Should religion be banned?

[Modelworks]

Actually, more likely than not your beliefs coincide with the deity your parents believed in and indoctrinated you into believing as a child..not through any process of thought or reflection.

And you would be wrong. I made the choice at 17 , over 20 years ago to find out about other religions. I had problem with my parents choice and many questions so I took the time to read about many of them . I went with Buddhist at first then changed to athiest and now more in line with Christianity.

 

[Modelworks]

I never really understood this point of view.

Man A is a thoughtful, commpassionate humanist who devotes himself to helping the needy, but does not believe in God. Man B abuses people and commits crimes, but he believes in and worships God.

You are assuming that because a man has said it that is what God will do. I differ from Christians here in that I do not believe that a man has to know Christ to be in Gods favor, I believe he only has to follow Christ teachings.

Man A gets eternal torture. No chance after a quadrillion years to apologize and get on board with the right prayers. Man B gets eternal paradise. Maybe he'll stop with the bad behavior when he gets to heaven.

It doesn't work that way. Many people have the idea that someone can claim religion and live their life however they like and repent at the last minute and everything is good. Sorry God isn't that easy a pushover. Live your life in evil and you better have one major major last minute act before you die to make up for it all.

I find it impossible to believe that God could not only be cruel, petty, and capricious, but the most cruel, petty and capricuious being imaginable.

Isn't it a kind of blasphemy to make God out to be basically evil by everything we know?

I hear this a lot. People ask why God allows people to die, why allow children to suffer and I don't think anyone can answer that but God himself. My theory on it is that you cannot teach a child anything by giving them everything they want, you end up with a spoiled brat that has learned nothing. I also believe that their is a balance in place where too much interference by God would not provide the desired result. I think the whole process of life e is to get people back to the state they would have been in the garden of Eden. That is something I would guess has to be learned and cannot be given.

We may see it as cruel when a loved one dies if we hold God responsible knowing he could have saved them, but we are looking at it from our perspective. I think the same could be said of a child when you tell them no more candy and they start crying. In that moment from the child's viewpoint we are the most evil person around.

 

[nonlnear]

I hear this a lot. People ask why God allows people to die, why allow children to suffer and I don't think anyone can answer that but God himself.

The answer is not the problem; it's the question. A non-omniscient but intelligent creature will always find questions which are difficult to grapple with. To posit this obvious fact as evidence that any omniscient deity must be malevolent is just plain silly once you see the obvious necessity of such mysteries.

Theodicy is only a major topic (of contentious debate and scholarship, that is) in Western religious thought, because it arises as an issue when certain prejudices about the innate capacities of the human mind are fully sublimated into a religious matrix. If a belief system posits a divine being as "perfect" (by whatever standard) and also posits a creation or universe which is somehow separated from that divine presence, then it necessarily follows (at least for certain types of divine being) that the entities which are separated from the divine must exhibit their lack of perfection, or else they would be divine (again, for certain types of posited deity).

Frankly I find the insistence upon categorical attributes of a deity quite comical, in light of the obvious limitations of logic. An entity orthogonal to the universe is orthogonal to Reason, instantly making most theological discussion moot. That is not to say that one can't contemplate grand questions, but such contemplations are always a reflection of our own imaginations, rather than truly a reflection of anything transcendent. After all, transcendence transcends. (If it truly exists, that is... - of course that is abusing the word "exists", but ironically it was necessary for clarity to use the wrong word instead of the right word: transcends.)

 

[HGC]

Thanks for the thoughtful reply, Modelworks. I basically agree with you. I was putting forth the "fundamentalist" view, very widely held, which really doesn't make sense to me.

 

[HGC]

Great post nonlinear! I learned two new words, too: theodicy and orthogonal.

 

[William Gaatjes]

The answer is not the problem; it's the question. A non-omniscient but intelligent creature will always find questions which are difficult to grapple with. To posit this obvious fact as evidence that any omniscient deity must be malevolent is just plain silly once you see the obvious necessity of such mysteries.

Theodicy is only a major topic (of contentious debate and scholarship, that is) in Western religious thought, because it arises as an issue when certain prejudices about the innate capacities of the human mind are fully sublimated into a religious matrix. If a belief system posits a divine being as "perfect" (by whatever standard) and also posits a creation or universe which is somehow separated from that divine presence, then it necessarily follows (at least for certain types of divine being) that the entities which are separated from the divine must exhibit their lack of perfection, or else they would be divine (again, for certain types of posited deity).

Frankly I find the insistence upon categorical attributes of a deity quite comical, in light of the obvious limitations of logic. An entity orthogonal to the universe is orthogonal to Reason, instantly making most theological discussion moot. That is not to say that one can't contemplate grand questions, but such contemplations are always a reflection of our own imaginations, rather than truly a reflection of anything transcendent. After all, transcendence transcends. (If it truly exists, that is... - of course that is abusing the word "exists", but ironically it was necessary for clarity to use the wrong word instead of the right word: transcends.)

You can also just write that a limitless entity does not have to have the same perspective as a human being. And therefore, from it's point of view beyond good and evil as seen from a human perspective...

I wrote a text similair to this in a dailytech post once :

If you live good and honest life, those who are important to you will enjoy the benefits. Think of them, not of god.

If god does not exist, you have still lived a beneficial life because of the joy you bring to those who are important to you.

If god exists and is a kind god for humanity, then you still lived a beneficial life because you bring joy to those who are important to you. What happens after you died is between you and god. Perhaps he will bring happiness for those who are important to you.

If god exists and is an evil god for humanity, then you still lived a beneficial life because you bring joy to those who are important to you. When you die, what ever happens is between you and your evil for humanity god. And if you have bad luck, he will bring suffering for those who are important to you.

So you see, if you believe or not in a god, you can still make the decision to live a happy and just life. Something that will live on in future life. And that is the simple truth. A part may even be epigenetics.

A god in your reasoning is still an evil god if that god decides to do with humanity whatever it pleases, just because it can. It still is from a human perspective.

A hypothetical situation : Because our solar system might just be in the way of another species, and that a very powerful entity comes to wipe our solar system out of existence. Now first ,that entity comes to us that we must accept it as our god. Since it is omniscient compared to us it has a certain perspective but is it just for us ? No but since it is in our eyes a divine being, we accept all it's decisions as good.
In essence you are doing no more then justifying for example ritual offers...