David Landers > Quotes

“In God’s Problem, professor Bart Ehrman’s metaphor is exceptionally provocative: What would we think of an earthly father who starved two of his children and fed only the third even though there was enough food to go around? And what would we think of the fed child expressing her deeply felt gratitude to her father for taking care of her needs, when two of her siblings were dying of malnutrition before her very eyes? 2 You can’t unread that passage. So, yes, whenever I’m around people who are praying, whether at dinners or any other ceremony, I don’t bow my head along with them. Today, I look around—defiantly—because I’m not going to give thanks while my siblings are starving before my eyes. Don’t get me wrong: I am thankful—exceedingly thankful—for my food, but not to a God who would design things as such. Indeed, I feel that my contact with reality helps me appreciate my food more than a praying Christian. If the praying Christian truly appreciated how lucky he is to have so much good food, he wouldn’t be offering thanks for it! He’d be baffled like Bart Ehrman, and he would even feel guilty and wonder what he has done to deserve such bounty. If he truly appreciated how most of the world is hungry while he’s praying, he would begin to see the obscenity of his prayer. He might even lose his appetite for a while, if he really understood the problem, deep down.”
― David Landers, Optimistic Nihilism: A Psychologist's Personal Story & (Biased) Professional Appraisal of Shedding Religion

“Before I was diagnosed with esophageal cancer a year and a half ago,” [Christopher] observed in his final column for Vanity Fair, “I rather jauntily told the readers of my memoirs that when faced with extinction I wanted to be fully conscious and awake, in order to ‘do’ death in the active and not the passive sense . . . However, one thing that grave illness does is to make you examine familiar principles and seemingly reliable sayings. And there’s one that I find I am not saying with quite the same conviction as I once used to: In particular, I have slightly stopped issuing the announcement that “Whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.”6”
― David Landers, Optimistic Nihilism: A Psychologist's Personal Story & (Biased) Professional Appraisal of Shedding Religion

“During a staff debriefing, doctors and doctors-to-be explored the Hippocratic Oath, again, the one about not doing harm. Supporters apparently argue, “What’s the point of causing more suffering in this situation, when soothing is so readily available (for the survivors, that is)?” Of course, this is a personal opinion, a value judgement not necessarily shared by all medical professionals. For the record, I personally doubted the doctor’s choice, despite the circumstances, and wonder whether it was right to lie to the survivors, in the Grandest Scheme of the Cosmos. I can imagine myself responding to an order like “Tell me he died peacefully” with something more akin to “I’m so sorry, but I can’t,” and cross the subsequent bridges accordingly.”
― David Landers, Optimistic Nihilism: A Psychologist's Personal Story & (Biased) Professional Appraisal of Shedding Religion

“When I consider the brief span of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and behind it, the small space that I fill, or even see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces which I know not, and which know not me, I am afraid . . . I marvel that people are not seized with despair at such a miserable condition. — French mathematician/philosopher Blaise Pascal (born 1623)”
― David Landers, Optimistic Nihilism: A Psychologist's Personal Story & (Biased) Professional Appraisal of Shedding Religion

“In each of the other instances we’ve discussed, the lie prevents the deceived person from experiencing the appropriate emotions that are due to the cosmos.”
― David Landers, Optimistic Nihilism: A Psychologist's Personal Story & (Biased) Professional Appraisal of Shedding Religion

“If we truly appreciated the more fundamental aspects of living, we probably wouldn’t be so driven to travel or skydive and such. We wouldn’t be so desperate to do those things, that’s for sure. Instead, we’re talking about appreciating the mere act of existing. Whenever we can do this, boredom becomes obsolete, as the most fundamental activities become worthy of our time and attention. Taking a walk. Marveling at nature: trees, birds, stars, your own consciousness. The simple fact that we are here at all, along with oceans, comets, Facebook, government conspiracies, and gridlock.”
― David Landers, Optimistic Nihilism: A Psychologist's Personal Story & (Biased) Professional Appraisal of Shedding Religion

