It's a trap!

[SeekerOfKnowledge]

I think religion is too broad to generalize, but since this is about Christianity, I will post what I dislike about it.

The first thing is this concept that it produces that God favors a certain people and takes their side over other people. This is through out the bible with God choosing the Jews over and above other nations. It wasn't like the Jews were the only oppressed people to ever exist. Why does he choose them, well because of being offspring of Abraham primarily.

Then he tells them to do all sorts of things we find to be repulsive today, but people ignore all that as if that is not the morality taught by God.

The other thing is this double standard people take, they want to say to follow God, but at the same time, they don't want to follow his laws that apply to society and to be implemented by government. I find Christianity to be odd, in that, they take God's laws in the OT to be primitive, and then think they can come up with better laws then God. I feel this produces insincerity, or double think, instead of out right condemning the OT, they have this double standard, which they feel they have become better humans then God would have made his favored people if they had obeyed in him all instances. And that these people were not ready for better laws and guidance. It's just absurd.

Another I dislike about religion is the extent it plays on identity and creates this us vs them mentality. This is true of Christianity as well, when people whom disbelief in Christianity are not to embraced as equals.

Furthermore is that Christianity depicts this awful place of torment, and it's only farfetch interpretations that God would create a fire just to kill people he resurrects. Rather it seems the fire is eternal and that disbelievers will never have eternal life but be spiritually dead and to be tormented in flames. This concept of God creates a false sense of greatness, and then people attribute greatness, to having a cold stern attitude towards disbelievers.

I think the idea that God loves all humans but is going torture so many of them, to be absurd, and an absurd concept of love.

And with that, I would say, that Christianity blinds people towards true love and true greatness.

Since much of their identity is in giving glory to God, the image of that God, is invested in their ego.They become a mini version of that God....

And then feel like emotionally blackmailing you to accepting Jesus just like God does.

Another thing is that I believe the religion praises gullibility. Many Christians will believe out of gullibility, and be rewarded for it.

With superiority complex, to idenity, to us vs them, to torturing disbelievers is right beliefs...I think there is much reason to hate it.

Another thing I dislike about the religion is that it says not to love the world and the things in the world, and I feel this absurd. I know interpretations that make this to be fleshly or materialistic things, but even then, even then after ignoring the meaning of the word world, it's placing unrealistic conditions and describing a false reality where such people don't love God.

I agree on all accounts. Christianity has a lot of blood in its hands. Our species in general has much more. There's murder, rape and religion in the animal kingdom all around, not just in our type of animal (humans). With that being said. I think it's time we live up to our claims on intelligence and make the first move. I've been on christian forums trying the same thing but I either get ignored or stopped in my tracks as a troll or a confused, lost soul.

Obviously, Christians aren't going to make the first move. So why not us? Why not, instead of causing division and outwardly viewing Christians as gullible, juveniles, as equals? We all have blood on our hands. All species are violent. Evolution is violent. Using flaws in one system to create a hatred towards it is not a wise way to spend mental energy. Not saying that this is you view. but this is the view I believe we should be taking on this matter.

[Faith No More]

Why do you dislike religion? (or state if you're indifferant with an example of your indifferance)

I don't particularly dislike religion itself, but I dislike what some people do with it.

How did you come to believe (or not) in your current deity?

I could never find any convincing evidence of one.

What has been your worst experience with Christians?

About a decade ago, my friend killed himself, and his parents held a Catholic funeral. The priest that ran the ceremony gave a thinly-veiled sermon describing how my friend was now in hell.

What has been your most pleasant experience with Christians?

Being raised by two of them.

[Reforged]

Why do you dislike religion?
I don't, I love it. Its hilarious.


How did you come to believe (or not) in your current deity?
Lack of proof for existence, expanded my knowledge and discovered things are infinitely more complex than made out by religion, grew up.

What has been your worst experience with Christians?
Wrong question. I don't automatically define people by their belief systems as humans are varied in personality and intellect and not to be judged by a label but who they are. You should be asking what is my worst experience with Christianity or if you want to be completely unbiased; religion.

What has been your most pleasant experience with Christians?
See above.

What has been your worst experience with religion?
Indoctrination. I was indoctrinated from an early age. The worst thing you can do to a human being is take away his capacity for reason and make him a dogmatic sycophantic slave living in fear of an all powerful being he is also commanded to unconditionally love or else burn. It reduced my quality of life and my ability to think rationally considerably.
I grew out of that and I am better for it, those are chains I will never wear again.

