I was taught about the God from the Bible as a young child, my mother is a Christian.
This is the One all-powerful, all-knowing, benevolent God that only wants your love, and is capable of loving you for all eternity as well.
That's nice. It certainly appeals to every single person's fear of
loneliness, the
unknown,
dangerous things, and
death. Having someone who loves you and is always there for you and capable of ending all suffering and having you live forever appeals to every single base
desire that a human being has, pretty much.
It's convenient, really. A suffering mortal being who is lonely and will die, is told that everything that plagues them is just temporary and they
already have a friend that will stop all of those things forever... all they have to do is whisper their name and pledge their undying, requited love for such a being.
Wow, life's that easy? Neat-o.
It
almost
seems
too good
to be true. But that's just cynicism talking.
Tell me more about this being.
He (he? God has a gender? May I ask why? Gender seems a little superfluous if there's only one of you...)
He made me out of nothing, along with everyone else. Everything in this world was made by him and we all owe our very existence to him.
But, he only decided to reveal himself to mankind a few thousand years ago.... and we were under the impression the universe had multiple gods or different gods or no gods until then. Why?
I thought that the people that were descended from the garden of Eden, and Noah, etc.... folks who came into direct personal contact with the Almighty himself, might have, you know, passed along their direct, firsthand knowledge to LITERALLY every single human being that was alive at the time.
When did the story of the one true god who created everything, passed down from mother and father to son and daughter, unbroken since the events in question, become confused into a story about many gods, other gods, or no gods?
Why did the people in China and North America have no knowledge of this God? That seems a little strange. Surely they all came from Noah's descendants as well. How peculiar.
It's almost as if this story about the Abrahamic God was a more recent invention than the One True Story Of The Creation Of Everything would be. It also seems to be a rather local phenomenon, one centered around some desert-wandering people of a certain time period, rather than say, all of humanity since the beginning of all history.
Just seems a little odd.
But go ahead and tell me more about this God.
Well you see, God being the only God in existence, is naturally jealous of other Gods.
....right.
So don't worship those other, nonexistent gods. That's sinful and wrong.
...right.
Only worship Yahweh/Jehovah. The one true god with several different names for some reason, who only revealed himself after countless centuries of allowing the people of Earth to be under the impression that there were other gods before him.
...right.
And remember not to murder people. He forgot to tell us that at the beginning, so after countless centuries, he sent a little man in a flowing beard down from the mountain with stone tablets He gave him in secret, to remind us that murdering people is wrong. We're too silly not to know that for yourselves, as sort of like... common sense. We wouldn't know that it is wrong except with these reminders that religion provides us.
...right.
Only religion can teach us about morality. Without it, we are eternally lost.
...right. That's why there was no civilized society before Abrahamic religion. There were no cities, no roads, no complex codes of conduct, no other beliefs about what is right or wrong. And certainly after eating that forbidden fruit, where we gained knowledge of good and evil, we couldn't figure out what was good and what was evil, so we needed a reminder.
And then, centuries later, we needed more reminders, but we also needed to change a lot of the rules regarding what was right and wrong, what was acceptable behavior according to the One True God who is never wrong, he just changes His mind sometimes.
So what happens when I'm good and I follow these rules?
Well, I get to go to heaven.
What's heaven like?
Well, apparently, it's like a gigantic Bronze-age city, complete with actual wall fortifications, and it's super rich. The very foundation of the city, the gates, everything, is made out of precious gemstones and metals, the kind of items which would be considered quite valuable by a Bronze-age man from the Middle East, whose greatest imagination of what wonders heaven would include, must include precious gemstones and metals which he could use to barter with. The street is basically made of money!
Money, yes, because God is as glorious as the money upon which we print His name. And equally fabricated. And it has value "because we place our faith" in it.
God and money are quite similar in that regard.
Tell me more about this God. Does he sit on a throne, like a Bronze age king or emperor?
