Is religion good even if it's false?

[Slavedevice]

Religion can give people PURPOSE! But, in the case of Abrahamic/Biblical religion, it can only tell half the story. Non-Abrahamic explains WHY we have Positive and Negative forces. People under the Bible influence are mostly re concerned about being sheep instead of making the earth a good place for EVERYONE (including our children)

[Greatest I am]

Who is more likely to use genocide and kill instead of cure, Yahweh or Satan?

If you can only see a satanic god; I can understand why you don't believe in his existence. I don't believe this satanic god as the creator of all that is seen and unseen either.

Your first is un-qualified, which is why you understand me incorrectly.

I am a dualist and see good and evil in all concepts.

I do not believe in your version of a god because mine has shown itself to be more moral.

Yours is as well, unless you would emulate the genocidal trait Yahweh and Jesus have.

When you start looking at the Christian moral issues I have challenged you with, and that you have to run from, then you will be able to judge justly, the way scriptures have taught me to.

Step up with decent apologetics or step aside.

Regards
DL

[EricPH]

I do not believe in your version of a god because mine has shown itself to be more moral.

I look towards what God said is the greatest. To love God and to love all our neighbours as we love ourselves. If we could be kind to each other as God commands; then the world would be a better place.

[Sculptor1]

Korea and Religion

Over the last couple of years I've seen serveral South Korean dramas. Some about Zombies which seems to have caught on there. And more recently Squid Game.
In most is these shows there are Christian characters who generally take on the role of a fool. I was suprised since by and large that was the only reference to religion in the programmes.
SK is 56% "non religious", and only about 12% Xian. (according to the CIA)

I wondered if there were any one on the Forum that had special knowldge about S. Korea, who could shed light on what seems to be a recurring theme.

[Greatest I am]

I do not believe in your version of a god because mine has shown itself to be more moral.

I look towards what God said is the greatest. To love God and to love all our neighbours as we love ourselves. If we could be kind to each other as God commands; then the world would be a better place.

So you think a genocidal evil god is wort following.

He shows his love by killing when he could just as easily cure.

Strange how you would thing that to be a good form of love.

God has never spoken as far as I know, and when you quote it it is a lie as you have no first hand information.

Right?

Regards
DL

[EricPH]

I look towards what God said is the greatest. To love God and to love all our neighbours as we love ourselves. If we could be kind to each other as God commands; then the world would be a better place.

So you think a genocidal evil god is wort following.

If god were genocidal, he would not command us to love all our neighbours as we love ourselves.

You say there is no god, but can you prove how the universe came to be purely by natural causes.

Can you conclusively show how life started from no life purely by natural causes.

[Greatest I am]

I look towards what God said is the greatest. To love God and to love all our neighbours as we love ourselves. If we could be kind to each other as God commands; then the world would be a better place.

So you think a genocidal evil god is wort following.

If god were genocidal, he would not command us to love all our neighbours as we love ourselves.

You say there is no god, but can you prove how the universe came to be purely by natural causes.

Can you conclusively show how life started from no life purely by natural causes.

????

I am not willing to admit to those beliefs you put into me, till I see some quotes.

You read me wrong as I make no such claims.

I can tell you what I know as fact, but cannot prove true, the logic trail they have produced.

Some things, like telepathy, unless one experiences it, can never have a real fact to make such an abstract a belief. This aside.

What was/is Noah's flood and Jesus' Armageddon if not genocides, and a show of hate from a god who you believers claim can cure just as easily as kill.

Yahweh/Jesus choose to kill instead of cure, showing they are evil. Right?

I did not say there was no god, if memory serves.

I said there was no supernatural god.

As a dualist, my DNA and material dualism, thinking in a body/soul way, tells me there is a fittest spiritual side to me and that it is what all should define as god.

You, as a dualist, likely have some kind of thinking.

As to your questions on my ability to explain nature; in broad and spiritual ways, I think so. In full scientific terms, I, like both religions and science are at a God of the Gaps area of thinking.

Too many God and too many dimensional theories is where everything seems to have stalled.

Did I tell you that telepathy is real. No proof can I give.

Regards
DL

[Ecurb]

What was/is Noah's flood and Jesus' Armageddon if not genocides, and a show of hate from a god who you believers claim can cure just as easily as kill....

I've never understood this objection to the Christian God. I'm an atheist, myself (agnostic, I suppose, but atheist for all practical purposes), but if God created humans as mortal beings, he knew we were all going to die. He created us to die. What is "genocide" to God? He's "genocided" everyone who was ever born, by creating the world as we know it.

Besides, from God's perspective, death may not be so bad. I mean, what if you get to loll around on clouds, playing harps? Maybe that's a little boring, but there's probably some other good fun, like scaring Shepherds tending their flocks by night.

