drunkencop

"...believing in God is seen as the logical equivalent to believing in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. If you think I am totally deluded because of my beliefs, I would ask that you at least show respect for the fact that I am devoted to them and value them sincerely."

Do you not see the irony here? Would you be making this heartfelt plea for us to respect your beliefs if you did believe in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny?

Of course not -- because a belief doesn't deserve "respect", no matter sincerely its followers may value it. A belief deserves either support or skepticism.

The adherents of every belief, however, deserve respect. As do you. Part of that respect involves an honest description of how unlikely your beliefs are to be grounded in truth.

Welcome to the mirror world, where a lie isn't a lie if you put the word "faith" in front of it! Is this kinda like "Simon Says"? Up is down -- oops, matter of faith, so I'm okay! Burning heretics is good for the human race -- oh, wait, I actually mean that one. Sorry, Galileo...

"Grandma went to heaven" is a statement of fact about a very specific matter that is either true or false.

The person uttering it has not seen, heard, smelled, or touched a single piece of evidence to verify this supposed fact.

Indeed, they're saying it either because they're sincerely repeating a myth they've heard since they were credulous children, because they want to mollify a grieving child's anguish, or both.

If you make a claim about the physical location of a human being, yet you have absolutely no evidence to bolster your claim, then you're making a claim that is not falsifiable and should be considered false.

No, he didn't tell a lie. Religion is silly.

You don't have to "know" something is false to know if it's silly. Do I have a singing purple leprechaun on my desk? Well, think before you answer, Skepticism-Is-As-Bad-As-Faith; after all, you don't know whether or not I do!

So take a step back from your false equivalency and use the same common sense on this that you use every day in every other aspect of your life. If someone comes up to you with supernatural claims, every ounce of common sense and experience you possess should tell you that this person is probably saying something silly. And you shouldn't change your mind unless they actually manage to produce the kind of evidence that would change your mind if you were, say, sitting on a jury and contemplating a far-fetched alibi.

But there's certainly also the possibility that the parent thinks he believes it, although all of his actions and other beliefs reveal that he doesn't believe it.

Daniel Dennett has addressed this well. No one debates the existence of Mt. Everest, and nobody has to assert that they believe in it. To identify yourself as someone who believes in something, there must be some question as to whether or not you would. People who say they believe in something which is at the core of their group identity, and for which there is no strong evidence, are rather obviously choosing not to question those beliefs the way they would question any other belief -- including the very similar beliefs of other people's religions.

So the fact that the parent "believes" in holy reincarnation or holy levitation or holy mindreading doesn't necessarily mean that he is being honest when he tries to raise his kid to believe in such things. Do they really believe those things to be real the same way they believe Mt. Everest to be real? If not -- if there is any hiccup to his belief -- then he is lying to his kid as well as himself.

Steven Pinker does a pretty admirable job of running down some ideas on swearing:

http://www.tnr.com/currentissue/story.html?id=246c0071-a9cd-...