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Yes, they are scared because that's the bs they have been force-fed to believe, that god'll get 'em for all of eternity if they don't fall in line.
Being scared is one of the main points of many religions. Because if a person tells you to do something, many are going to think - you and what army?
Personally, I've come to the conclusion that religion serves several different social cohesiveness purposes, which is why it continues to persist. We are hard wired to both know and care about the differences between us and them. Fortunately who us and them are depends on our culture.
How many of you have actually read the whole bible, cover to cover?
Here. First time I was about 12, needless to say much of it went right over my head. But I have always been the kind of person who would read the back of a Wheaties box if nothing else was available, so I was determined to power through, since my religion (fundamentalist Lutheran) said it was, and I did. My main impression though was that there was a whole lot of angst about things that frankly, I couldn't see why anyone cared.
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Originally Posted by WalkintheLight
Just imagine if God allowed folks to just do what ever they want, we would have a society just like we have today.
But god clearly DOES allow people to do whatever they want. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who want ridiculous and/or downright evil things. Quite a few of them profess some religion or other. No lightning strikes, and there is no difference in mortality rates due to accident or illness between religions that I can see.
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Originally Posted by WalkintheLight
Religion is a joke, I agree. aLL RELIGION IS MAN MADE, BIBLICAL CHRISTIANITY IS GOD MADE.
Um, your evidence? "Because the bible says so" is not evidence, it is merely an assertion that you happen to agree with.
This may astound you, but many people who are not christians have encountered what they confidently assert is the godhead. How on earth is a non-believer supposed to choose which one?
My "falling away" was a gradual process that took place over a good decade or more. To sum it up, I failed to see the applicability of many Bronze Age concepts to modern life. The parts of the bible that I could accept as useful guides are also espoused by other religions as well, so christianity is not special in that regard.
As it is, beyond a handful of fundamental beliefs...they get all over the place rather quickly.
And are quite willing to torture and burn each other over their differences. It is secular law that has put a stop to this in our western European culture.
Speaking only for myself, I never felt I wasn't free behaviorally, because as a believer, the "dictates" were pretty well aligned with my own internal compass anyway. Apart from all the pearl-clutching around the margins, most of what is forbidden in holy writ is just common sense.
The freedom I revel in is freedom of thought. Nothing is unthinkable.
To your first comments...
It is kind of fascinating as to what "sins" people commit. Almost all of us have a small pool of "sins" that we commit. Some of the worst ones might be playing with our naughty parts or thinking naughty thoughts about the girl next door. And of course you have some people who actually DO naughty things with the girl next door.
After that. What? White lies? Saying bad things about somebody? Being mean or inconsiderate to somebody? Goofing off at work? Cussing? Missing church?
I mean there aren't that many things that the majority of people actually do or don't do that are horrible or awful .
And that leads me to your second paragraph. A Christian can think things but they have to feel guilty about some things they think. Thinking about slugging that guy who made you mad. Is that a sin for which you need to repent. Or just thinking about how you think the guy is a jacka$$. Is that a sin. A Christian's thought life could be kind of complicated in sorting these things out.
And finally...
The term "faith" has lots of various meanings and has lots of components. But one of the main ones is to avoid "doubt". Therefore if you have "faith" you can't really honestly examine your beliefs because it might move into the into the real of "doubt" which then weakens your faith and could be considered sin.
Having "freedom of thought" seems to be a nice alternative to having to examine your thought life for "sin".
I mean there aren't that many things that the majority of people actually do or don't do that are horrible or awful.
The general idea presented by believers is based on the doctrine of the utter depravity of humans. That without god's moral restraint, "anything goes". And yet it never even crossed my mind once to do some of the things my fellow Christians were up to. Using donated funds for personal luxuries and various forms of sexual abuse, are things you read about every day and in some cases I personally observed, yet I would never have entertained doing those things, much less done them -- then or now.
By the lights of evangelical Christians, after 30 years of godlessness I should be eating babies and making burnt offerings to Satan, subverting local youth, engaging in orgies, etc., and yet, weirdly, to this day, your most sweaty, red-faced baptist bible-thumper could not fault my public OR private life, and at the EXACT same time will happily make the snap judgment that I am an evil and depraved person.
The general idea presented by believers is based on the doctrine of the utter depravity of humans. That without god's moral restraint, "anything goes". And yet it never even crossed my mind once to do some of the things my fellow Christians were up to. Using donated funds for personal luxuries and various forms of sexual abuse, are things you read about every day and in some cases I personally observed, yet I would never have entertained doing those things, much less done them -- then or now.
