Mk, here's my long winded view on religion, the three monotheistic religions (Islam, Christianity, and Judaism) in particular, seeing as they are the largest in the world right now. Most of my points will be directed towards Christianity, as in America it is the biggest religious force.
First off, let me say that I do not believe in any religion. I take interest in the occult and the supernatural, but I do not believe in any deity, for he/she has not shown his/herself to me. I am an atheist, I am not a skeptic.
I have a number of reasons I find fault with contemporary religion, starting with the omnipotent deity idea.
In Christianity, you are told that God is everywhere and anywhere and knows everything. Ignoring for now the fact that no one has ever found scientific data to support this idea, we come to the quandary of have an omnipotent ruler.
Christians talk about how God gave them free will, but a belief in an omnipotent God makes that idea untrue. Why? If God knows everything, then he knows the future. If he knows the future, then he knows what everyone's actions will be. If he knows that, and judges everyone upon death like it says in the bible, then he would have already chosen who will burn in 'hell'.
Is that a loving God? No.
Then why worship him?
If God created everything, as it explains in Genesis, then he would have created all the evils in the world, correct? But any christian you talk to would deny that. The typical christian response is that "since evil is simply an absence of good, then God created only good, and evils only arise as people deny his goodness" (conveniently glossing over the fact that God knows everything, and could guide people back to his Goodness if he wanted to). But the flaw in this explanation arises when one examines God's 'goodness'.
Without even touching upon the evils in the bible (the massacres of the Medianites, the Benjamites, the Syrians, etc) one could argue that even though evil is the 'absence of good', one could still commit 'evil' whilst being 'good'. Consider this: If a being had the power to avert a massacre of innocents with no ill effect to anyone else, and he/she refused to avert the disaster, for no reason other than personal satisfaction, is that being evil?
What sort of God would condemn humans to death? What about to eternal torture in hell? Judged or not, that's not the work of a loving God. Thus God is not loving.
Another reason I oppose religion is that religion fosters ignorance. In any religion, a cornerstone point is that all truths can be divined from the religion, and any other ideas are false and heresy. This is what prompted the Church to
Three hundred and seventy years. Think about it. This is now common knowledge. It was common knowledge in 1992. It was common knowledge in about 1880. But the Catholic Church denied it, because in their 2000-year old text, it says something different.
Even today, when evolution is the only scientifically backed 'creation' theory, religious groups still cling to their ancient ideas of a magical man in the sky who made them from dirt and bones.
Knowledge is power. Religion squashes knowledge, because it tells us that all the answers to everything are in ancient books.
Not to say I find the Bible/Koran/Book of Mormon/etc are not completely useless, they are interesting fictional tales about ancient life. They give us a portal into the day-to-day life of civilizations long gone. But they are not things to be used and taken as fact.
Religion is an outdated, ignorant, pointless idea that relies on circular arguments (The bible is true because it says so in the bible), ancient ideas (the world is FLAT), and ridiculous claims (we all go to a cloud city when we die!). It should not be taught to anyone, least of all children, who are hard-wired to take knowledge from adults as fact. In my mind, telling your children that you go to hell if you're bad is just the same as brainwashing.
And that is why I don't like religion.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment