Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

God and religion

frogwoman

frogwoman

No amount of cajolery...
I think i am losing or have lost my faith tbh.

One of the main things with this Daesh stuff for me is that its led me to become increasingly disgusted with religion. We all know there are people within Israel who would like to and have behaved like Daesh on occasion. The same with the monks in burma and the hindu nationalists and the way christian churches have behaved throught history. Religion can get people to act in moral ways, it can give people a lot of comfort but then you can achieve that sort of peace of mind without it, you can achieve great things without it. And believing that they are acting on 'gods will' seems to give some people permission to be incredibly cruel and sadistic. We dont even know if moses, mohammed or jesus even existed. It's just pointless.

Religion has given me a lot of comfort over the years, its helped me a lot but the behaviour of Israel and ISIS in particular, just makes me so disgusted with it, how its used to excuse such sadism, how you can justify anything just by reading a fucking book. If a religion can make you a moral person but also a worse person then what claim does it have to be the truth of anything.

The same thing with Israeli Settlers, how sickenly happy they are to 'make aliyah', without any thought of the consequences. And people always say 'thats not real judaism' or 'thats not real islam' but the people doing this stuff pray to god daily and passionately believe in all the laws, i would be surprised if they did not feel God has helped them or worked miracles in their lives, that they did not have sone sort of 'relationship' with him.

So yeah this is just a rant, not interested in convincing anyone of my views but wondering if anyone had similar feelings. Its quite difficult for me to come to terms with because you know there have been times when i really did believe in god but i dont think I can again.
 
Last edited:
Not,just Catholic Christians. All Christian denominations have caused suffering.

I lost my faith years ago tbh and I don't miss it. I very occasionally meet someone religious who radiates peace and love to all mankind and caring and all that stuff, but I have met people of no religion (just as rarely) who do the same. So I don't miss it
 
Manter said:
Not,just Catholic Christians. All Christian denominations have caused suffering.

I lost my faith years ago tbh and I don't miss it. I very occasionally meet someone religious who radiates peace and love to all mankind and caring and all that stuff, but I have met people of no religion (just as rarely) who do the same. So I don't miss it
Click to expand...

Yeah i know, they all have. Sorry, should edit my post.
 
8ball said:
People can be brilliant and people can be complete shits with or without religion.

I find it preferable to base belief or non-belief in God(s) on the likelihood of such a being(s) existing.
Click to expand...

Me too. But yep ive also come to the conclusion its prob not very likely.
 
There's lots of instances of religion provoking people into doing aawful things; I'm not sure how many examples there are of religion preventing people from doing such things.
 
If you are a design engineer and you get your stress calculations catastrophically wrong, then no amount of praying to "god" is going to make that structure safe.

You do not need religion to be a moral person, at least I don't.

I accept that some people find the idea of a supreme being and a system of benign rules comforting, but unfortunately others may interpret those same rules in a very different manner - which is the root of the problem, isn't it ?

Personally, what other people do with regard to religion is for them, UNLESS it adversely affects anyone else.
 
Religion probably began when some smart guy decided he'd rather stay in the nice warm cave while the dimwits went out hunting, and invented preaching.... it was always about crowd control.
 
The problem with having an imaginary supreme being in charge of everything that can't communicate what it wants is that people can project their own wants as being God's will and justify anything through it.

They have oil, we don't, we are god's chosen so surely its God's will we take their oil and its God's will that they die if they don't let us take it without a fight.
God made us, i'm having murderous thoughts, it must be God's will that i have these thoughts.

If the devil existed and wanted us to do evil he'd very likely invent religion.

although saying that:
In the film The Book of Eli the bad guy wants the world's last bible as its such a powerful tool. Tools are just tools though. They aren't inheritantly good or evil. A woodworking tool can be used to make a baby's crib or longbow and arrows for war. Its the hearts of men that are the issue and how they use the tools of this world.

One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said, "My son, the battle is between 2 "wolves" inside us all.

One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.

The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith."

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: "Which wolf wins?"

The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed.
 
One of the main problems with religion is that it's pumped into people's heads when they are too young to think critically, and childhood indoctrination is very difficult to throw off. If you offered it to people when they're grown up, most would turn it down, except the stupid and the gullible.
 