By the lights of evangelical Christians, after 30 years of godlessness I should be eating babies and making burnt offerings to Satan, subverting local youth, engaging in orgies, etc., and yet, weirdly, to this day, your most sweaty, red-faced baptist bible-thumper could not fault my public OR private life, and at the EXACT same time will happily make the snap judgment that I am an evil and depraved person.
I should have put the bolded as another type of sin that might be more frequently committed. In fact one thing I noticed during my families "Assembly of God" period was that there were many small "businessmen" in that particular congregation. After we got out of there and time went on I found out that many of them had reputations of being greedy or somewhat unethical in their business practices. All the while their personal lives were pretty clean and above board.
As for you. It is kind of disappointing that your godlessness hasn't ever kicked into full on debauchery and depravity.
I am curious about former believers who are now non believers and what brought them to change their minds. I suppose for many it was a gradual process and it happened for many reasons.
However I am specifically interested in what Biblical story/tenet/doctrine that was the straw that broke the camel's back.
For me, it was the "what happens to those who have never heard the gospel" dilemma. As I'd talk to Christians whom I respected at the time I got all kinds of answers. They go to hell... they don't go to hell...the ones older than the age of accountability go to hell...They go to hell but they don't get punished as bad...they go to limbo/purgatory. An answer I got from the more sensitive types was "we don't know, God is the judge". I do remember that the ones who said that they were going to hell would quote Paul in Romans.
I began to think that this should have been a fundamental question that God addressed when he formulated his "plan". And then I thought about how God wasn't a "respecter of persons". And then I thought about how if God was not a "respecter of Persons"... how could he have a "chosen people" to the exclusion of everybody else on the planet. Nation or individual.
Then I thought about how the Messiah was supposed to come exclusively to save the Jews. Then after Jesus came and the Jews didn't bite, God had Paul open up business to the gentiles. Then I thought about how the gentiles had been shut out for thousands of years and although they were now eligible to be saved by Jesus... how it was going to take forever to get the word out and the little dude in the Amazon rain forest is going to be doomed for a couple more millennia. Not to mention my ancient relatives in northern Europe.
And I thought again about how God isn't supposed to be a "respecter of persons".
I then realized that while Christians would always tell me "life isn't fair"... I realized that their version of God isn't either. Not by a longshot.
The theology is, in the history of mankind, God created different nations and sent prophets and messengers towards them with a message of monotheism. And when a nation's time was up, God created new people and new nations and sent new prophets and messengers towards them - with the same message of monotheism. Worship only ONE God.
There is a mention of a few such prophets in Torah, Bible and Quran. These are Abraham, Lot, Joseph, and a few others. The actual number is unknown to us.
A follower of Isaiah, Elijah, Hosea, Ezekiel, Elisha, Samuel, Jeremiah etc is NOT bound by Jesus or the Bible or the Quran.
Every nation was given a choice to accept or reject.
Every nation will be judged under the light of the message and guidance provided to them by their prophet.
God is not going to throw folks of the pre-Jesus era in hell just because they did not believe in Jesus
And just like many others, Jesus was also a prophet. He arrived with the same message of monotheism.
However, over the years, the bible and the message of Jesus was so brutally miscegenated that the theology of modern day Christianity has way too many holes to be ignored and accepted as "blind faith".
From a prophet, people turned Jesus into God. or God's son.
There is a very interesting research done by Dr. Robert Beckford. And it makes a lot of sense to me when I tie it into the pattern of God sending Prophets, and NEVER his sons towards human kind.
As for you. It is kind of disappointing that your godlessness hasn't ever kicked into full on debauchery and depravity.
Lol! Well sorry to disappoint but I'm too old to be sowing wild oats anyway. The most exciting thing I did today was to finish a proof of concept for my client involving a complex stored procedure in Sql Server. And that's only MY definition of "exciting".
Being scared is one of the main points of many religions. Because if a person tells you to do something, many are going to think - you and what army?
Yes, it is. I still can't believe that those beliefs and the behaviour of followers in my cult were widely accepted. I did fear. Why would anyone want to instill into an innocent child complete fear of a god and certain people? It is a twisted thing to do. Fear the world, for it is riddled with sin and all things ungodly.
