A few days ago i met a rabbi that on the count of me not being either Jewish or a follower of the Jewish faith, his view of me was that i wasn’t even human.
I have long realized that this is one of the fundamental problems with all organized mainstream religions, it divides people into the believers (to be seen and treated as human beings) and the rest of the worlds population unbelievers (not even really human they are destined to eternal damnation anyway). On top of that religion removes reason from their brain.
It is like a filter is in place that turns information they receive into whatever fits their current beliefs.
I decided to mirror this exact experience in the post Why are religious people so stupid? The Rabbi i was trying to have a dialog with answered pretty much the same way i put forward my argument.
“I cant talk to you you are not Jewish “me: what?” you don’t follow the jewish faith, the only true faith. “me: What does that have to do with anything?” You are not Jewish, you are evil i cant talk to you , etc, etc, etc.“
Now i am going to use a poster to the above mentioned post as an example, but unlike my usual diss! I will just ask the questions, you be the judge of what effect and consequence religion has on people.
The poster is according to his blog a 16 year old kid calling himself jesuswarrior. He is home schooled, and he believes in the bible and seams to be a fan of creationism. I am sure he is a nice guy, though somewhat confused.
I am actually a little apprehensive about writing this since its obvious that JW has lived a very sheltered Christian life, so i will not be my usual nasty self i will just ask the question that JW and his like seams unable to ask. I was considering not doing this post, i might cause JW some discomfort, but as i see it his parents already did that by treating him like a mushroom.
JW is a startling, horrible example on what some parents put their kids through. JW is now 16 and his parents, i am sad to say, has convinced him that the world is something like 6000 years old and that if JW doesn’t conform and behave, he probably believes he will end up in hell. I know you are suppose to be a bit fucked up at 16, hormones and all, but imagine having to start your transition to adulthood this far off.
Just imagine, here you have grown people that actively sifts through the unsurmountable data pile of scientific fact and information, looking for any scrap’s of imaginary discrepancy in the current understanding that the world, that it is a few billion years old. Yet they have no problem blindly believing in wild guesses made by ignorant subsistence farmers thousands of years ago! We are talking here about people with no real knowledge or understanding of anything, let alone the universe, yet still they believe that the entire universe was created a few thousand years ago based upon what some of the mentioned farmers supposedly guessed?
Can choosing the latter be considered normal? Or even the choice of a sentient being?
How can people deceive themselves like this? its beyond me and that they imprint it in their kids is just horrible. To me it seams like religious people lack the ability to ask critical questions, it is as if this brain function goes straight out the window when the brain is on religion.
Why cant religious people see these obvious contradictions and the discrepancies?
Anyway i digress i will focus on JW comments to illustrate what i mean. I will post the questions that schould have been asked if it wasn’t for the religious veil clouding the issue.
JW’s comment are in italic mine are in bold
Ok escapedmentalpatiant, I’ll take you’re objections one at a time.
1. Christians don’t condemn people for not subscribing to their religion. Doesn’t your religion do that for you? so that you as an individual don’t have to? doesn’t your religion condemn all non believers to eternal suffering in hell. that You need to read the Bible. What makes religious people think we haven’t read their holy books? God has a set of rules. Like it or not, he does. how come half the world population is unaware of them? He just asks his creation to follow his Ten Commandments. Isnt god cruel if he creates humans that will never ever hear about his rules (other faiths) since this means they are condemned to eternal suffering from birth? There are a lot of good rules to follow in there like don’t lie, don’t steal, don’t murder, don’t commit adultery. How come most of the commandments are about not having other gods, if god is so great wouldn’t everyone want to follow him voluntarily? Now everybody has broken some of his commandments. And God, because he is a good and just judge he cannot allow evil, the breaking of his commandments, to go unpunished. If god creates man and man cant follow his rules thus being destined for inevitable punishment doesn’t this make god a sadist? why doesn’t he just create us so that we are able to follow his rules and avoid the punishment? We as Christians are just passing along what the Bible says. If god really was the author of the bible why does it contradict itself on almost every page? How come a creature, supposedly powerful enough to create the entire universe is unable to construct a simple, understandable, consistent book?
2. Since you don’t want to discuss Einstein I won’t either.
3. You say that Christians accept a success rate of 1% in prayer. First of all God never says in His Word that he will answer prayers the way we want him to but he will always do what’s best. What is the point of praying if its never answered, the way we want? Let’s say My grand mother is dying and I pray that he would let her live, but she dies. First of all the prayer didn’t go unanswered his answer was just no. It was in his plan to let her die. If god is almighty why let anything die at all? Either because He knew she was not going to repent, ask forgiveness for our sins, isn’t it cruel to create a human that is born to sin? Forcing them to gravel for forgiveness, why not create man unable to sin? If man is made in gods image doesn’t that mean that god is just as fallible and sinful as us? And if so why schould we call it god at all? or it was time for her to go to heaven. Either way he was being JUST. Is creating a creature that is unable to follow gods laws and thus destined for eternal suffering being just? Besides a true Christian’s prayer in any case should be that God’s will should be done, Doesn’t this mean that we have no free will? and in that there is a 100% success rate. isn’t living an entire life pre-planned and under surveillance of a super being in the sky a horrible thought? Doesn’t this mean that our lives are totally pointless from our perspective?
4. You may not like this one. Alright I believe that Christians should praise God for everything that happens. If someone hits you in the face do you praise them for it? As I said in the above paragraph God will do what is JUST in every situation, he had a Just reason for everything that happens. How can starvation disease and all the other endless and often needless suffering humanity has and still goes through be called just? But to put it in the words of Jesus unless YOU repent you will likewise perish. If god is just why does he create a large portion of the human race in places where they have never heard of the bible? Is it really just or good on any scale to condemn people to perish and eternal suffering from birth? But in the Bible I think that God makes it clear that because God is merciful, he will not send a child to hell if they are not old enough to understand that they have sinned against God and that they need to repent. How about the people living in the thickest amazon Forrest for example? Or how about all the billions of people that lived before there was a chrisitian faith? If god created man why create so many that will have no information that there exists a god, that he has laws or that there was some guy name jesus somewhere in history?
If god is powerful enough to create the entire universe, why was he unable to give billions of individuals of his own creations any clue that they had to follow a given set of rules?
5. As I said before God is Good and Just and everyone has sinned against his law. As i said before why create people that are unable to follow his rules since breaking the rules results in such harsh punishment? And just as a Good earthly judge should not let a lawbreaker go unpunished so because God is good he CANNOT allow sin to go unpunished. Now you might think that Hell is an unjust place to send people, but God is so Holy that only Hell can be just punishment for sin. How come a creature that is supposed to be just and good has the most severe punishment system ever described? I mean eternal punishment with no possibility of parole for what can only be described as minor crimes? What crime could justify eternal torture and punishment anyway? Let me give you an example. Suppose You lie to your child, what can they do about it? Nothing. Now suppose you lie to your wife/husband, what can they do about it? Well they can make you sleep on the couch
. Now suppose you lie to your boss, well you could get fired. And if you lie to the government it’s called treason and you can get jail time. Now what changed in each of these situations, not the sin, it was a lie every time. It was the authority against whom you lied. Now as the amount of authority of the person you lied to increases, so does the punishment. Now God is the highest authority there is and because you have lied to him, he says that every lie is against him, the punishment is much greater than anything on earth. How can anyone be called just or good if the punishment for a simple lie equals eternity in hell? does a lie really justify the severity of the punishment for all eternity?
I will leave it at that. Now you guys tell me what you think about what religion causes.