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Yvain comments on No, Really, I've Deceived Myself - Less Wrong
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That's not a benefit of believing in God. You don't have to believe in God to be accepted into religious communities. You just have to say "I believe in God".
It may help to genuinely believe you believe in God. But in the Modern Orthodox Jewish community that I remember from Chicago, someone who actually seriously believed in God and acted accordingly, who was over the age of 20, would probably get looked at a little funny - they wouldn't get the warm friendship that accrues to those who just say the passwords.
A "benefit" of actually believing in God would be, say, that you weren't too sad at funerals because you genuinely believed the deceased was in Heaven. Pretty sure no one at the family funerals I attended went that far.
Doesn't she receive a benefit by not having to live a lie her whole life? I've read deconversion stories, and they almost always include a point where someone has lost faith but tries to stay in their religious communities and go through the motions. Most of them end up miserable (granted that there is a 100% selection bias because these are deconversion stories)
Well, yes, there is a 100% selection bias here. I'm not sure I can count that as evidence, like, at all.
The intention was to provide a clarifying example of an existential statement that should be non-controversial ("There exist some people who are uncomfortable living a lie"), not to assert probabilistic evidence for a universal statement ("Everyone I have read about is uncomfortable living a lie, therefore this is true of all humans"). I noted the selection bias only to clarify that I am not making the stronger universal statement, but it doesn't interfere with the existential statement.
In human terms, or ideal Bayesian terms?