Why yes. He does. But he's also everywhere.
Does he want to be worshiped forever and ever, constantly surrounded by admirers praising him, like a Bronze age king or emperor?
Why yes. He does. He wants your undying worship, and he's worth it since his whim is the only reason you even exist. He could crush you at any time. And if you sin, he will punish you greatly.
....right. Boy, this guy does sound a lot like a king or emperor from the bronze age, where this story comes from. And what he does sounds a lot like what a king or emperor from the bronze age would do, and how he treats his subjects is not all that different from what a king or emperor from the bronze age would treat them.
The only difference is that he's reputed to have supernatural powers that he's used before to commit genocide upon his unworthy subjects who displease him.
Again, sounds like something a bronze age despot would do.
Tell me more about this punishment. What does he do to punish you?
Why, he sends you to hell. That's quite clear, Jesus told us all about it.
So what is hell?
Well, imagine you're a bronze-age man, whose brain is being cooked alive by the sun. Imagine you are suffering from hunger and physical wounds, or are tired, because you are essentially a slave or a serf who is under the unyielding tyrannical rule of some ancient despot. What would you imagine hell could be like?
Well, it's EVEN HOTTER than what you're experiencing, desert-boy. And, you'll be even hungrier, and you will feel even worse pain, and you will never ever get to rest, and you'll burn and boil in agony forever and ever and ever.
Yes, that's hell.
God does that to you if you misbehave and don't worship him?
Yes. He sends you down to the lake of fire with Satan and his minions.
Wait wait wait wait. Who is Satan?
Well Satan is the great evil, the Lord of the Underworld, the Prince of Darkness (Also called Lucifer, which means "light-bringer", bit of a discrepancy there.)
Oh? Why is he the great evil?
Because he's the one who tempts mankind to do evil things, so he can steal your soul.
Why does he want your soul? Is he like a vampire who can only exist as long as he's feeding from a steady flock of living victims? What does he use your soul for? He's still trapped in hell forever....
Because he wants to be God. He's God's great enemy.
ORLY? So, unstoppable, all-knowing superbeing creates lesser being which He can destroy at any moment, obviously not granting this lesser creature enough power to destroy God in kind, and also knows that this lesser being will become the greatest evil, because he's all-knowing.
Therefore, God creates Satan, can stop Satan, can destroy Satan, but doesn't. Also knows everything that Satan is doing and will do, and knew that would happen when He created it.
Therefore, he's not really God's enemy. He's just another one of God's creations, functioning exactly as God designed him to do, doing exactly what God apparently wanted him to do, or else He wouldn't have created him.
Oh I see.
I thought God was good? Why did he create the Greatest Evil and allow it to try to tempt mankind into doing evil things, things which could cause him to Judge mankind and sentence people to eternal hellfire and damnation as payment for our misdeeds?
Because of free will and stuff... God had to not only give you the option to worship only him or die forever and ever horribly, but also he needed to try to trick you into choosing the wrong thing.
He needed this sadistic little game to be challenging, so he made sure to provide absolutely no direct evidence of himself, to make it hard to believe in him.
He's invisible, just like Santa's workshop on the North Pole.
He also only gives presents to those who believe in him, just like Santa Claus.
He's also got this flowing white beard and he's got magical powers, just like Santa Claus.
Nifty. And if you're bad, you get coal in your stocking, so to speak. You burn forever.
But that's not all! He also conjured up this slick master Tempter and Great Deceiver to try to trick mankind into doing evil, so he'd be able to populate hell with as many souls as possible, so he could torture them forever and ever!
Nice.
So, God is good? God is powerful? God is all-knowing? We have free will but we are forced to make the right choices, and those choices are not entirely intuitive choices, and most people who have ever lived or will ever live will by default be wrong and fail this rigged test, because they will either grow up in a culture that doesn't worship the correct God, or die before they learn about this God, or before they're capable of being held accountable for their choices, being children and all, or mentally handicapped?