Complaining that God killed those first-born Egyptians is no different from complaining that God made mortal humans in the first place. Merry Christmas!

[Greatest I am]

What was/is Noah's flood and Jesus' Armageddon if not genocides, and a show of hate from a god who you believers claim can cure just as easily as kill....

I've never understood this objection to the Christian God. I'm an atheist, myself (agnostic, I suppose, but atheist for all practical purposes), but if God created humans as mortal beings, he knew we were all going to die. He created us to die. What is "genocide" to God? He's "genocided" everyone who was ever born, by creating the world as we know it.

Besides, from God's perspective, death may not be so bad. I mean, what if you get to loll around on clouds, playing harps? Maybe that's a little boring, but there's probably some other good fun, like scaring Shepherds tending their flocks by night.

Complaining that God killed those first-born Egyptians is no different from complaining that God made mortal humans in the first place. Merry Christmas!

Morality is at issue, and any god who can cure as well as kill, and chooses to kill, is an evil to his core God.

I see above that I answered as I would have to a believer, apologies.

If you cannot see an objection to genocide as a form of justice, St Hitler would agree.

Best for the season.

Regards
DL

[Sy Borg]

What was/is Noah's flood and Jesus' Armageddon if not genocides, and a show of hate from a god who you believers claim can cure just as easily as kill....

I've never understood this objection to the Christian God.

I can help. I have a friend who grew up two doors down from me. He became an evangelist Christian and was deeply involved, giving sermons and helping with gay conversion therapy. Over time, married with children, he had to accept that he himself was gay. He left the church an absolute mess from the conversion therapy. Ever since he's been an activist for gay people damaged by religious institutions. Not a fan of the church, these days.

Or another example, again really an issue with adherents' behaviour than God. I used to work at a scientific institution and those working in evolutionary biology would sometimes travel to do public classes, and Christians were always trying to cause problems. It became intense and toxic.

As for God itself, the OT is replete with its frequent unnecessarily violent atrocities. You can't whitewash that with a feelgood second testament. That's akin to a rapist offering his victim a bunch of flowers and a box of chocolates.

I am agnostic, personally, and take the Bible and other myths as the metaphors they were intended to be. Amusingly, and sometime horrifyingly, many modern people are so naive and gormless that they take the scriptures' blatantly metaphorical content literally.

I feel this disconnect is related to ignorance of, and consequent hostility, towards science. When there is too much information available for one to test personally, one can:

1) either trust the information implicitly - orthodoxy,

2) largely trust the information, but with some reservations,

3) reserve judgement entirely and focus on less macro issues

4) learn just enough science to try to justify predetermined positions,

or 5) dismiss the information entirely.

In a society with significantly divergent bodies of knowledge - the science strands and the esoteric strands, options 2) and 3) strike me as the logical choices. However, due to current hostilities 1) and 5) are becoming more prevalent. It seems that religions need to transform themselves to avoid behaving like toxic corporations*.

* Not saying all corps are toxic, but some certainly are, eg. certain media organisations that promote divisions or arms and mercenary companies that feed on war.

[Ecurb]

As for God itself, the OT is replete with its frequent unnecessarily violent atrocities. You can't whitewash that with a feelgood second testament. That's akin to a rapist offering his victim a bunch of flowers and a box of chocolates.

I go along with everything else you wrote. Fine. This is that part I questioned in my post. The perspective is a human one. Of course from our perspective floods and famines seem horrible. Death seems terrible to us mortals. But if God knows what will happen when we die, is death horrible to Him? And if it isn't terrible to Him -- if, indeed, it is rebirth to a better place for those He loves -- why would all of those slaughters constitute "atrocities"?

The Problem of Pain seems a more difficult one for Christian apologists than a few billion killings, which might, after all, be a kindness to the departed.
I'm not saying any of this is true -- just that, given the story, my apologetic seems logically sound.

[Sy Borg]

As for God itself, the OT is replete with its frequent unnecessarily violent atrocities. You can't whitewash that with a feelgood second testament. That's akin to a rapist offering his victim a bunch of flowers and a box of chocolates.

I go along with everything else you wrote. Fine. This is that part I questioned in my post. The perspective is a human one. Of course from our perspective floods and famines seem horrible. Death seems terrible to us mortals. But if God knows what will happen when we die, is death horrible to Him? And if it isn't terrible to Him -- if, indeed, it is rebirth to a better place for those He loves -- why would all of those slaughters constitute "atrocities"?

A fair point. Still, the OT God was a vindictive character, seemingly capable of far less wisdom than the most wise humans. Come to think of it, numerous mythological gods are posited as fools that are entirely subject to their most base emotions, never questioning themselves.

