First installment of Word of the Week by WolfgangSenff (this week is really, really funny, too!)
Offline Hi atheists,
I wanted to start a Word of the Week column here at RRS. I am hoping to actually get it posted to the side of the website, but that's not really necessary at all! A little background first: I'm kinda a wordsmith. I invent a lot of words by accident, but they turn out to be highly appropriate much of the time. I'm going to bring them here and hopefully get a few laughs, and some food for thought!
I'm going to go into the history of this week's word a little bit first. Lately, a lot of my super-Christian coworkers have been trying to convince me to believe in god by saying, "Wouldn't you RATHER there be a god?" "Life makes more sense if there is a god." "I first understood god only after I loved him."
My response to those, in order, is: No. At least if there isn't a god, I may have free will, which is what I would "rather" believe (not that rathering makes it any more true). Life doesn't make any sense if there's a god. I can't love something before I know that it is lovable, and since god is "unknowable", I can't love him. I realized, however, that that type of thought is quite prominent in today's society, so I invented this word to describe it.
Fallacio - noun. 1) The act of forcing one self to believe something true because it makes them feel better emotionally. 2) Building up one's beliefs of god based on the fallacy of appeal to emotion. 3) Making one self feel better through tortured rationalization of evidence so that it supports a specific theory that the person does not want to give up.
"Jesus -- the other white Moses" - Me.
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Offline "I first understood god only after I loved him."
Why does this argument sound good to those who espouse it? The only other things I can think of that are similar are
"I first understood smoking only after I loved it."
"I first loved alcohol after I tried it."
Similarly:
Smoking makes me feel better emotionally, especially in times of stress.
I like smoking because it calms me down.
I know it's bad for me, but I don't really want to quit right now.
Even more absurd if I take the same terms and put them in place of god or jesus:
I can't imagine a world without cigarettes.
Wouldn't you RATHER be smoking?
Life makes more sense if when I'm puffing away on a cig.
Of course this all makes perfect sense to me, because I am a smoker, but I acknowledge the irrationality of it.
I know many who take marriage the same way. The divorce came with the understanding.
"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin
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Offline There happens to be a lot of evidence (although I don't have my sources handy. I think Michael Shermer is one of them. Dialogue with a Christian Proselytizer has a bunch on this, too) supporting the statement:
Religions come about when people are in times of great stress.
So, it seems reasonable that as soon as something begins to challenge people, they start to become less reasonable and unable to think critically about it. This can fairly often be seen in speech classes. Tell a person to give an impromptu speech before an audience of peers, and more often than not, it's going to suck. And it seems like the bigger the audience, the bigger the suck!
I may have to post about this to the psychology forum to get some more reference from Todangst and others. This is really interesting stuff.
"Jesus -- the other white Moses" - Me.
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Offline "I first understood god only after I loved him."
Why does this argument sound good to those who espouse it? The only other things I can think of that are similar are
"I first understood smoking only after I loved it."
"I first loved alcohol after I tried it."
Similarly:
Smoking makes me feel better emotionally, especially in times of stress.
I like smoking because it calms me down.
I know it's bad for me, but I don't really want to quit right now.
Even more absurd if I take the same terms and put them in place of god or jesus:
I can't imagine a world without cigarettes.
Wouldn't you RATHER be smoking?
Life makes more sense if when I'm puffing away on a cig.
Of course this all makes perfect sense to me, because I am a smoker, but I acknowledge the irrationality of it.
LOVE your analogy! 
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Offline Why does this argument sound good to those who espouse it? The only other things I can think of that are similar are
"I first understood smoking only after I loved it."
"I first loved alcohol smoking after I tried it."
Similarly:
Smoking makes me feel better emotionally, especially in times of stress.
I like smoking because it calms me down.
I know it's bad for me, but I don't really want to quit right now.
I can't imagine a world without cigarettes.
Wouldn't you RATHER be smoking?
Life makes more sense if when I'm puffing away on a cig.
Of course this all makes perfect sense to me, because I am a smoker, but I acknowledge the irrationality of it.
The answer is "yes" to all of the above. 
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"I first understood god only after I loved him."
Why does this argument sound good to those who espouse it? The only other things I can think of that are similar are
"I first understood smoking only after I loved it."
"I first loved alcohol after I tried it."
Similarly:
Smoking makes me feel better emotionally, especially in times of stress.
I like smoking because it calms me down.
I know it's bad for me, but I don't really want to quit right now.
Even more absurd if I take the same terms and put them in place of god or jesus:
I can't imagine a world without cigarettes.
Wouldn't you RATHER be smoking?
Life makes more sense if when I'm puffing away on a cig.
Of course this all makes perfect sense to me, because I am a smoker, but I acknowledge the irrationality of it.
That's pretty funny. Maybe you should quit.
People who use lines like "I only understood God after I loved him" are confused as to what love is. Not only that, but they're the kind of people who need something to relieve certain stresses in life.
I STILL don't understand the saying. How does one love something they do not understand? Furthermore, how does one love something they can not grasp, realize, touch, feel, smell, hear, or relate to? What is there to love? Also, how does love beget understanding?
I would have thought that last question was obvious. Once you love something, it's far easier to ignore rational argumentation to the opposite of the thing you "love".
Your other questions, however, are great! I guess I would just have to say that they only FEEL that they need these things to relieve stresses. I would hazard a guess that that's because they never learned to relieve stress properly. That would be an interesting idea for a psychology paper -- "Religion: The result of inability to relieve stress".
"Jesus -- the other white Moses" - Me.
Yeah, that makes sense. Being in love has a similar effect (by this, I mean a LOVE love, not a religious love). I dated a girl who lied, cheated, and stole stuff from me all while I thought I understood her (she built up all sorts of lies and did things to show that she was a certain way) but really didn't. Once I realized how stupid I was, I ended it with her. Oddly enough, she was a die hard Christian.
Your other questions, however, are great! I guess I would just have to say that they only FEEL that they need these things to relieve stresses. I would hazard a guess that that's because they never learned to relieve stress properly. That would be an interesting idea for a psychology paper -- "Religion: The result of inability to relieve stress".
I would enjoy seeing some sort of paper on the effects of religion on a persons psyche and their ability to think critically as well as their ability to relieve stress.