Tuesday 1 April 2008

The problem with religion...


The problem with a belief that: inside one of the countless billions of galaxies in the universe, on a tiny isolated planet, you are individually being monitored by a loving deity that has your interests at heart; is that it does not favour modesty. The self-absorbed smiles on any religious person will tell you that.


For a faith that supposedly favours the meek (it depends which page of the bible you read) Christianity teaches us to ignore the work of countless generations of scientists because of one bronze-age source. So the Earth is six-thousand years old. Well I never.


If you take Noah literally, email me NOW!!! I want to hear from you.

10 comments:

VAMP said...

Thanks for stopping by the Middle-Aged-Atheist.

Noah, huh? Boy he had to deal with a lot of shit didn't he? LOL

Join the Atheist Blogroll --- google "Mojoey" or click on the banner on my blog to join and get more traffic.

Steven Bently said...

Great blog, Thanks, Have you bookmarked.

Anonymous said...

did you just want to get some traffic off my blog? you wrote "I don't agree. visit" and your link. maybe I'll get some traffic off of yours

Mr. Hibit said...

Mr. X.
I am a Christian and I don't believe the earth is 6,000 years old. I do believe the story of Noah. I do not believe in a deity that has my interests at heart (primarily).
In this post, you have only attacked a few beliefs of religionists, but have not addressed the God of the Bible. I am interested in hearing more about the 'god' in whom you do not believe. You may be surprised, but I may not believe in that 'god'.

GCT said...

"In this post, you have only attacked a few beliefs of religionists, but have not addressed the God of the Bible."

Funny thing that. No matter what arguments are put forth, there's always a Xian saying, "Well, that's not MY god, so I don't have to listen to your arguments." Consider that from one divine source, there are countless ideas of what god is. You'd think an omni-max being could come up with something that could be understood by all and coherently?

MR. X said...

KO

pilgrim said...

Brothers and Sisters in Christ

The goal of these men are obvious--Let us not waste time with foolish arguments and long defenses. This has been going on for nearly 2000 years. Let us continue to build each other up in our most holy faith, keeping our eyes upward and our minds on things above. Those who are drawn to Christ will find him, for He finds all of His lost sheep.

But these men are not open to dialogue, only ridicule and persecution. Indeed, their knowledge puffs them up, and they will only continue to try and put us to shame with their tests, their questions and their fine sounding arguments. Let us be like sheep and remain silent and dumb.

Brothers and sisters, the Son of Man is coming--let no man tell you otherwise--and when He is revealed from the heavens with power and glory, our hope and vindication will be made manifest. Keep your eyes on the shepherd of your souls.

Grace and peace...

Anonymous said...

pilgrim is not even a troll. he is a bot

Anonymous said...

gct was bold enough to comment:
"You'd think an omni-max being could come up with something that could be understood by all and coherently?"

Thought provoking! It seems to me that there's very little that could be understood coherently (by which I assume you mean "in the same way"?) by everyone, ever, regardless of their accidents of birth, language, culture, mental abilities, general disposition etc.

As soon as you allow in transcendence -- that God is in some sense completely "Other" and apart from both us and the universe as we experience it -- the idea that such a being can be understood by me, thee and the milkman in the same way as we understand any other entity becomes difficult to maintain. This, it seems to me, is the real problem with a religion that tries to nail God down (heh) by reducing him/her to propositional statements that make him/her easy to understand; or a religion that says Jesus is, like, my bestest buddy. When taken to its extreme, the idea is absurd -- a potential God that we could completely describe or relate to in this way, it seems to me, would not be worthy of worship.

With this in mind, the existence of a massive variety of ideas about who God is does not necessarily argue against the existence of God -- worth pausing for thought though -- but it certainly argues against a God who is easy to understand and describe.

Oh, yeah, and creationists suck both as scientists and theologians. They should listen to St Augustine, bless his ancient holy socks:
http://www.pibburns.com/augustin.htm

GCT said...

mrsham,
"Thought provoking! It seems to me that there's very little that could be understood coherently (by which I assume you mean "in the same way"?) by everyone, ever, regardless of their accidents of birth, language, culture, mental abilities, general disposition etc."

Thank you, but I disagree. An omnipotent being that is also omniscient surely knows how to present himself to humans in a way that is understandable by all.

"As soon as you allow in transcendence -- that God is in some sense completely "Other" and apart from both us and the universe as we experience it..."

I see where you are going with this...The original comment was about our conceptions of god. These conceptions vary so widely that even Xians will fight each other over whose conception of god is right. Although we may vary in the small details, the larger ones also seem to vary quite a bit, which is hard to understand when it comes to an omni-max god that supposedly wants us to know/love him. Also, I would think that the part of god that would be comprehendable by humans would be at least similar amongst all humans.

"With this in mind, the existence of a massive variety of ideas about who God is does not necessarily argue against the existence of God -- worth pausing for thought though -- but it certainly argues against a God who is easy to understand and describe."

If you conceive of a personal god, then I disagree with this. It's obvious that this personal god has not established a personal relationship with all, or else he changes from person to person. Further, the breadth of different god personas does speak against an omni-max god that desires us to know/love him, in that it's obvious that not all of us are being spoken to, or else god is not omni-max, else he would know how to present himself to us.