Want to know stuff about Religion? ask an atheist or an agnostic it seem.

**Rhyfelwyr** · 10-01-2010, 01:05

ATPG is back in the backroom!

I never knew you were into religion more in the past, anyway I share your dislike of the excesses of organised religion.

**Askthepizzaguy** · 10-01-2010, 01:39

Originally Posted by Rhyfelwyr

ATPG is back in the backroom!

I never knew you were into religion more in the past, anyway I share your dislike of the excesses of organised religion.

I wanted, very much, to be deeply religious. I sought out that connection to a God, I wanted very much for that God to be there. I didn't have a whole bunch else to turn to for support.

My comments about my conclusions about faith are too general to reveal my specific feelings about specific policies contained within these organized faiths.

If for example I like the overarching message of a faith, but I find parts 25, 86, and 1017 to be entirely distasteful, it is hard to call that faith my own. I'd have to have my own version of that faith to believe in it. But, most of these religions suggest they are the absolute, revealed, unalterable word of God. I have a hard time believing that I must believe some things in order to believe in other things. I also don't trust humanity not to have altered such words. We're not trustworthy people for a second, let alone thousands of years. We also make mistakes and lots of them.

There is a strong feeling that I have, that just feels like it can't be true that God cares about if we eat cows that are killed in a certain manner or not, or if we eat a pig, we have defiled ourselves. I don't accept that God mandates that we need to chop off pieces of our body in order to appease him. I don't really accept any of the mythologies in various faiths, regarding the history of the universe.

If it has a moral message but is wrong on science, I could still believe in it's moral message, but then it tells me it is the inerrant word of God, and all other beliefs are wrong, and if you accept one, you have to accept the other.

I also don't believe God has such a wildly different personality as he does between Testaments.

I also don't think God changes his mind on stuff, he's supposed to be infallible. Yet he changes his policy toward mankind several times.

He also demonstrates silly human failings, like wrath and anger and jealousy and spite. This love he's supposed to have unconditionally has lots and lots of conditions.

It appears to be demonstrably false due to contradictions alone in many respects, and hypocritical in others. It also does not seem to apply in many examples to modern society, especially in cases of slavery and child marriages and arranged marriages, or punishments for certain crimes. I really don't believe God wants us to both love each other, and also, stone each other to death for minor offenses.

Obviously I'm focusing on Abrahamic faiths here but it applies equally well to non, especially in cases where it seems cultural traditions have been blended into faiths and won't go away, like caste societies and untouchability, ritual slaughter of animals to appease things, and so on.

It almost seems lost in a bunch of other humanocentric distractions, any real discussion of God. In fact, discussing God and having differing opinions on God is often met with hostility, and accusations of heresy or blasphemy, especially in certain segments of the population which are more fundamental.

So it is not just the mythology I can't believe, but also many of the exact policies which seem to be very male-centric and ancient-times-centric, and superstition-centric. Like the aversion to female menstruation which is obviously archaic. I don't believe God would think that women should be treated one way at one time and then given freedom in another, obviously one is right and one is wrong. If God is eternal he would know that women would eventually be treated equally to a man, and I kind of refuse to believe a loving God would have it any other way.

He would have been correct on that point from the beginning, and I seriously doubt a natural function like menstruation would be evil according to God, that we must avoid touching women on their periods. It just seems unenlightened. I picture God as being far, far more enlightened than I could ever be, and when his revealed word seems like it is unjust, superstitious, and traditional for the sake of tradition at the expense of common sense, and instructs us in policies any enlightened person would find abhorrent, I don't think that's God.

Logically, God should be flawless. There can be no flaw whatsoever in his reasoning, because he should be reason incarnate. If he made the laws of the universe then he also made the laws of logic, mathematics, and is precisely correct on any given thing, ever.

When he makes a logical statement on something, whose logic is then later contradicted directly and exactly, in totally incompatible form, by himself, I know that it cannot be God.

I also cannot picture God as having to need to lie. In the Bible, he lies outright several times, even encourages his people to lie. There are several instances of this.

Message-wise, the message is incompatible with itself. Treat others as you would treat yourself is out the window especially with regards to gay people. Not all religions are this way, not all subsets of religion are this way, but frankly if there are gay people, and I know I can't just decide one day that I like men, it would never happen, then being gay isn't a choice. No one just goes "kissing dudes? Ewwwwwww" and then one day decides "You know, screw it, I will choose to like men now".