“The psychologist meets the defendant face-to-face and uses his training to nail down the right diagnosis and to comment on competency or insanity, whichever the case may be. Of course, sometimes the right diagnosis is malingering, that is, the defendant is trying to act crazy when he isn’t. Alternatively—and perhaps even more challenging and interesting—the defendant may be dissimulating, that is, trying to act well when he’s actually mentally ill. This is a lot more common than you might suspect! People with psychosis typically don’t want others to know about it. When someone starts spouting off all about their hallucinations and paranoia in the first few minutes of a meeting, I’m naturally suspicious”
― David Landers, Optimistic Nihilism: A Psychologist's Personal Story & (Biased) Professional Appraisal of Shedding Religion

“Now, Elvis Presley, you were one of the first celebrities I ever adored, but screw you: I would be destroyed to find out that I had been engaged in romance under false pretenses. No thanks; I don’t want any part of that. I don’t even want my girlfriend to lie to me when I ask her, “How are you doing?” If your day sucks, it’s okay to tell me. And that doesn’t just go for girlfriends; it goes for regular friends as well and even strangers, if they’re up to it. Let me see your reality, so I can know and try to say something kind accordingly, instead of tricking me into disregarding it via small-talk. Of course, it’s your prerogative, but at least be aware that you don’t have to hold back on my account.”
― David Landers, Optimistic Nihilism: A Psychologist's Personal Story & (Biased) Professional Appraisal of Shedding Religion

“I’m so thankful because I’ve got my sanity and I’m free. You know, the basics. Now, there’s something less gratifying about feeling good when it comes at someone else’s expense. But, back on the other hand, there’s also no denying that sunlight feels about as good as can be once you’ve been deprived of it for a few hours, surrounded by insanity, stink, and injustice.”
― David Landers, Optimistic Nihilism: A Psychologist's Personal Story & (Biased) Professional Appraisal of Shedding Religion

“I feel like I want to know if I’m dying, and why. Give me the pill, remove my delusion, so that I can die lucid.”
― David Landers, Optimistic Nihilism: A Psychologist's Personal Story & (Biased) Professional Appraisal of Shedding Religion

“Somehow, I simply felt it was wrong to lie about a Truth that was so serious, about an event that was so significant to our lives. Telling the truth seemed more important than averting suffering. Maybe suffering shouldn’t be avoided at all costs. Maybe if we would just face the horrors of our lives they wouldn’t be as horrible as we anticipate. And even if they are, maybe they should simply be respected and experienced as the horrors that they are. I suspect many readers have difficulty with this position, at least regarding some of the examples so far. But I also suspect everyone has a point at which the painful truth is preferred. Consider if your spouse or mate was cheating on you, like having an affair with someone at his or her office. Would you rather know, or would you rather live your life, and maybe even go to your grave, ignorant? It’s interesting: Romantic cheating is something that we’re usually more interested in knowing about. With cheating, we can’t tolerate—well, being cheated. Here, we are not merely out of touch with reality; someone to whom we’re emotionally attached is intentionally deceiving us, and we won’t be the object of that. Sure, we’ll deceive ourselves till the cows come home. As long as we’re in control of the deception, it’s okay. That said, we mustn’t forget Landers’s First Law of Psychology: “It depends; exceptions abound.” Ask Elvis: Honey, you lied when you said you loved me.
And I had no cause to doubt you.
But I'd rather go on hearing your lies,
Than go on living without you.8”
― David Landers, Optimistic Nihilism: A Psychologist's Personal Story & (Biased) Professional Appraisal of Shedding Religion

“What does it mean to be a self-conscious animal? The idea is ludicrous, if it is not monstrous. It means to know that one is food for worms. This is the terror: to have emerged from nothing, to have a name, consciousness of self, deep inner feelings, an excruciating yearning for life and self-expression—and with all this yet to die.10”
― David Landers, Optimistic Nihilism: A Psychologist's Personal Story & (Biased) Professional Appraisal of Shedding Religion

“Reading the law can be engaging, especially if you have an obsessive personality like mine. In the law, every and and every or counts, sometimes punctuation alone leading to heated debate regarding the original intent behind the law in question.”
― David Landers, Optimistic Nihilism: A Psychologist's Personal Story & (Biased) Professional Appraisal of Shedding Religion

