Quote:I am guessing you were indoctrinated as a child? (Taught Christianity "as fact".) Even if not, we live in countries saturated with Christian mythology everywhere, and people who truly believe it.
It wasn't pushed really hard on us, but at least early on, before my dad stopped believing, it was what we were told. I remember feeling really upset about something, and the solution from my mom was to put it in gods hands and let him take care of it.
Quote:To try and put it in perspective, think of all the religions there are in the world. Then think of all the religions that have been and gone. And all the religions that will appear in the future. Only one religion can be the right one, since they generally contradict each other. Why should that right one be Christianity? And even if it is, there's over 40,000 sects of it. If we're talking about playing it "safe", the odds of picking the right religion are actually negligible. In fact they are zero, if you consider all the potential religions that could exist.
This one really gets me, and produces some pretty silly questions. How right does a person have to be to go to heaven? What about the Westborough baptist church? They spread messages of hate, will they get to go? Mega churches, with their massive stadiums full of people, preaching a watered down version of the gospel; are they going to heaven? Is there some sort of equation where all the variables get plugged in, and then it's either pass or fail? Seems absurd to me.
Quote:You worry about Christian hell because people go on about it all the time. You don't worry about any others, I bet. Why is that? Because they are dumb and made up. Well, Christian hell is no different. It just happens to be the popular religion (originally spread by violence and by historical figures announcing it to be "the religion" people would follow.) Millions of people believing something doesn't make it true. Clearly not, since millions of people believe in Islamic hell, and at least one of those two isn't real.
This one really gets me. There are so many people, older people who are smart, have a high level education, are capable of solving complex problems, and yet they believe this stuff... It just bewilders me. And if Hell is such a common, shared characteristic of many religions, where did that belief come from? Was there some old, ancient religion before the rest of them, that's been forgotten and lost?
Quote:They can't all be right, but they can all be wrong. A decent God, one worthy of worship, would not even demand worship. He would be happy to see you living your life as best you can, and treating others well. He wouldn't even have a hell to send anyone to. It's the most evil concept ever. He wouldn't want us to waste our time kissing his ass and doing loads of weird rituals.
Like I said before; if we are imperfect and impure before the glory of god, then why does he seem to have so many human character flaws? The entire concept feels childish and immature. He loves us all, unconditionally, but his actions speak otherwise. It just doesn't make sense to me, on any level.
Quote:Any other type of God other than a decent one, isn't worthy of worship, and you can't trust him to keep his word anyway. So fuck him. Luckily, there's no evidence any religion is anything other than fantasy. It just gets passed on by indoctrinating people when they are young, before they learn how to think critically. By that point it's lodged in the brain as fact, even though it's utter horse shit.
True or not, where do you think the majority of values have come from in the past? If religion fades away eventually, as a fairy tale, what will people become? Who will they look up to? It feels to me, like people are already putting their energy into the wrong places. They either worship themselves over social media platforms, or they look up to celebrities and pop stars, who have mental issues and drug problems... Materialism, narcissism, promiscuity, drinking, drugging, destruction of the body and mind, violence. Music is all about getting trashed, the media is full of propaganda and garbage... These are the things that people are surrounded by. It's on the internet, it's on the TV, it's on the radio, it's spread by word of mouth, this is the current culture in the United States. Who is spreading the good message now? Even if it's not true, I would argue that Christianity and lot of the old religions have some pretty good values. I mean, the teachings of Jesus are pretty much the exact opposite of the mainstream entertainment and media industry right now.
