Religions

I searched if the word religion was to be found in some other topic, but what i found were mostly offtopics or ancient, so let me start a new one (PS: if my search failed, it's because i can't be arsed to search more).

Ok so, i guess the totality of you do not believe in religions because they are just... ye well, they make no sense at all to me. I would really like to say "most of you", but i can't get to think of a schizoid(described as what wikipedia says) as someone who believes in one of those religion's God: i mean, why should you believe it? Religions are created by man, noone demonstrated the contrary, and as long as it remains a man's word, to me it's as worth as my word and as everyone else's word: you say god created all this, i say that i'm god: who is right? Probably you, probably me, probably none of us, probably there is nothing like that at all. To believe in what another man says, to me, is just trying to grasp a reality where your life has some sense, because you can't think of your life being meaningless and because it's easy to suck up to anything that gives you pleasant or "reasonable" (not at all) answers.

This said, i would like to analyze the religion i was instructed to, and the one i was willing to believe in, putting much effort into understanding it: christian religion.

This God, one day, for some reason, created humans and put them in his garden: there they could fu,ck all day long, eat fruit or just get lazy somewhere, but there was a condition: they hadn't to eat from the apple tree, because it was evil. Those humans did the opposite and supposedly got banished to earth, where they have to experience difficulties and hardships, get over them, die and ascend again to heaven, or go in hell, or middleway through. Nice story, but:
1) Why did god create humans in the first place? Couldn't he stay quiet?
2) Why the hell there was an apple tree in the first place? HE is the one who created humans, so he should have been aware that they were retarded and would have eventually eaten from that tree, after a "provocation", then why so mad after they did so? He could have just removed it and left things as peaceful as they were.

... or was he just bored? If that was the reason, then this religion makes no sense, because it claims that God is a "good" being that preaches altruism, carity and other stupid things, when he was just bored and created all of us out of boredom. If a God really existed, i would think he was seriously bored, because i'd have done the same thing, if i had the power.

But, just to further analyze this "religion", let's claim that this God supposedly created humans because he wanted to make everyone experience life, because he had a low self esteem and wanted to be thanked and prayed to, because he thought it was a good experience: there are many things to be put into question:
1) If your intention was to give everyone the same chances and possibilities, you did it all wrong, because everyone is born in a different environment and is given different choices... naturally this is valid if we take into account that God gives birth to everyone: on the other side, if it's man who gives birth to other men (which is the correct answer, in my opinion), then God would be responsible only of the first man and woman he created(if it still was him who created the first man and woman, and if Darwin never existed), but this would also deny many things that christianity says.
2) You put us in a not permanent scenario: in some billion years, earth is going to get sucked by the sun, and any kind of living form will be burned anyways so, unless you plan to bring your "judgement" day before that date, you have overlooked some particular (naturally, this is valid if we take into account that man won't destroy humankind before that date).
3) What if someone doesn't believe in god? Is he going to be punished? And what would be the reason? Let's bring up some scenarios:
- a guy, like me, who has the "luck" of getting to know of this religion and so can work to be "saved" but refused to do so, because he got his reasons
- a kid, who is born in a land of war, hasn't got any instruction and doesn't know anything beside his animal instincts: how could he ever get to know of god? How is he supposed to believe in him?
- a fetus, that is considered to be alive, yet doesn't have any knowledge or anything at all, in general: if it dies, because of complications for whatever reason you want, is it going to be "punished"?
- an animal: i consider man as an animal who has got the physique and intellectual capacity to develop complicate things, because he was lucky to be born with hands that are able to write and a voice, such as many kind of written and spoken languages, an "organized" society, science and even trivial things like fashion, standards and... religions. Getting back to the point, let's consider any other kind of animal: how is that animal supposed to be "judged" by god? How is it supposed to "show" that he believes in god? Or is it just a decoration?

It just makes no sense at all. It's so much full of non-sense, contradictions and what not, that it makes it impossible for me to believe in christian religion and any other kind of religion (because i find other religions even more retarded; i have to say that there are some like buddism, that focus much on meditation and just look boring, but that i still couldn't believe in because still man-made and looking too much convenient)

What do i think? As i stated somewhere else, for me any kind of scenario is possible: it could be that i am god(defined as an eternal being with holy powers) and out of boredom i created all of you and, still out of boredom, i wanted to be born as a human to enjoy the trip. It could be possible that i'm just a pawn of this other being called god, who is bored, created all of us, and is toying with us. It could also be that there is no god at all, and imagine that there once was one singular piece of matter/energy that one day shattered in many pieces of matter/energy, that eventually went through chemical reactions and what not, leading to the creation of life and, coincidentially, of us, and it could just be that our capacity to think, feel etc is just a consequence of electrical impulses of our brain or something else related to that (and therefore just the result of matter/energy combinations). According to this last vision, you could ask "why did it shatter?", and the answer could simply be that there is no real reason... why shouldn't it shatter at all? Whether it would have shattered or not, nothing was created, nothing was destroyed: the balance is still there.

I like this kind of topics, so i was interested in your views regarding this, in case you believed in some religion. If you didn't, like me, for my same reasons or for other reasons(in which i would be interested aswell), i would like to know of your "scenarios", so that i could get to learn something new.

Why we believe in Gods I think this video explains it. People look at gods as a comfort for their problems. As hope to their meaningless lives. Half the people I know don't even know their own religion, or what the scriptures say. People just want to believe that there is a benevolent being who will grant them life after death, and punish those who they hate. Even if God a descended from the sky, and did magic for everyone to see. I wouldn't bow to anything with my truest of heart.