“Once the defenses fall and we let go of faith, we are overcome by a sobering clarity: Of course, a religion that ever failed so miserably must be the product of humans, not divinity. There is no way that a god would sit back and watch for 600 years while his highest priests tortured thousands of innocents via the likes of anal vice until they denounced him. Something truly holy would never have been subjected to such gross misunderstanding and atrocious implementation in the past. It would be timeless, not a work in progress; otherwise it reduces the billions of people who have lived before us to some sort of experiments for our own well-being today, us living in much better times. What a horrifically narcissistic and insensitive attitude this would be, to disregard the past in order to soothe our own existential fears about our own deaths, most of which will be quite pampered relative to theirs. Again, I did it, too. And now I’m ashamed. In fact, it makes me wonder if some of the hostility I have towards people who remain faithful is projected, that is, I’m mad at myself for ever having been in so much denial, too. The truth is that we have come a long way so that religion is more civilized than ever before. But this is not because God cares more about us today than he did those living in the Middle Ages; it’s simply because we’re smarter than we were back then. And, despite how far we’ve come, we’re far from out of the woods. There’s still much more divinely inspired torture and murder in the world today than there ever should have been, and religious-based oppression of a less lethal nature remains quite rampant, even in the progressive and privileged West. Overall, we are still in a state of progress, meaning that we are actually an ongoing experiment for the people of the future who will have even better religious lives than us, one where there is even less murder of heretics and less oppression of slaves, women, and homosexuals.”
― David Landers, Optimistic Nihilism: A Psychologist's Personal Story & (Biased) Professional Appraisal of Shedding Religion

“Once the defenses fall and we let go of faith, we are overcome by a sobering clarity: Of course, a religion that ever failed so miserably must be the product of humans, not divinity. There is no way that a god would sit back and watch for 600 years while his highest priests tortured thousands of innocents via the likes of anal vice until they denounced him. Something truly holy would never have been subjected to such gross misunderstanding and atrocious implementation in the past. It would be timeless, not a work in progress; otherwise it reduces the billions of people who have lived before us to some sort of experiments for our own well-being today, us living in much better times. What a horrifically narcissistic and insensitive attitude this would be, to disregard the past in order to soothe our own existential fears about our own deaths, most of which will be quite pampered relative to theirs.”
― David Landers, Optimistic Nihilism: A Psychologist's Personal Story & (Biased) Professional Appraisal of Shedding Religion

“When teaching various psychology courses over time, I’ve conducted informal polls of my students regarding what they would prefer in a situation similar to Alvin Ford’s. About two-thirds to three-fourths have preferred the delusion, at least when queried on the fly. Although my classes have not exactly comprised a random sample of the population at large, their position corroborates my hunch that most Americans prefer the delusion over the truth.”
― David Landers, Optimistic Nihilism: A Psychologist's Personal Story & (Biased) Professional Appraisal of Shedding Religion

“That is, the psychiatrist’s Hippocratic Oath says something about “I will keep [the sick] from harm and injustice.” Not even considering the “injustice” part, is it right to treat a delusional patient, if successful treatment necessarily means he is to be put to death?”
― David Landers, Optimistic Nihilism: A Psychologist's Personal Story & (Biased) Professional Appraisal of Shedding Religion

“We could talk about the diathesis-stress model of psychopathology, the well-accepted notion that individuals may carry genes that predispose them to a mental illness such as schizophrenia, but the illness lies dormant unless a traumatic stressor (such as sexual abuse, homelessness, and of course, imprisonment) arouses it.4”
― David Landers, Optimistic Nihilism: A Psychologist's Personal Story & (Biased) Professional Appraisal of Shedding Religion

“The great boon of repression is that it makes it possible to live decisively in an overwhelmingly miraculous and incomprehensible world, a world so full of beauty, majesty, and terror that if animals perceived it all they would be paralyzed to act. — Philosophical anthropologist Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death”
― David Landers, Optimistic Nihilism: A Psychologist's Personal Story & (Biased) Professional Appraisal of Shedding Religion