What has been your best experience with religion?
Discovering it was nonsense with no evidence and no basis in fact.
I don't have absolute certainty but I do know there are countless questions with real answers waiting to be found. I like this, it means there are still discoveries to be made. There is still purpose for our species and even if I should play barely the most insignificant part in that journey I am satisfied.
I don't know what happens after I die, evidence would suggest nothing happens. That I am simply to return to the state of non-existence I once emerged from.
If this is the case then I deem it an acceptable state of affairs.
After consideration, it is not something I find myself afraid of.

[SeekerOfKnowledge]

Why do you dislike religion?
I don't, I love it. Its hilarious.


How did you come to believe (or not) in your current deity?
Lack of proof for existence, expanded my knowledge and discovered things are infinitely more complex than made out by religion, grew up.

What has been your worst experience with Christians?
Wrong question. I don't automatically define people by their belief systems as humans are varied in personality and intellect and not to be judged by a label but who they are. You should be asking what is my worst experience with Christianity or if you want to be completely unbiased; religion.

What has been your most pleasant experience with Christians?
See above.

What has been your worst experience with religion?
Indoctrination. I was indoctrinated from an early age. The worst thing you can do to a human being is take away his capacity for reason and make him a dogmatic sycophantic slave living in fear of an all powerful being he is also commanded to unconditionally love or else burn. It reduced my quality of life and my ability to think rationally considerably.
I grew out of that and I am better for it, those are chains I will never wear again.

What has been your best experience with religion?
Discovering it was nonsense with no evidence and no basis in fact.
I don't have absolute certainty but I do know there are countless questions with answers waiting to be found. I like this, it means there is still discoveries to be made. There is still purpose for our species and even if I should play barely the most insignificant part in that journey I am satisfied.
I don't know what happens after I die, evidence would suggest nothing happens. That I am simply to return to the state of non-existence I once emerged from.
If this is the case then I deem it an acceptable state of affairs.
After consideration, it is not something I find myself afraid of.

LOVE the way you answered the questions. I really feel for you since I've had the same experience. And no I asked them the right way. I wanted to be able to tell what kind of people are answering it. Their personality, etc,. I try and take into account many things before forming a theory and it takes even longer to come to a conclusion with so many different possibilities.

I, however am looking into cybernetic organs and/or cryonics.

---

Why do you dislike religion? (or state if you're indifferant with an example of your indifferance)

I don't particularly dislike religion itself, but I dislike what some people do with it.

How did you come to believe (or not) in your current deity?

I could never find any convincing evidence of one.

What has been your worst experience with Christians?

About a decade ago, my friend killed himself, and his parents held a Catholic funeral. The priest that ran the ceremony gave a thinly-veiled sermon describing how my friend was now in hell.

What has been your most pleasant experience with Christians?

Being raised by two of them.

Wow. That's very sad to hear about your friend.
And very inappropriate of the priest.

It's nice to hear you had a pleasant experience with your parents. Mine still don't know about my no faith policy. Do they know you are atheist?

[Mystic]

You are right. We should try to respect them as equals.

Also, I would say if you want to disprove religion, you shouldn't do on subjective basis. For example, the issue of God torturing disbelievers is appeal to moral emotion, and is subjective. It being subjective doesn't mean it doesn't relate or is grounded in objective morality, it's just that we can't prove it in an objective manner.

I would focus on issues that we can disprove logically.

This is what I did with Quran. I couldn't come out of the subjectivity and oppose it's subjective morals, but what I was able to do was find logical errors and contradictions and logical fallacies.

This is what I think we should do.

Also I feel it's no good to constantly assert that Christians don't know God or don't have the holy spirit guiding them, it does no good.

There needs to be a falsifier. Therefore, we should focus our energy on proving what can be proven by universal axioms of logic and structure of language.

[SeekerOfKnowledge]

I was thinking more of like.

We believe in nothing.

You believe in soemthing.

Let's all go eat sundaes!

Because in reality, what does any of the bickering we do really mean? It means nothing. We rant, we write, we shout, we become logical and try to be nice and none of that works. It ends with us either feeling good or bad at the end of the day based on how our actions and reations played out with other people. Does it make any differance? Not really. We feel differant. The people we talk to feel differant. But at the end of the day, we rarely make as big an impact on peaceful co-existance as we could. We often add fuel to the flame. Maybe even spark more fire. It's not a matter of "How can we prove why your god doesn't exist" or "How can we convince you that we don't and never will believe in anything"

It needs to be "When will we get to the point where what we believe is such a small ordeal that we don't even think of it anymore?"

