"Why Believe in God" ad campaign

[David E]

With regard to the AA comic, I want to point out that the person in the program who stops using no longer makes his friends and family miserable. He/she now has a sense that they are not the most important thing in the world and are not the victims they thought they were when they used in their former nihilistic, dead-end (and most likely secular) mindset.

Now, to you they may be re-adopting childish things, and playing a mental trick on themselves in putting what is beyond their control in the hands of a higher power (God). But it works in making life better for them and us.

As for the Africans with AIDS, they also have two ways of viewing their situation: a) the physical world is all there is, and I got shafted, or b) there is part of me with a purpose that transcends my physical death.

Since we can't prove or disprove either scenario, they are both in their way mental tricks. Which one will be more uplifting, and which will be more of a drag?