The Problem of Pain seems a more difficult one for Christian apologists than a few billion killings, which might, after all, be a kindness to the departed.
I'm not saying any of this is true -- just that, given the story, my apologetic seems logically sound.

Seems largely sound to me. Suffering is usually posited as character-building, eg. hair shirts, and Mother Teresa famously loved to see people suffering as she believed that it would make them better people before they succumbed to their poorly treated ailments. In this scenario, it's as if we were sculptures in progress, except that it hurts us every time God chips off a piece.

I remember being told by a Christian that we are all perfect souls in heaven, which come down to the Earth and then return to our perfect form, relieved of the soil and burdens of life - a fairly common perception. Trouble is, if we are already perfect, why go through all that? I expect a sophisticated theist might say that "perfect" could be used in a limited form, eg. each species might be perfect for its particular niche, but they are still limited rather than "perfect beings", as such, and thus have more room for growth.

I just watched a video on the history of flat Earth beliefs. People can be ingenious when it comes to post hoc rationalisations of unsubstantiated positions.

[Tegularius]

It goes to show that "Truth" is the most ambiguous word in the lexicon. Dispense with the ambiguity, which has never ceased to be argued about, and everything defaults to one of very many ontological entities, understood or not. Truth, like cause & effect, has no standing in physics and nothing in the universe which compels these concepts into being as some kind of necessity. Truth functions mostly as a consensus whose assertions are always temporary and therefore a falsification of the near absolute meaning by which we regard it. Among humans, truth incorporates its own vast complex of errors.

[Belindi]

What was/is Noah's flood and Jesus' Armageddon if not genocides, and a show of hate from a god who you believers claim can cure just as easily as kill....

I've never understood this objection to the Christian God.

I can help. I have a friend who grew up two doors down from me. He became an evangelist Christian and was deeply involved, giving sermons and helping with gay conversion therapy. Over time, married with children, he had to accept that he himself was gay. He left the church an absolute mess from the conversion therapy. Ever since he's been an activist for gay people damaged by religious institutions. Not a fan of the church, these days.

Or another example, again really an issue with adherents' behaviour than God. I used to work at a scientific institution and those working in evolutionary biology would sometimes travel to do public classes, and Christians were always trying to cause problems. It became intense and toxic.

As for God itself, the OT is replete with its frequent unnecessarily violent atrocities. You can't whitewash that with a feelgood second testament. That's akin to a rapist offering his victim a bunch of flowers and a box of chocolates.

I am agnostic, personally, and take the Bible and other myths as the metaphors they were intended to be. Amusingly, and sometime horrifyingly, many modern people are so naive and gormless that they take the scriptures' blatantly metaphorical content literally.

I feel this disconnect is related to ignorance of, and consequent hostility, towards science. When there is too much information available for one to test personally, one can:

1) either trust the information implicitly - orthodoxy,

2) largely trust the information, but with some reservations,

3) reserve judgement entirely and focus on less macro issues

4) learn just enough science to try to justify predetermined positions,

or 5) dismiss the information entirely.

In a society with significantly divergent bodies of knowledge - the science strands and the esoteric strands, options 2) and 3) strike me as the logical choices. However, due to current hostilities 1) and 5) are becoming more prevalent. It seems that religions need to transform themselves to avoid behaving like toxic corporations*.

* Not saying all corps are toxic, but some certainly are, eg. certain media organisations that promote divisions or arms and mercenary companies that feed on war.

The recent child abuse scandals in churches, and subsequent cover ups and lack of justice and mercy among senior churchmen is ample evidence of toxic corporations.

As for God itself, the OT is replete with its frequent unnecessarily violent atrocities. You can't whitewash that with a feelgood second testament. That's akin to a rapist offering his victim a bunch of flowers and a box of chocolates.

Me, I view the atrocities as part of the history of God and theistic culture, culminating in the life and work of Jesus of Nazareth. God's history is not at an end yet, and I hope that broadly Christian morality will prevail, and encompass other sects such as Islam, Buddhism, and Wicca.

[EricPH]

The creation of the universe is history, and you can't change history. Either at least one God with knowledge; power and a purpose created the universe and life, or it all happened purely by natural causes. You could be a hundred percent right or wrong on the toss of a coin. There cannot be a maybe or probable God.

[quote=Belindi post_

The recent child abuse scandals in churches, and subsequent cover ups and lack of justice and mercy among senior churchmen is ample evidence of toxic corporations.

Most church goers are saddened and shocked that this happened. But when these people abandon God and do what they choose to do; how can you blame God when they go against God's commands?