Elaboration:

Atheist/minority/bi/tranny Tony is friends with Christian/majority/straight David. They don't talk about religion. They find different things to talk about because although they have different views on their personal opinions, that doesn't mean that should get in the way of their passion for cars.

Where feelign the need to mention what you do or don't believe in is a thing of the past.

[genkaus]

Actually militant atheists vandalize, but that seems about it for the moment. In the past, more militant secularist leaders resorted to some of the worst atrocities ever seen. They've quickly fallen out of favor with their populations.

Examples?

One good thing about religion is that it has been a useful tool throughout human history to control a population without the need for nearly as much violent force.

Bad thing about religion is - it has to keep using excessive violent force to retain or expand that control.

[SeekerOfKnowledge]

Actually militant atheists vandalize, but that seems about it for the moment. In the past, more militant secularist leaders resorted to some of the worst atrocities ever seen. They've quickly fallen out of favor with their populations.

Examples?

One good thing about religion is that it has been a useful tool throughout human history to control a population without the need for nearly as much violent force.

Bad thing about religion is - it has to keep using excessive violent force to retain or expand that control.

Religion is just a means to an end. I think some very smart people (who shall remain nameless) realized the kind of power that came with religion and decided to act on it. I mean, what better way of control than threatening someone with eternal torment ? Do what The Book says and you shall live on streets paved with gold and precious gems. Don't hurt others even though you want to, Yahweh will take care of his own. Give all you have to your church/sinagog, because if you're poor and give all you have you've still given more than a rich person. It all seems like programming to me.

Stay poor and oblivious.
Work hard and don't hurt others.

Hmm, who could possibly benefit from such conditioning?

[Dumac Dwarfking]

I was thinking more of like.

We believe in nothing.

You believe in soemthing.

Let's all go eat sundaes!

Because in reality, what does any of the bickering we do really mean? It means nothing. We rant, we write, we shout, we become logical and try to be nice and none of that works. It ends with us either feeling good or bad at the end of the day based on how our actions and reations played out with other people. Does it make any differance? Not really. We feel differant. The people we talk to feel differant. But at the end of the day, we rarely make as big an impact on peaceful co-existance as we could. We often add fuel to the flame. Maybe even spark more fire. It's not a matter of "How can we prove why your god doesn't exist" or "How can we convince you that we don't and never will believe in anything"

It needs to be "When will we get to the point where what we believe is such a small ordeal that we don't even think of it anymore?"

Elaboration:

Atheist/minority/bi/tranny Tony is friends with Christian/majority/straight David. They don't talk about religion. They find different things to talk about because although they have different views on their personal opinions, that doesn't mean that should get in the way of their passion for cars.

Where feelign the need to mention what you do or don't believe in is a thing of the past.

To be honest, this sounds wonderful. I would love to find myself in a a position where this was possible, because honestly, I couldn't give two shits what someone believes, but unfortunately its an inherit property of any religion to try and convert you, and personally I struggle with a Christian telling me I'm going to hell without defending my position.

You're still right though, I've never actually convinced any Christian that they were wrong and I was right. Arguing never amounts to much. To quote scripture, perhaps it would be better suited to simply turn the other cheek, I'm just too proud to do that.

[Mystic]

I was thinking more of like.

We believe in nothing.

You believe in soemthing.

Let's all go eat sundaes!

Because in reality, what does any of the bickering we do really mean? It means nothing. We rant, we write, we shout, we become logical and try to be nice and none of that works. It ends with us either feeling good or bad at the end of the day based on how our actions and reations played out with other people. Does it make any differance? Not really. We feel differant. The people we talk to feel differant. But at the end of the day, we rarely make as big an impact on peaceful co-existance as we could. We often add fuel to the flame. Maybe even spark more fire. It's not a matter of "How can we prove why your god doesn't exist" or "How can we convince you that we don't and never will believe in anything"

It needs to be "When will we get to the point where what we believe is such a small ordeal that we don't even think of it anymore?"

Elaboration:

Atheist/minority/bi/tranny Tony is friends with Christian/majority/straight David. They don't talk about religion. They find different things to talk about because although they have different views on their personal opinions, that doesn't mean that should get in the way of their passion for cars.

Where feelign the need to mention what you do or don't believe in is a thing of the past.

It depends on how much you value the truth and teaching the others the truth.

I don't know, perhaps this is due to my Islamic upbringing, for example, there are hadiths that say "Ta Ha" means "Seeker of the Truth and Guide towards it".

I think people come on forums wanting to learn the truth, even if they have a severe bias against it.

I would agree with you in real life though, we shouldn't get into debates about this. But on forums, people are looking for a discussion.