Exactly ! I turned my nose up at religious indoctrination after only a couple of years at a CofE primary school, four years after that - I won a prize for Bible Knowledge. Nothing like knowing thine enemy - and successfully arguing a point with the pastor in front of the bishop (I was able to quote chapter and verse to support my points). Funny that.
 
frogwoman said:
I think i am losing or have lost my faith tbh.

One of the main things with this Daesh stuff for me is that its led me to become increasingly disgusted with religion. We all know there are people within Israel who would like to and have behaved like Daesh on occasion. The same with the monks in burma and the hindu nationalists and the way christian churches have behaved throught history. Religion can get people to act in moral ways, it can give people a lot of comfort but then you can achieve that sort of peace of mind without it, you can achieve great things without it. And believing that they are acting on 'gods will' seems to give some people permission to be incredibly cruel and sadistic. We dont even know if moses, mohammed or jesus even existed. It's just pointless.

Religion has given me a lot of comfort over the years, its helped me a lot but the behaviour of Israel and ISIS in particular, just makes me so disgusted with it, how its used to excuse such sadism, how you can justify anything just by reading a fucking book. If a religion can make you a moral person but also a worse person then what claim does it have to be the truth of anything.

The same thing with Israeli Settlers, how sickenly happy they are to 'make aliyah', without any thought of the consequences. And people always say 'thats not real judaism' or 'thats not real islam' but the people doing this stuff pray to god daily and passionately believe in all the laws, i would be surprised if they did not feel God has helped them or worked miracles in their lives, that they did not have sone sort of 'relationship' with him.

So yeah this is just a rant, not interested in convincing anyone of my views but wondering if anyone had similar feelings. Its quite difficult for me to come to terms with because you know there have been times when i really did believe in god but i dont think I can again.
Click to expand...

IME "faith" is one's personal relationship with your deity - something which many believers experience as a series of peaks and troughs. Faith leaves room for arguing about the contradictions between what your deity represents, and what your deity does/is/allows.

Religion, on the other hand, seems to be adherence to a code of behaviour with regard to your deity. It's man-made, mediated and often murderous.
 
It's the cognitive dissonance I struggle with.
The Bible is chock full of the vilest stuff imaginable and yet it's handed out to children - who I guess probably never actually read the whole thing.

My bottom line now after far too much exposure to "the great debate" at the start of this year is that, fair enough, though the roughly 3.5 billion year evolutionary time scale is common-sense / general knowledge now, and the 14 billion year old universe is getting to be, ultimately I am not and never will be a cosmologist, so fair enough, let's leave room for a "creator of the universe" - albeit a hands-off one ...

.. but in that case, barbaric recycled Bronze Age mythology is the greatest possible insult to such an entity.

There's this room in Paltalk that is day after day chock full of people seriously damaged by religion - and not just the apologists who visit to preach ...
 
ViolentPanda said:
IME "faith" is one's personal relationship with your deity - something which many believers experience as a series of peaks and troughs. Faith leaves room for arguing about the contradictions between what your deity represents, and what your deity does/is/allows.

Religion, on the other hand, seems to be adherence to a code of behaviour with regard to your deity. It's man-made, mediated and often murderous.
Click to expand...

The thing is faith and religion are linked tho. Someone religious will follow all those laws out of the love of god, they will view it as an act expressing their devotion to god, like as a symbol of gratitude to him. Thats how i have behaved in the past, i didnt follow that stuff because i was scared of going to hell, but because i loved god and wanted to show that

And thats fair enough, but an evil person could also love god, they could also think god worked a miracle for them, they could also care deeply about pleasing the lord and doing what he wants, pray to him every day etc. Its a bit hard to say to an israeli settler that what they believe isnt real judaism when they believe in god and have faith in him as well as what is usually a very detailed knowledge of the religion.

What im trying to say is the two arent necessarily exclusive
 
frogwoman said:
The thing is faith and religion are linked tho. Someone religious will follow all those laws out of the love of god, they will view it as an act expressing their devotion to god, like as a symbol of gratitude to him. Thats how i have behaved in the past, i didnt follow that stuff because i was scared of going to hell, but because i loved god and wanted to show that

And thats fair enough, but an evil person could also love god, they could also think god worked a miracle for them, they could also care deeply about pleasing the lord and doing what he wants, pray to him every day etc. Its a bit hard to say to an israeli settler that what they believe isnt real judaism when they believe in god and have faith in him as well as what is usually a very detailed knowledge of the religion.

