Originally Posted by
RCLefty
Where is the line between "safe" superstition and "dangerous" superstition? When is it ever safe to have an incorrect belief about your reality? All incorrect beliefs have the potential to lead to incorrect decisions. This includes both practical decisions and ethical ones.
I doubt this. I think that, rather than being more prepared, you will be less prepared. For one thing, it seems to me that you don't actually believe in an afterlife at all; you are just telling yourself you believe it. (I could be wrong, but that is the impression I get from your posts.) So to me, it seems that when the time comes, you will suddenly find your never-all-that-sincere belief abandoning you, and you're suddenly in the position of having to come to terms with death in a way that you never have, before.
A leap of faith is not something that can be made once and for all; you have to go on making that leap over and over again, every day, every hour, every minute of your life. That's not noble, that's denial. Coming to terms with death is a good deal more difficult than just pushing the question away, but once you have faced it honestly, you don't have to keep doing it over and over again.
In the words of Samuel Clements (Mark Twain): "Faith is believin' what you know ain't so."