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Personally, I've come to the conclusion that religion serves several different social cohesiveness purposes, which is why it continues to persist. We are hard wired to both know and care about the differences between us and them. Fortunately who us and them are depends on our culture.
It does, but at what cost? Religion has done way more damage than good. I view the cohesiveness as being taught behaviour, like fear and controlling the masses. People are ok with it as long as they don't have to do too much thinking or they don't want to put in any energy, time or money into doing anything productive. Just follow the crowd. I mean, there's more of "them" than "us", so they are in the majority. So, that makes them right.....right?
For former believers... What was the Biblical dealbreaker?
For me, there was no "one" thing that caused me to reject the Bible. It was pretty much - everything.
The biggest, most prominent and important reason is this: I cannot, nor would I want to, justapose the idea of Yahweh being his perfect, just, fair, compassionate, forgiving, God who loves you and wants you to have everlasting life ...
But would then turn around and have 42 young children brutally torn apart simply for calling Elijiah "old baldhead."
Or the constant misogyny everywhere in the Bible. Why is it that Lot had to find good MEN in Sodom and Gamorrah - but women didn't count. So when God decided to wipe everyone out, hundreds - or thousands - of innocent women and children were wiped out.
For thousands of years, Western society has valued the lives of women and children over men - whereas God sees things in a diametrically opposite way. Women and children are worthless. I suppose that's why when a woman gives birth to a son, she is considered "unclean" for 30 days. But if she gives birth to a daughter, she us "unclean" for 60 days. What disgusting discrimination - and this by the supposedly most perfect and most moral being to ever exist.
Do we even need to talk about how slavery was condoned? Uh huh. Notice how God never punished a person for doing something we would consider morally repugnant. Even when Cain killed Abel, he was not truly punished. In fact, he was protected with the Mark of Cain - and somehow found a wife and lived in the land of Nod. Not sure where he found a wife considering Cain and Abel were the only two people on earth at the time - aside from their parents, Adam and Eve. But since when do we expect the Bible to make sense or be consistant.
After all, the goat herders who originally found the Dead Sea Scrolls burned a bunch of them as heating fuel to keep their yert warm. Who knows what important information was destroyed? Now - WHY would God supposedly "inspire" this book and then have parts of it destroyed like that?
So yeah, God kills people for doing things like having gay sex or committing adultry - he kills people for not impregnating his dead brother's wife or picking up sticks on the Sabbath. He murders children for being unlucky enough to be Egyptian - or even the slaves of Egyptians. He kills people for insulting his miserable prophets, he kills women who aren't virgins on their wedding night. Or for wanting to have sex with angels. Or looking over their shoulders as they leave their homes. But he DOESN'T kill people who want to have sex with their fathers - or people who murder or engage in sex trafficking - or people who own slaves or who wage aggressive and unprovoked warfare - or who commit genocide - or who marry six year-olds and consummate the marriage when they're twelve (!!)
Why the hell would I want to worship a monster like that? And yet ... yet ... billions of people for thousands of generations have convinced themselves that Yahweh is a good god - despite what they read in the Bible. It is the worst case of cognitive dissonance ever foisted onto the human race. It just goes to show you that, once you have a large enough propaganda apparatus in place, you can convince entire nations that literally ANYTHING is true.
And no ... Jesus doesn't count. Because Jesus is supposed to BE Yahweh - is he not? There is this bizarre "trinity" going on where Yahweh is his own son - with this third ghost thing floating around. I mean, seriously - WHY do people believe this garbage? Are they really so afraid of death that they would rather latch on to a silly story that they have to know, on some level, is just flagrantly untrue?
Because, first of all, there is no mention of the Trinity in the Bible. Anywhere. Every time Jesus mentioned God - God was someone else somewhere else. Jesus never once referred to himself as the creator of the universe - and even said that, to reach God, one must come through him. Well, if we went through Jesus, would we have already reached God? So the statement makes no sense!
Except - as a cult leader, which Jesus most assuredly was. He was never the "son of God" - and given that Jesus instructed people to give all their possessions to the poor - or that one must hate their parents and children and in-laws and spouse to be his disciple. That's exactly what cult leaders do: they try to tear you away from your connections to anything outside of the cult. They want to make you completely dependent on the cuilt for everything - food, clothing, shelter - and spiritual guidance. And billions of people fell for it - hook, line and sinker. It's ... upsetting that people are so gullible, even today with our current knowledge and technology, people still put their faith in a book written almost 4,000 years ago. A book that is so filled with horrific atrocities that I'd rather let my young children watch horror movies all night long than to be exposed to the extreme evil found in that horrific book.