What im trying to say is the two arent necessarily exclusive
Click to expand...

Sure, but the tenets of religions - effectively the bits added on by humans - are what tends to fuel most of the aggro, as opposed to the fact of having faith. Too often religion is as much an excuse for horror as an explanation for good, whereas faith often cuts through all the mediated garbage.
 
BandWagon said:
One of the main problems with religion is that it's pumped into people's heads when they are too young to think critically, and childhood indoctrination is very difficult to throw off. If you offered it to people when they're grown up, most would turn it down, except the stupid and the gullible.
Click to expand...
One of the worst aspects of some religious practice is where it treats questioning received doctrine as a sin.
Exactly ! I turned my nose up at religious indoctrination after only a couple of years at a CofE primary school, four years after that - I won a prize for Bible Knowledge. Nothing like knowing thine enemy - and successfully arguing a point with the pastor in front of the bishop (I was able to quote chapter and verse to support my points). Funny that.
Click to expand...
Which is why it's a good idea for schools to teach philosophy, as well as giving children an opportunity to learn about other religions and a chance to ask questions.
 
I see the poor mans dawkins brigade have arrived- some of histories greatest thinkers and creators and awesome examples of a human being believed in god or gods. I don't believe. I go church for carol service, easter sometimes. Just familiar and anyway, who doesn't like a sing-song?
But I'm not about to sit giving out about 'critical thinking' when people far far smarter than me or the dawkins brigade will ever be held a faith. hur-hur sky pixie bullsit.
 
DotCommunist said:
I see the poor mans dawkins brigade have arrived- some of histories greatest thinkers and creators and awesome examples of a human being believed in god or gods. I don't believe. I go church for carol service, easter sometimes. Just familiar and anyway, who doesn't like a sing-song?
But I'm not about to sit giving out about 'critical thinking' when people far far smarter than me or the dawkins brigade will ever be held a faith. hur-hur sky pixie bullsit.
Click to expand...

Even the smartest and most on the level person can be honestly mistaken. Your argument is an appeal to authority.
 
ViolentPanda said:
Sure, but the tenets of religions - effectively the bits added on by humans - are what tends to fuel most of the aggro, as opposed to the fact of having faith. Too often religion is as much an excuse for horror as an explanation for good, whereas faith often cuts through all the mediated garbage.
Click to expand...

Which bits of religion were not created by humans?
 
Last edited:
NoXion said:
Even the smartest and most on the level person can be honestly mistaken. Your argument is an appeal to authority.
Click to expand...
it is no such thing. It's just pointing out that believers are not stupid. I'm not going 'look, authority figures believed' I'm pointing out that belief is no barrier to critical thinking. For gods sake theres (lol) theres even biologists out there who are young earth creationists and yet adepts in their field. How do they square that circle? I don't know.
 
DotCommunist said:
it is no such thing. It's just pointing out that believers are not stupid. I'm not going 'look, authority figures believed' I'm pointing out that belief is no barrier to critical thinking. For gods sake theres (lol) theres even biologists out there who are young earth creationists and yet adepts in their field. How do they square that circle? I don't know.
Click to expand...
Indeed, who invented and pioneered the sciences?
 
DotCommunist said:
it is no such thing. It's just pointing out that believers are not stupid. I'm not going 'look, authority figures believed' I'm pointing out that belief is no barrier to critical thinking. For gods sake theres (lol) theres even biologists out there who are young earth creationists and yet adepts in their field. How do they square that circle? I don't know.
Click to expand...

People have the ability to compartmentalise their critical faculties. Atheists are by no means immune.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Koknbul
🤥 Why are all religions based on deceit ?
2 3
Replies
73
Views
3K
Humberto
Humberto
Gromit
God wanted Trump to be president
Replies
22
Views
1K
petee
petee
jcherish
If God created everything, who created God ?
2 3
Replies
64
Views
4K
krink
krink
bimble
Pictures of god
2 3 4 5 6
Replies
161
Views
9K
WouldBe
WouldBe
W
If god exists, would you worship him?
6 7 8 9 10
Replies
279
Views
12K
mojo pixy
mojo pixy
Back
Top Bottom