My feelings on religion... What's yours? [thereisnogod]?

Question

"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?" - Epicurus

Religion has been used to support, justify and protect almost every violent or repressive movement in history. Millions of people have died in wars, crusades, inquisitions, witch hunts and other murderous acts attributable to religion.

If God loves everyone and is a forgiving God, how could he send some people to hell for eternity?

The religious right want to control how you live your life. Based on the word of their "God," many religious people try to pass laws that limit your personal freedom.

Many religious people teach other people to have low self-esteem: you can't do anything without God and anything you accomplish, you didn't actually accomplish, God did it.

There is no scientific evidence to support a god or gods.

Answer 1

Religion is a *group agreement* of a basic set of beliefs or tennets.

Spirituality is a *pesronal understanding* of a basic set of beliefs or tennets.

My own personal opinion is that spirituality needs to be honored before religion if one is going to include religion in their practice at all. One cannot agree with the group if one does not know what they personally believe and understand after all. Allowing spiritual practice to have priority over religious practice also, theoretically, protects honesty and integrity of the individual so that the religious right get starved out eventually. When honest religion once again lives, religion in general will no longer have to live with the "bad name" it sometimes reaps. Yet individual spirituality cannot become selfish because communal religion would regulate it.

Balance. It's key. (It's even more crucial in the question of scientific empiricism and objectivity ~ which ironically is more often than not highly close to being subjective anyhow, after all, it is the human mind subjectively being objective ~ versus religious emotionality and subjectivity).

Answer 2

""Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?" - Epicurus"
With all due respect,this type of statement has been answered numerous times.
http://www.tektonics.org/guest/jovfwt.htm

"Religion has been used to support, justify and protect almost every violent or repressive movement in history. Millions of people have died in wars, crusades, inquisitions, witch hunts and other murderous acts attributable to religion."

A lot of half truths here.Yes,millions have died in wars-wars that also have been secular in nature.Millions did not die in the Inquisition.It was actually a few thousand.Millions of witches were not burnt-that's a deliberate inflation of numbers.And by the way-you know the Soviet Union? They murdered millions of their own people.They tried to eradicate religion.Guess what? They were atheists.If religion is wrong because what was done in it's name,then atheism is wrong because what was done in it's name.

"If God loves everyone and is a forgiving God, how could he send some people to hell for eternity?"

God is also just,holy,and righteous.He cannot overlook sin,and being loving doesn't mean letting people do what they want without any consequences.

"The religious right want to control how you live your life. Based on the word of their "God," many religious people try to pass laws that limit your personal freedom"

Oh,okay,we''ll just let people rape,murder,and steal,because to make a law against it 'limits your personal freedom'.If you are talking about abortion,the burden of prrof should be on pro-choicers as to why is should be okay to murder an innocent baby!

"Many religious people teach other people to have low self-esteem: you can't do anything without God and anything you accomplish, you didn't actually accomplish, God did it."

That is rather ambiguous.

[yesthereisagod]

Answer 3

I'd like to make a point here - You don't have to believe in religion to believe in God or Gods UNLESS you believe that God = creator of the universe.

It could be just as logical that "God" is merely humanity's way of explaining the feeling that they belong to something other than just their little spot on one tiny planet in one tiny solar system in one tiny galaxy in a universe that could just as likely be part of a massive group of multi-verses. The feeling that there is something infinitely more intelligent than humanity has reached so far.

Maybe it's just that, knowing how little of our brains we ACTUALLY use, we think that eventually we could evolve into a different type of human altogether - one that could eventually learn to use the WHOLE brain. And that eventually we will be able to REACH those stars, to travel outside of our universe, to make time obsolete.

Personally, I don't believe in Heaven, Hell, or a God or Devil or Goddesses, in the sense that there is an omnipotent being that is in control of my destiny. I don't pray to anyone, I don't ask for "forgiveness" from anyone except other humans, but I strive to live my life as best I can, because I feel that there is something more out there - something that eventually, we as humans can achieve, and I don't think that it's best reached through wars and killing (though I do recognize those as base skills for keeping population under control). I know that I will not live to see those days - the days when we live among the stars. I have no misconceptions that we'll calm the fighting down enough to allow my daughter to do so either. But I hope, through my actions, that my progeny will feel up to the task to venture out there and discover - low self esteem or not - and that they'll find what humanity has been searching for.

Answer 4

The first paragraph is the classic problem of evil. Alvin Plantinga solved the logical (or deductive) problem of evil in his book, God Freedom and Evil. There still remains the inductive (or evidential) problem of evil.

Your second paragraph is a good argument against some particular religious practices, but it's irrelevent to the question of whether any particular religion is true.

The second paragraph is just a recharacterization of the problem of evil mentioned in the first paragraph, and the ultimate question is whether the two claims about God are logically compatible. Again, that problem was solved by Alvin Plantinga to the satisfaction of most philosophers, including atheists. (I know this because I did a research paper on it.)

The fourth paragraph merely builds on the same point as the second paragraph and is equally irrelevent to the question of whether any particular religion is true.

The fifth paragraph is not an argument. There, you're just pointing out one particular theological point of view without offering an argument against it.

Your last argument (if that's what it's meant to be) is the fallacy of "argument from silence." Because a particular kind of evidence isn't available, it doesn't follow that no evidence of any kind is available. For example, the scientific method itself is based on presupposition which can't be proved by the scientific method without engaging in viciously circular reasoning, as David Hume pointed out in his book on An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding. There is no scientific evidence for the uniformity of nature--the basic assumption of all scientific experiments. If we must reject any item of knowledge on the basis that science can't prove it, then we would have to reject science itself. So it's self-refuting to claim that anything unproven by science is therefore unknown.