Well, no.... yes... I'm not sure. You see, The Church doesn't have one single consistent answer to these, the really tough questions.
But, they are consistent on one thing. You'd better come to church, and choose the right one, and you'd better bring money or convince others to come to church.
If you do this, and praise the right God, and ask forgiveness, you're forgiven for crimes your ancestors committed, crimes you have already committed, and sins that happen in your mind which nobody knows about, and every wrong thought that you've ever had... erasing the guilt that you have for merely existing in the first place.
That original sin of just being created in the first place and born as a human being. You horrible, unworthy person! You must repent for the evil sin of having been born!
Gosh, this story gets worse and worse all the time. And this deal about getting into heaven gets worse all the time.
And God keeps altering the deal.
Pray he doesn't alter it any further, what with changing exactly what things are kosher or not, or what you're allowed to do while you're alive to escape eternal punishment, "free will" indeed. You're allowed to defecate and pray and have children who defecate and pray, and you're allowed to worship Him and praise him for the privilege of being alive and worshiping him,
which if you don't, he'll do far worse than just murder you.
Praise the Lord!
Now, after being told this story, why on earth would I not believe it? I mean, how could you not? It's totally plausible and it contains a good moral message, and there's absolutely nothing one could say to criticize it or its many inconsistencies.
After all, it takes a lot of FAITH to not believe in this character. It takes a lot of faith not to believe that there is a 9-headed ten ton fire-breathing serpent living inside my garage that will eat me if I dare step outside.
Not believing in this implausible being requires the same amount of faith and leaps in logic as it does to believe in it, religious people tell me. And if I have faith, I'm just the same as them. Whatever flaws they have, apply to me.
So suppose they're right. Suppose there is an all-knowing, all-powerful, completely good being out there, called God.
Well, if there is, I've been trying to defend His good name against the horrible things religious people have been teaching others about Him. Because no God that is completely pure and good and omniscient and omnipotent would allow this kind of stuff to happen to people, and conjure up plagues and wildfires and floods and earthquakes and satanic demons and create realms of burning hell for us to have to endure. That's blasphemous, to me.
That's accusing God of a lot of horrible things that only a misogynistic group of bearded genital-cutting bronze-age men living under an oppressive despot could come up with. I simply have more faith in this God than religious people do, to not believe the lies that have been spoken about Him in the Bible. I don't believe a being with greater moral character, greater physical power, and greater intellect than I, would make the kind of ridiculous blunders in design, leadership, and judgment that this guy does. Frankly, the God we're discussing sounds awfully comparable to this Satan character that is supposedly so much worse. And Satan doesn't have the kind of outright power that God does, or so I'm told.
I believe that if there is a God, he would make a lot more sense than to mess around with talking serpents and burning bushes and building walls around a city paved with gold. Being omnipotent and omniscient, it doesn't make much sense to have walls around your city. Or to have a throne. Or an army, with horses and chariots. Or to have to endorse human and animal sacrifice and genital torture just to signify that your adoring forced subjects still like you and admire you, just the way you designed them to.
Being told this story, I looked around for other stories that made more sense. Some of them were even wackier, some of them were not, but all of them were implausible to me, and all of them seemed to be stories that were made up at one point, in one place, at one time, on a planet filled with people that were happily and blissfully living out their lives completely and totally ignorant of the "truths" that these new religions had to share.
Somehow, we had a society that functioned without Buddha. He wasn't real big in ancient North America.
Somehow, we had a society that functioned without Jesus. You can find that anywhere before he was born. Amazingly there were whole civilizations filled with regular, decent people before that.
Somehow, people get along just fine without believing in Muhammed or Allah, or Visnu or Thor or Zeus. Somehow, they are capable of breathing and living and reasoning and being good people regardless, blissfully ignorant of their completely real and all-powerful overlord Gods who they MUST WORSHIP OR THEY WILL SUFFER.
