u/DBeau85

Ok, hear me out:

My father was recently diagnosed with vascular dementia that is specifically affecting his judgement (most other capacities are what you'd expect from a 70 yo). He also has ADHD (diagnosed with his dementia, but likely it's been present his whole life, but due to his cognitive decline, he's no longer able to regulate it).

Doctors are trying Zoloft to support his mood and anxiety, but are cautious about stimulants for ADHD bc of his age and impact on vascular progression. Ive read that NDRIs are used off-label to treat ADHD, and plan to talk to his doctor at the next consult about adding this.

In the meantime, he's using the stimulation of chatting online with "women" scammers to find dopamine and fill his day, and to some degree deal with some hypersexuality brought on by the dementia. it's not great, but it's helps his mood, and fills his time. We cut him off from the texting for a short while and he got kind of despondent and depressed.

My mother (his primary caretaker) and I are trying to figure out how best to deal with this. Do we protect him best by:

1. cutting off all of his contact with these scammers who try to coerce him into giving them money, or
2. just restrict his access to money and let him get his dopamine fixes online?

I should note that Dad's diagnosis was a result of our discovering he was being scammed online, but not before he had given away a lot of money. He's had his access cut off from bank accounts and such, but he's been known to sell things online and he's proving quite creative and determined to find ways to get money, buy gift cards with them, and send then to scammers. The scammers are very persistent and coercive, promising to meet with him if he'll send gas money, etc. He's unable to see these things as scams.

He always gets caught (by us, he's really bad at covering his tracks), and then feels shame (we're working on trying to not moralize this). His neurological testing revealed that his vascular damage is such that even when he's able to understand the consequences of his actions, he's unable to prevent the actions.

We're kind of new to this, any thoughts are welcome.

It's felt pretty effortless. It's just what's on in my car now. It's not a choice, it's automated. I drive a fair bit, so I get through about 100 audiobooks in a year. Consistent, constant learning is so impactful. Knowledge is power.

I was born and raised in a christian context. I was a christian for 35 years. I was an active leader in my church for more than a decade. I believed that christianity offered an explanation of life and our shared reality.

Then I started reading non-fiction books on neuroscience, philosophy, history and anthropology. Learning really is transformative. Knowledge really is power. I was confronted with the fact that what I believed to be a reality-based explanation of the universe, was a narrative, a mythology, that had evolved for the purpose of explaining life, providing meaning, shaping culture and behaviour, and providing psychological comfort. But it was not true, in the sense that it provided an evidence-based understanding of the world.

After reading more than 400 non-fiction books my perspective on religion/mythology is that it is practically inescapable. It evolves with us because we need explanatory stories. We need collective ideas that shape how we act. Even now as an atheist, I tell myself stories about why I exist, how I should act, and what is the best way for a society to collaborate. These stories are my mythology, in essence, my religion. Now, as much as I can, I try to root these stories in evidence-based concepts. For example, I believe that I exist because billions of years ago energy fluctuations set in motion the necessary conditions that would ultimately lead to me typing these words onto a screen and sharing them to a global network of humans -- not because an all powerful being designed me with a purpose.

I am a high-functioning, high-masking autistic, which I think is relevant because it is the part of me that values truth over comfort. I value rationality over emotions. The impact of our cognitive biases described in books like "Thinking Fast and Slow" (Daniel Kahneman) makes me suspicious of intuition and feelings. Books like "Determined" (Robert Sapolsky) make me aware that my beliefs and actions are the result of my experiences and my biology. That as humans we're evolved (along with our stories) to survive, which is a different aim than to understand or find meaning in the cold-truths of our reality. Determinism for most people feels cold, but its what our best science currently says it most likely. Our many cognitive biases and mental heuristics help us stay alive, but they betray us from seeing the world as it actually is in ways that we are usually helpless to be aware of.

Many people who deconstruct their religious experiences feel anger or frustration at the perpetuation of these falsehoods and myths, feel mislead or deceived. I have found it more useful to understand why we believe in myths, the value they have conferred on our progress as a species, and to try to build a worldview that prioritizes truth over comfort. But I am also aware that this is not something everyone can manage. Our reality is harsh, and staring into that void for most people leads to pessimistic nihilism. I think that people should aim at comfort if truth reduces their well-being. I think that is likely the case for most people. I feel fortunate to be able to construct my worldview around truth (to the degree I understand reality), without feeling nihilistic about my life.

In the end, I think that everyone makes the choice to prioritize truth or comfort, consciously or not. And that's ok. But the understanding of these two categories has changed how I see the world, other people, and my past.

I was a christian for the first 30-ish years of my life, I was a leader in my church community. I was raised to believe that Christianity was an accurate explanation of reality. I believed that I should defer to the understanding of those who are older than me and therefore, presumably, more wise. Then I read Thinking Fast and Slow (Daniel Kahneman), which started me down a 450+ non-fiction-book journey on neuroscience, philosophy, anthropology and history, and everything fell apart. I also learned, that I was autism spectrum, but high masking, with a strong core value of truth.

From my viewpoint, which I understand to be fairly atypical, I see religions as explanatory mythology, collective societal structure, and emotional comfort narratives. I think this is true for all religions, and there is some interesting historical science behind the fact that you can predict the kind of religion that a society will create if you understand the circumstances they are experiencing (and therefore the kinds of explanations, structure and level of comfort they are seeking)

Christianity happens to have met those needs in the first century, and in various ways, with various interpretations, has continued to meet those needs for the last 2000 years.

For me, this understanding of religion helps me have compassion for those who taught/believed in a mythology as though it were an evidence based explanation of reality. They were doing the best they knew how, and once I learned better, I did better. That's not to say there weren't costs to leaving my community and world view behind, but I'm very happy that I did.

I think that some people need a religious mythology to deal with life. I believe that as beings we have evolved to survive, which is different than evolving to understand our physical reality. I think that some people need the comfort of narrative more than truth. I don't think that makes them bad. I do think that it can make it difficult to eliminate some harms at a societal level sometimes, but I do think it would be worse overall if I could snap my fingers and eliminate all religious belief. The void of nihilism can be rough. I think you need a certain kind of perspective to look at the cold realities of existence. And I think that means that some (many?) people need to believe in myths for their well-being. In that sense, think you can either seek truth, or comfort, and for most people those will be mutually exclusive. I personally find an evidence-based explanation of reality to be comforting. But I've come to understand that that may be biased by my autistic lens on the world. As I understand it there's some evidence to suggest that people on the spectrum tend to be either atheists or religious fundamentalists.

So that's where I'm at, after the better part of a decade of deconstructing my christian upbringing. Thanks for reading. I also tried to maintain a level of epistemic humility, so feel free to poke holes in what I believe, but I will only respond to civility.