The thing is - God doesn't love you. He just wants you to throw yourself on the ground and lick his sandals. He wants your worship, your praise, your adoration, your genuflection, your hymns. He wants you to put him first in ALL things - because all-powerful universe creators seem to forget who they are quite often - like they have some kind of divine Alzheimers' issue.
See ... I've always believed that a truly GOOD god would not do something like tear down Job's life over a silly bet with Satan - and then yell and scream at Job like a petulant child simply for asking what he had done to displease this monster. "Where were you when I put the stars in the sky or filled the valleys with water" or whatever exactly he said. What an ass - and God KNEW he was busted. So he had to break out the "let's intimidate the puny mortal" trick to avoid having to explain himself.
"I'm terribly sorry, Job, but I had to wipe out your entire life - including your lovely wife and wonderful children - because of a bet with Satan. And no ... you don't have a right to be angry. Because I'm God. And you're not. So you have to just sit there and take whatever I throw at you. Yep. So open up and take a bite of this excrement sandwich ..."
And instead of seeing these absolute horrors for what they are - people defend them. "But you don't know God's mind!" or "Well, obviously God had his reasons!" or "God's actions are always good. Therefore. Killing babies must somehow be good!"
Which, by the way, is God's number one reason and justification for murder: landgrabbing. Anyone unfortunate enough to have built a city in the region known as the Promised Land were mercilessly wiped from the face of the earth. Over two dozen named cities were wiped out by the Israelites at the behest of God - you know - the embodiment of all things good and moral?
No - a truly good God would NOT stand on a mountain and thump his chest demanding - DEMANDING - love and worship and praise and to put him first in all things - and all the rest of it. Including the ominous warning that if you don't let him control your life and do as your told and worship him like a fanatic, you will burn in hell for all eternity. Because - yeah - eternal torture is a trait I always look for in an infinitely good god. Don't you?
In fact, you could sit down with a stranger and have a wonderful conversation - and then the stranger would leave. Or - he might be in distress and ask for your aid. And you would never know this stranger was an all-powerful god. He would be humble - as he would want us to be. Humble, compassionate, helpful, charitable, magnanimous, empathic - THOSE would be the traits he would want to see in us. Not blind faith and fanaticism whereby we're stoning people to death for the slightest misstep - where everyone lives in fear of saying the wrong thing or working on the wrong day.
A truely good God would have very very few rules. And I think we can all figure out for ourselves the kind of rules a truly good God would want. Not all of these ridiculous sexual rules. A truly good god isn't going to care who you climb into bed with - and while he would frown on the idea of adultery, he wouldn't want to murder everyone who committed it - including rape victims who didn't scream. Because that's the morality of the Bible. If you don't scream, you've committed adultery and deserve to die. Wait, what? Your rapist had his hand over your mouth? You were knocked unconscious? He had his hand around your throat? He threatened to kill you if you screamed? Heh. So what. You didn't scream. Therefore, you die.
Ever notice how modern society goes out of its way to ensure our laws are almost NEVER Biblical? We don't care if God condones slavery. We - do not. And murder is a capital offense - but failing to impregnate your dead brother's wife - is not. Nor is adultery or working on the Sabbath or not being a virgin on your wedding night or talking back to a priest. But somehow pedophilia isn't punishable by death. In fact, in the Bible, it's not even a crime!!
It's disgusting. And yet billions of people cling to that stupid, atrocious book as if it actually means something. It's not even a timeless book given that everything is still measured in sheckles and furlongs and other weird things that have fallen out of favor. God didn't even have the prescience enough to realize that English would become the lingua franca of the modern world - so maybe there ought to be a Bible written in English. Does it matter if English didn't exist yet as a language? No. In fact, having an indeciperable language in 2,500 B.C. suddenly burst onto the scene thousands of years later would prove beyond a doubt that the Bible truly was written by God. But no ...
So you see - this is the deal breaker. All of it. And I only scratched the iceberg. I mean - barely scratched it. At all. I just wish the Bible fanatics could see and understand how horrible that book really is - especially the Dominionists in this country who think our laws in the US should be based on the Bible, not the Constitution. So tell me, those of you who think the Bible is the end-all, be-all, would you really want to live under Biblical laws? And be honest. Really be honest.
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