Hmmm....
Until a story comes along that I do not think was just made up by a science fiction writer who said if you want to get rich you should start a religion, until something comes along that I actually cannot explain as anything besides the supernatural, I'm chalking this whole organized religion phenomenon up as nothing more than an ancient or medieval cultural movement that has long since exceeded its usefulness, or the era of history where it could credibly make any sense to any thinking person, and exists today because of tradition, which is always the worst reason to do anything, especially since the original meaning gets lost along the way.
Take the pagan origins of modern Christmas for a prime example. Most of the associated elements of Christmas never originally had jack to do with Christ, and today, still have no other real association with Christ. But we still carry on the traditions because traditions remind us of our childhood and our family. So they stick with us, long after we've outgrown them. Long after we've discovered, using our brains, that there is no Santa Claus, no Easter Bunny, and much of the tradition is pagan in origin, remnants of an old European culture which we no longer identify with otherwise.
Actually worthwhile notions such as forgiveness and loving one another and being decent to each other and living by the golden rule, have existed before and separate from every single practicing religion on this tiny habitable globe drifting through the heavens.
Considering almost 100% of the universe is filled with environments that will kill us pretty much instantly, the fact that there exists any environment where life can exist is lucky for us, but it does not mean the universe was made for us. It's a rather hostile and inhospitable place which, if it is designed, is designed to make us perish as the galaxies fly apart from one another, suns go nova, ecosystems die, comets collide with planets, and extinctions are the fate of all species. It's a rather elaborate and unnecessarily large death trap, if it's a place made just for us. We'd have to be rather naive and simplistic people, completely impressed with ourselves, thinking ourselves to be so very extraordinary, as to think this vast and incomprehensible existence is here for the sole benefit of Man, and his supposedly inferior counterpart, Woman, and the animals we choose to domesticate together, under the oppressive yoke of an invisible voyeuristic genocidal maniac who is more concerned with making sure we don't wear condoms, than stopping the AIDS virus. Who allows countless children to suffer and die, to be abused, to become sick, to be murdered.
It's the same reasoning you apply towards Santa Claus.
If Santa Claus is good, and he also has the kind of magic necessary to deliver countless toys to countless girls and boys, why doesn't Santa instead deliver food to the starving children of the world?
Does reindeer magic only work when delivering XBox 360 to spoiled white children?
It doesn't work when delivering a bowl of hot soup to starving children of the third world? Gosh, wouldn't it be easier for the elves to make soup than electronics?
You just do the thought experiment. What would the world be like if Santa was real?
Wouldn't he behave a certain way, and demonstrate his magic in more practical ways than giving spoiled children more things?
By that same logic, why does God spend so much time worrying about what other gods we might imagine? Or if we find our co-workers to be sexy? Or if we pleasure ourselves in the privacy of our own home when we're lonely? Why does this God allow Satan to exist, and suffering, and why does he threaten us with horrible ends if we misbehave, and why do good people meet horrible ends anyway, and some bad people live the life of luxury and comfort, having everything they could ever want?
Why does God reward the greedy, the unethical, the corrupt, and give them all the power over us in our mortal lives, expect us to toil and suffer our whole lives and be virtuous, doing little more than praying for him to be merciful to us and praising him for being such a benevolent deity, while fearing that he might destroy us in the most horrible of ways, while guessing exactly what he expects of us because he's an unseen tyrant?
It all sounds like a system of control. A way for rich, powerful, political creatures to keep the masses obedient and less aggravating. Keep them fearful and submissive, eager to suffer in this life, so they can experience joy in the next.
That way the kings and princes of this life can be immoral, corrupt, and greedy soul-sucking leeches on society, consume massive resources and live in opulent mansions, commanding others around with the promise of money, so for their short, temporary existence on this planet, they can suffer far less than the rest of us.