As i stated many times, i'm open to any kind of scenario so, even tho i'm also of the opinion that religions are there just to comfort the simpleton, i could also accept that a specific religion is indeed true, in case some proof was brought or in case it made sense: on this little possibility that that religion is real, i build up my theories and questions, and come to the end that whether the reason was or wasn't that of comforting people, it still wouldn't make sense and i couldn't believe in it even if i wanted to.

Anyways, if the christian religion, for some reason, was true, then i would definitely end up next to lucifer, because even if i were prompted with the choice "If you now say you are sorry, then i forgive you" i would take responsibility of my incapacity of believing and accept any kind of punishment: never i would pray someone. This last sentence could apparently run against my main goal, which is the one to get the most "happiness", but it actually doesn't, because i would feel so $#%^ for having prayed this sir, that i couldn't be any happier afterwards.

As far as I'm concerned, when it comes to religion, there are two primary views that have a semblance of sense. Those views are rational at first, but then get dragged into the shredder of human politics, and distorted into meaningless niceties that people fight and die over for no conceivable reason.

The first view.
"And we, who embody the local eyes and ears and thoughts and feelings of the cosmos; we've begun, at last, to wonder about our origins. Star stuff, contemplating the stars; organized collections of 10 billion-billion-billion atoms contemplating the evolution of matter tracing that long path by which it arrived at consciousness here on the planet Earth and perhaps, throughout the cosmos."
~ Carl Sagan

If this view is correct, then the universe hates itself sometimes, loves itself at other times, and at still other times, wishes it didn't exist. It's a very strange universe. Yet, not infeasible, by any means.

Or to put it another way...

"In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."
~ Douglas Adams


The second view.
"It is necessary to posit something which is necessary of itself, and has no cause of its necessity outside of itself but is the cause of necessity in other things. And all people call this thing God."
~ Thomas Aquinas

To get angry about the contradictions in religion is to get angry at the people who claim they practice religion. There are a lot of people who practice a lot of very strange and irrational things, not limited to religion. I would say the proper thing to get annoyed about is people. Yet I can't justify getting annoyed about it too much since I'm people, too. Doesn't mean it doesn't annoy me, just that the fact that it annoys me, annoys me. If that makes sense.

To get angry about the contradictions in religion is to get angry at the people who claim they practice religion. There are a lot of people who practice a lot of very strange and irrational things, not limited to religion. I would say the proper thing to get annoyed about is people. Yet I can't justify getting annoyed about it too much since I'm people, too. Doesn't mean it doesn't annoy me, just that the fact that it annoys me, annoys me. If that makes sense.

Ye, i get so annoyed and pissed when other people claim to practice of believe religions when they are full of contradictions and non-sense: the main reason why i get nervous(i don't think this is the extact translation from my language: i said "nervous" with the meaning of annoyed and irritated) is because i'm a person aswell, and since i'm part of the human race, i fall in the same category of these irrational beings, when i actually think and reason a lot: that's also why i don't like to associate myself with "normal" people.

jacknife wrote:Ye, i get so annoyed and pissed when other people claim to practice of believe religions when they are full of contradictions and non-sense: the main reason why i get nervous(i don't think this is the extact translation from my language: i said "nervous" with the meaning of annoyed and irritated) is because i'm a person aswell, and since i'm part of the human race, i fall in the same category of these irrational beings, when i actually think and reason a lot: that's also why i don't like to associate myself with "normal" people.

But what is "normal?" I don't think I've ever met two people who thought the same way, although they did wear the same sort of clothes, have the same sort of haircuts, and used the same language conventions. I think the annoying part is in whether there is a willingness to analyze; to understand things, vs. using things to one's advantage without consideration of what's true and what's not. Just my $0.02

I thought normal was exceptance . No matter how sane you are, if people exclude you or you exclude yourself you are not normal. It is definetly annoying of people to not analyze, but what can you do? Leaders of countries can easily exploit this one area in peoples' beliefs to be elected. It's good for the believers, and bad for anyone who thinks other wise. I would almost think that now and days that people can't still think like this.

I think I've been an atheist for about 7 years now, however I've grown more and more apathetic toward religion as I've gotten older.

It's ultimately unknowable, it seems.

meatwagon22 wrote:I thought normal was exceptance . No matter how sane you are, if people exclude you or you exclude yourself you are not normal. It is definetly annoying of people to not analyze, but what can you do? Leaders of countries can easily exploit this one area in peoples' beliefs to be elected. It's good for the believers, and bad for anyone who thinks other wise. I would almost think that now and days that people can't still think like this.

It's also impossible to live up to the ideal of analyzing everything. Just try to understand your computer. "If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe." ~ Sagan

The politics of religion are the contrary point from analyzing and looking for truth. Politics and religion, when mixed together, imply that God is either something created by humans (which defeats its own claim), or that God is impotent (in which case, why care?). As such, it's reasonable to suspect that the problem isn't religion itself, but the people using the facade of religion to further their own agendas. And the people supporting this just never bother to think about it.

Religion is, to say the least, silly.

I've been an Atheist for a long time. I used to have to go to church and Sunday school. I remember one kid went to my school as well as Sunday school, and he hated me in school because I would always bring up contradictions I found.

Religion makes people happy and helps them cope with death. There is a line however, where a religion becomes a cult. Look at Muslim extremists. They kill anybody who leaves Islam, is gay, mocks the Koran, etc. They're a death cult, not a religion of peace.

One thing I don't like about religion is that it teaches people to blindly accept "god's work" instead of being curious. Every time a child is indoctrinated into Christianity, a scientist dies.