Answer 5

When Jesus came to Jerusulem he did not say that what the other teachers were doing is right. If you have studied anything about God, or Jesus life then you would know that what he talked about was loving each other and being salt (making others better), Jesus talked about humility and consideration towards others. He went out to the sick, drew the children near to him whenever he could because they were children, he esteemed women, and taught to obey the law.

You are correct about religion doing all the things you mentioned, but please don't lump every Christian with dogmatic followers who have no value in increasing their knowledge or doing anything more than being a casual churchgoer. True Christians follow Christ's teachings, and none of what you have expressed are included. Read His words sometime, they're pretty easy to find highlighted in red in every Bible out there.

Answer 6

No scientific evidence? That's the whole point of it being called a "faith". Believing in what u may not always see or hear or even sense soemtimes. That's why a lot of atheists just sit out of the picture and assume that all people of a religion or faith are "brainwashed" or are being controlled. These "laws that limit your personal freedom" are only so if u let them.

Answer 7

In my opinion what is important is what god represents. Peace, love, forgiveness etc....Everything else is pointless without these absolutes. Its up to humanity to end suffering in the world. People are just waiting for god to wave a magical wand and make everything perfect, if god did that it would only be a matter of time before we were right back where we started.

Answer 8

i think its a shame that so many people are willing to consign themselves to eternal punishment because of their pride and love for the evil world.

God is willing to prevail over evil and will, just in his time and in his way. But his ideas prevail everyday. Epicurus was a narrow-minded fool.

Evil being done in the name of religion is no indictment on religion anymore than the supreme court ruling back in the day that blacks were property and indictment on America. It is a historical fact that humans take something good and twist it to mean and do things to advance their evil purposes. Which major wars in the 20th century were because of religion? None. I think the only one on a witch hunt are antichrists like you.

Love doesnt negate justice. God is sifting humanity to see who loves him back and THEY will be saved. What would be the point in allowing evil people into Heaven that hate God? Sin cannot be in gods presence, that is why Satan was kicked out.

Untrue about laws. We want only to prevent crimes against humanity like organized state-sanctioned infanticide (abortion) that has killed millions. We dont want a theocracy, they have been tried and failed. We merely want the law of the land to reflect our morality.

There is a certain amount of value to statements like that because there is a huge tendency for people to think religion is all about them and creating a master person when its all about God. Paul says he takes pride in Christ first and formost, then has pride for his accomplishments. I think you are just misunderstanding the idea of that Biblical principle.

Actually there is tons of evidence for God, unfortunately it is not your mind that keeps you from God, it is your heart.

Answer 9

These are all good questions I must say, first off I want to say that I'm Christian and I'm just going to answer your questions honestly and I do not want this to be an angry arguement, that being said, I'll continue.

In regards to the quote you wrote, from what the Bible says God is both willing and able to do ANYTHING he wants but the reason why he doesn't fix all the problems and everything right now goes back to creation. He created us with freewill, he gave us one simple rule, just one, do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. we eventually did eat from that tree which is how we came to know what was good and what was bad. But anyways, he gave us freewill if he made the world perfect and stopped all crime we would pretty much have no choice but to believe in God and all that. It's not that he wants us to go to hell but he wants us to decide for ourselves to do what WE want. As an example do you like it when people only treat you good because they have to or because of some other reason that causes them to treat you well. Then lets say you find out that they really didn't ever like you and infact hated you. Would you want them to have had the choice from the beginning to be honest or would you rather have had them do what I described earlier, just putting on an act because they have to.

God did send Jesus though to keep us from going to hell if we didn't sacrifice animals and make offerings to him everyday. By sending Jesus to live a perfect life then die for everyone, past, present, and future; Jesus gave us the opportunity to not have to make all those sacrifices constantly and instead have faith in Jesus as God and that he died for everyone. This was a step God took to help to mend what had been broken at the fall of man, when Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

To answer your question as to why God would send someone to hell, it goes back to the idea of free will. We are given the choice to believe what God has said in the Bible and what Jesus has done for us, if we don't it's like robbing a bank and expecting not to be arrested. It's not that God wants us to go to hell it's just our own choice to believe it or not. The choice not to leads to the sad result of being sent to hell.

Ahhh, limiting personal freedom, I'm personally against that I believe that we have every right to do whatever we want, just know that you will have consequences for what you do.
I don't think it's right for religious leaders to do that we were given free will for a reason, so yea I definitely don't agree with that and they are really going against God, at least Christians are when they say that they don't have the right to do whatever it is. Because we DO have the right, it just may not be the right thing to do.

Well, humility is something different than having a low self-esteem. We are called to be humble, not to have a low self-esteem. We should be confident in who we are and what we are doing but not the point of bragging about it and making others feel like they are inferior. So you shouldn't have a high self-esteem but at the same time you shouldn't have a really low self-esteem. It's good to have a good balance of self-confidence but only to the point where you don't brag or w/e about what you've done or have.

As for there being no evidence though it is almost true it's not totally true. The evidence is subtle, the probability of everything working out perfectly enough to support life and to continue to support life is so far below possibility in terms of probability it is impossible. Even scientists say that if you gave monkeys a keyboard or w/e and you let them type FOREVER you would EVENTUALLY come up with the complete works of Shakespeare or some other piece of literature. In my opinion if it takes that long to make something as simple as that from random chance it's got to be impossible to create all the complexities of our world and universe.

I hope this helped you, have a good day.

Answer 10

You only gave evidence for the Christian God, friend.

Get back to me when you got the Kemetic, Asatru, Graeco-Roman Reconstructionist, Celtic, African Animistic, and Native American Gods down-packed on why they're not there.


- 16 yo Pagan