But at least we have the comfort of knowing that, because we had faith, when we die, we will get our big reward of living in a fortified bronze age castle city in the clouds with Zeus and his army of horses and chariots, with his zombie son, walking the streets admiring all the pretty gemstones that heaven is made out of. And there will be angels singing about how wonderful the emperor of heaven is.
And we also have the comfort of knowing that if we believe that any of this is ludicrous, that benevolent deity will suddenly turn around and burn us in eternal hellfire and make us suffer unimaginably.
People look at me strangely when I say that I think when I die, I'm actually dead, and there's nothing that happens, and my body rots.
Well, I don't know a lot of people who spring back to life, and most bodies tend to rot. I can at least show you that much. I can also show you that my brain, where my consciousness resides, will eventually become inert and lifeless. It doesn't take much observation to settle the non-ridiculousness of these claims.
Can I describe what it is like to not exist? No. Can I prove I won't still exist as a conscious living being after death? No.
But it still seems to me that assuming all these confusing, contradictory, and completely irrational things I've described are not only real and true, but factual, is a lot stranger than thinking that when I die, I'm dead, and Santa Claus isn't real, and Christmas is pretty much a pagan tradition ripped off for marketing purposes (nowadays, the marketing isn't about selling the religion itself, but selling merchandise), and if God is real, he's not a danged thing like how Christians and Jews and Muslims are describing him, because I guess I refuse to believe that the universe was designed by a sadistic genocidal tyrant who persecutes people for eternity due to the thought crime of doubting he's real, when he only shows up on toast in Mexico somewhere, and if you squint really hard, you can see he's real. On toast.
Oh sweet Jesus On Toast, you're my favorite Christian breakfast treat. Goes great with Christ Chex!
I don't need such proofs of God, because I already believe in toast. I know toast is real, I've eaten that.
I just have a harder time swallowing Satan, Hell, Six-Day creationism, angels, demons, miracles, heaven made out of gemstones, and almost all of the absurd and extraordinary claims that Abrahamic and other faiths want me to believe. And since they're all contradictory, both internally inconsistent and at odds with other faiths, I can say with supreme confidence that at the very least, almost all of you are dead wrong, and if I'm going to hell for not believing in the right thing, so are you, and if that's the case, there's not a darned thing we can do about it because like you, I cannot force myself to believe in something that doesn't seem true.
If it smells like bronze age man just made it all up as a bedtime story to scare children into behaving, maybe that's what it is. Just like Santa Claus, and the boogeyman.
God is the boogeyman that scares adults. Santa, Satan, same difference. Be good and get gifts, be bad and get coal.
I don't believe it and I think spending this much of our very temporary lives thinking about it and quarreling about it is senseless. But you believe it if you want to... just like how smoking and drinking and pot usage isn't for me, I'm not the kind who cares if you do it in the privacy of your own home. Just don't blow your toxic smoke in my face, and don't drink and drive. And don't tell me I'm evil just because I don't subscribe to your world view, and don't try to spend tax dollars promoting your superstitions to me or my family.
It's bad enough that these beliefs divide us so. I can't tell you how many times I've met a good looking girl, who I am hopelessly unable to date, because I'm the wrong religion: none of the above.
It's not that her beliefs would bother ME, as I live in a world surrounded by religious people. I have to go with the flow. It's that she's taught from an early age that I'm sick and wrong for not believing what she does, and that when I speak out and share my doubts with anyone, I'm being evil, and that she shouldn't rest until I believe what she does, so I can enter her heaven with her.
Because I am not an eternally bound slave of the church, worshiping the invisible master unquestioningly, I am evil.
It's heartbreaking to find that the vast majority of people on this planet give a rat's behind WHAT you think about what happens after you die, so much so that they couldn't be your friend or your lover if you disagree. Can't we wait until after we die to sort this nonsense out? That's when we'll either know for sure, or not care anymore.