And if it is not a choice then that is how they naturally are, and I don't think it is right to persecute people for how they are born. People are born with down's syndrome, are they sinners? Are they less of God's creation because they are different from us? They're not inferior either, I've personally known plenty and many of them are extraordinarily loving and kind. There is no evil there. Would we persecute someone for being colorblind? Or having blonde hair? It's part of nature. It's not even a handicap, it is a natural difference. It cannot be a sin. I mean no disrespect in the comparisons, either, but we don't treat others with differences any different, so why that difference? Who cares? Why do they care?

In the Bible, Jesus didn't care. He said a lot about the poor though, a whole lot. Nothing about the gays. Meanwhile, caring about the poor is now considered evil and socialist by some, and treating the gays the same is also considered a degradation of our moral fabric. I refuse to believe that.

On mythology, I disagree. On science, I disagree. On the nature of God, I disagree. On specific religious policy, I disagree. On rituals and traditions, I disagree.

Am I evil?

Am I going to burn in hell for thinking this way?

I disagree. And I think God would want me to use the mind I have, to disagree, sometimes. If I think something is wrong.

If I am wrong, he'll show me why in the afterlife. Until then, I should be free to express my moral objections. He gave me that free will.

I also have doubts that he is there. And it is not because I hate God, but because he's obviously and intentionally leaving it ambiguous that he is there. So that means he wants me to wonder if he is there, if he is there.

Everything I think and feel, feels correct and God-approved, if there is a God, but everything I think and feel is rejected by every single religion. And, I am told I am immoral for that.

I feel these people are wrong, and that their desire to confirm has made them lose their objectivity. And I object to that. Mass conformity only leads to mass failure when you're wrong.

People have been wrong, en masse, before. I feel they are wrong here. And they are wrong to preach certain beliefs as the only acceptable way to live, the only acceptable facts, and that those who disagree have something wrong with them.

At the end of the day, what is believed should be okay to disagree on. It's when the disagreement itself is considered sinful, that's where you lose me. I can't have a God that I can't disagree with. That doesn't seem Godly to me.

**Philippus Flavius Homovallumus** · 10-02-2010, 12:52

Pizzaguy, what you have described here is a characature of an Evangelical Christian train-wreck, the sort of thing that non-Evangelical pastors and Chaplains regularly spend weeks, months, even years, trying to dissentangle people from whilst preserving their faith.

You may find this shocking, but most religions allow for "objections of concience" and almost no Christian denominations (I cannot speak for other religions" claim the modern Bible to be litterally a flawless transmission from God; quite the opposite.

So maybe the problem is not the religions you have been exploring, but the lnse you have tried to explore them through?

**Rhyfelwyr** · 10-02-2010, 13:40

And the more sober Evangelicals still know that you have to read the Bible in its historic context. There's a reason the Old Testament and the Koran share all these rules that seem really quirky to us, they had their uses for ancient desert peoples.

ATPG, as for all the strange rituals and observances you associate with 'religion', these are 99% man-made and have nothing to do with the religions themselves. [evangelism] I make a point of taking nothing to do with all the baggage that comes with organised religion nowadays, since ultimately all the ceremonies and rituals and hierarchies and great buildings etc have nothing to do with what Jesus taught, they are just distractions that make people complacent and substitute the for a relationship with Christ [/evangelism].

Anyway, ATPG, you seem to be saying you were open to the idea of seeking a connection with God etc. Don't let overly dogmatic churches put you off; even in Paul's Epistles, he tells people not to quibble over minor points of doctrine. I know you don't believe in God anyway, but in this thread you seem to be complaining more about organised religion than faith per se.

**gaelic cowboy** · 10-02-2010, 15:06

And the more sober Evangelicals still know that you have to read the Bible in its historic context. There's a reason the Old Testament and the Koran share all these rules that seem really quirky to us, they had their uses for ancient desert peoples.

Time we started redesigning our religons then I suppose

**Beskar** · 10-02-2010, 20:25

His idea is something I advocate, only teach religion in the context of the facts and don't endorse any of them. True religious freedom and secularism in the education system.

**CountArach** · 10-03-2010, 05:10

I'm not that surprised by the results, especially given that it was about more religions than just one's own. Given the relatively low proportion of Atheism/Agnosticism in America it is largely confined to an educated minority. These people are far more likely to be exposed to other cultures and the concomitant religions. This in turn leads to a greater awareness thereof and thus the higher scores. Nor am I surprised by the high score of Jews as they are also exposed daily to a largely Christianised culture.