Daydreaming and digital games! How we like to escape. To escape reality does not stop it pushing back. So when it does, we distort it. We paint our colours on it. We warn about overindulgence and fantasy and virtual reality. It is as if we think there is a safe level. There is not. It is always overindulgence. It might not be very disruptive socially or in the family but it is there. We will be in denial about what we see happening in us, what we try to hide from everybody else. It will grow. Neuro-chemical change in the brain will develop shaped by the overindulgence. Dopamine which gives us the rewarded feeling when we behave a certain way will start rewarding the self-indulgent behaviour. That in turn fuels the overindulgence. We may not live long enough to see where the slippery slope will take us, but we are on it. It is still bad.
It is known now that if we lie a lot, the brain starts to change. The amygdala is suppressed. Our grip on reality and how and when to tell the truth loosens. University College London used MRi technology to test and verify all that (The Brain Adapts to Dishonesty - Neil Garrett, Dan Ariely and Stephanie Lazzaro, Nature Neuroscience Journal, October 2016). I would add that while the brain leads us to tell more and more lies and even rewards us for them, many liars will find ways to deceive without being caught out. One method could be is to propagate a book we know will mislead people. We hope the readers will be fooled and blamed for being fooled. We love lies so much we want to be their enablers.
Dopamine could be the best explanation for the prevalence of religion and crazy politics. It is the best friend of all liars, including religiously motivated ones.
Note: Many argue that morality, ie respect, truthfulness, fairness etc, is objectively right. Why care if it is or not if our biology acts like it is so desperate to give us meaning, not through morality but through fantasies and lies? If anything is written into the universe and into us, objective morality certainly is not it.
We are made in the image of God? Some image then!
The following screenshots show the believers are feeling God into existence despite knowing that feelings lie to them. They indirectly lie to themselves.
Religious people lying to themselves would lead to this more often if it were not for doubt and luck