I just can't sit in a church and lie about belief just to fit in with people that I like. I also hate being told that I'm evil for not subscribing to their newsletter. I have read the book, I have gone to church. I do know all the moral lessons there are to be taught in the Bible. I didn't miss the seminar, and I could probably pass the written exam with flying colors.
I just don't think the theory is sound. That makes me a bad person I guess.
Oh well.
Sorry for thinking. God made me skeptical, or he didn't make me at all. Those are the only two options. So this is either God's fault or it isn't. I can't really blame all the world's ills on a being I've never met. Seems like scapegoating. Therefore I assume it's not his fault, and that I am the way I am because that's who I am.
Since I see no evidence of Him, and the stories I hear about him are too fantastic to be believed, too contradictory to be factual, and too arbitrary to be divine, I simply think we are what we are, and the fantasies we conjure up are not true until proven otherwise.
So where does the universe come from? What happens when we die?
I don't know, but not all theories are equal and correct, none are proven, and I'm one of those people who is comfortable with admitting that I don't know, and that I can probably cross off a lot of theories because they're just plain silly. The universe was not created when a Great Fire-breathing Leprechaun spilled his lucky charms onto the kitchen table and breathed life into it. Do you know how I know that? Because I just made it up, from the fiction-producing part of my brain. And it sounds exactly as realistic and plausible as every other religious creation myth I've ever heard. The Lucky Charms leprechaun is as real to me as Jehovah. To me, they're both advertising gimmicks, selling a product to children, and adults who like things that are marketed to children.
So that's why I don't believe. But why atheist and not strictly agnostic?
Because I do take a position. I have an opinion: I don't think it's real. I'm not on the fence about it.
That said, it's not a matter of faith. Could I be convinced there's a God? Show me evidence. I'd likely be convinced I went insane instead, if confronted by actual evidence. But sure, I'm open to the possibility. I'm still sure we've got almost all of it wrong, though, our theories about god. We humans are predictable, and our capacity for wrongness greatly exceeds our tendency to be right on occasion. By default, most of your random guesses are going to be wrong, and I truly don't believe you have access to special knowledge, especially considering what the source of your knowledge has said about morality, law, and science. It's just not a reliable source.
At least guess truly randomly, or make up your own beliefs, instead of picking and choosing which passages of the Bible are believable or relevant to you.
Or you can do what I did, and look at as many different views as you could, and decide for yourself which makes the most sense. If you still choose religion after that, and you think you have answers I do not, please share them with me because I'd very much like to hear something that I haven't heard before.
Just know that hope and morality are not wholly owned subsidiaries of your religion. And your religions have been taking credit for those concepts, and that's wrong. I know that one for a fact. We may disagree on many things, and I may be convinced of many things, but I am not budging on the matter- religion didn't give us morality, and in many instances, has coerced and misguided people to act improperly.
But it isn't religion that is the source of our folly, but our human failings. We are human regardless of faith, being atheist makes me no better than you. It just means I do not allow wild speculation about possible afterlives to influence my judgment here in this life towards the irrational. It's not a huge difference, but I do think it's healthier to be skeptical than it is to be credulous, and I do not believe that faith is a virtue, but simply another way of saying "I'm stubborn".
Belief is one thing, faith is crazy. To believe is to opine, to have faith is to state as fact a thing which is your opinion.
I don't have faith that there is no God, I simply have the opinion there is no God. I think it's fair to say, without any direct evidence, the contradictions and absurdities alone make the figure rather dubious, and the stories themselves make me not want to believe it is so.
If the figure described is real, that would be a lamentable and unfortunate reality; it would mean we are forever the tormented mind-slaves of an intractable omnipotent overlord who is not nearly as benevolent as he is nosy and overbearing, and when it comes to cruelty to those he judges unworthy, no creature living, dead, or imaginary, could ever hope to outclass the cruelest one, known as God.
Well said sir. It can get pretty damn hard at times to tell the "gods" of one religion from the "demons" of another.
