to science?

“This chapter is about the psychology of performance. We will dig down into the minds of top sportsmen and explore the relationship between mind and body under pressure. And we will arrive at the paradoxical conclusion that the thing that often separates the best from the rest is a capacity to believe things that are not true but which are incredibly effective.” (Michael Syed, Bounce, p. 144)

“It’s a disturbing idea, that depressed people see reality correctly while non-depressed people distort reality in a self-serving way. As a therapist I was trained to believe that it was my job to help depressed patients both to feel happier and to see the world more clearly. I was supposed to be the agent of happiness AND of truth. But maybe truth and happiness antagonise each other.” (Martin Seligman, Learned Optimism, p. 108)

“When people say that those are saved who have faith, they are saying something true; but in the Word nothing else is meant by faith than love to the Lord and charity towards the neighbour, and so a life that is derived from those loves. … Matters of doctrine and established beliefs do not constitute faith yet are part of faith, for these, each and every one, exist to the end that a person may become such as they teach.” (Heavenly Secrets, 2116)

“… acting in accord with the Lord’s commandments constitutes true worship of Him, indeed constitutes true love and true faith, as may also become clear to anyone who stops to consider the matter. For there is nothing that a person who loves another, and who believes in another, would rather do than to will and to do what that other wills and thinks; his only desire is to know his will and thought, and so what is pleasing to him. … …, as the Lord also teaches in John,
He who has My commandments and does them, he it is who loves Me. But he who does not love Me does not keep My words. John 14:21, 24.” (Heavenly Secrets, 10143, 5)

“In many arenas of life, optimism is unwarranted. In some situations – the cockpit of an airliner, for example – what’s needed is not an upbeat view but a mercilessly realistic one.” (Seligman, p. 107-108)

“Think about a successful large business. It has a diverse set of personalities serving different roles. There are optimists … [but] the company also needs its pessimists. A CEO must balance the two.” (Seligman, p. 111-112)

“Like the successful company, we each have in us an executive who balances the counsels of daring against the counsels of doom. When optimism prompts us to change and pessimism bids us to cower, a part of us heeds both. … We can learn to choose optimism for the most part, but also to heed pessimism when it is warranted.” (Seligman, p. 115)

“Eternal rest, … is not idleness, for idleness produces languor, sluggishness, numbness and drowsiness of the mind, and consequently of the whole body; and these are death, not life, much less the eternal life which the angels of heaven enjoy. Eternal rest, therefore, is a rest that dispels these states and enables a man to live; and it is only this that elevates the mind. It consists therefore in some pursuit or occupation by which the mind is aroused, quickened and delighted; and this follows according to the use from which, in which and for which the work is performed. Thus the whole heaven is viewed by the Lord as a sphere of uses, and every angel is an angel according to his use. The delight of use bears him along as a favorable current does a ship, causing him to be in eternal peace, and in the rest of peace. This is the meaning of eternal rest from labors. …” (True Christian Religion, paragraph 694)