RE: What Major Intellectual Issue Most Keeps You From Accepting The Christian Narrative?
February 23, 2018 at 7:42 am
Primarily, it's shit like this...
![[Image: images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS8tgsZXkJ6ES_GQEn56rQ...ca5RmqUXBg]](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS8tgsZXkJ6ES_GQEn56rQSSMOH3RPsSX_bXQJ84PwRca5RmqUXBg)
However, that's only the superficial tip of the much larger iceberg. The entire proposal of surrendering one's intellect and accountability for one's actions to an insultingly stone-age system of superstition that is increasingly out of touch with reality in return for pie after you die is problematic, to be polite.
Historically, religion has always been used for oppression, and for the suppression of revolt by the masses. They had no choice but to work themselves into the grave, keeping their ruling élite in the manner in which they demanded. It didn't take those rulers particularly long to notice that they were vastly outnumbered by disenfranchised people carrying uncomfortably sharp and pointy farming implements. Keeping them too exhausted with drudgery to do anything other than eat and sleep of an evening won't work forever; what if a couple of them got it into their heads to ask about their share of the fine wine, meat, silks, women etc? What's needed is a big eye in the sky to frighten the peasantry into obedience. Make envy of the luxurious living of the rich a punishable offence - not in front of the plebs, we don't want to go out of our way to foment a rebellion. After death, then. Give them promises of a next life, wherein the shittiness of their life here and now will be rewarded with riches beyond anything on Earth; but only if they behave. The carrot and the stick - infinite reward for obedience, infinite punishment for rebellion.
We have had the tools to shuck off the religious straitjacket for only a couple of centuries. Now, in this twenty-first century, it's distressing to say the least that so many people seem to feel the need to enchain themselves, willingly and gleefully, with something so insidiously anti-human that it has held back human progress by at least a thousand years; and which now has the potential to wipe out humanity altogether.
Basically that.
However, that's only the superficial tip of the much larger iceberg. The entire proposal of surrendering one's intellect and accountability for one's actions to an insultingly stone-age system of superstition that is increasingly out of touch with reality in return for pie after you die is problematic, to be polite.
Historically, religion has always been used for oppression, and for the suppression of revolt by the masses. They had no choice but to work themselves into the grave, keeping their ruling élite in the manner in which they demanded. It didn't take those rulers particularly long to notice that they were vastly outnumbered by disenfranchised people carrying uncomfortably sharp and pointy farming implements. Keeping them too exhausted with drudgery to do anything other than eat and sleep of an evening won't work forever; what if a couple of them got it into their heads to ask about their share of the fine wine, meat, silks, women etc? What's needed is a big eye in the sky to frighten the peasantry into obedience. Make envy of the luxurious living of the rich a punishable offence - not in front of the plebs, we don't want to go out of our way to foment a rebellion. After death, then. Give them promises of a next life, wherein the shittiness of their life here and now will be rewarded with riches beyond anything on Earth; but only if they behave. The carrot and the stick - infinite reward for obedience, infinite punishment for rebellion.
We have had the tools to shuck off the religious straitjacket for only a couple of centuries. Now, in this twenty-first century, it's distressing to say the least that so many people seem to feel the need to enchain themselves, willingly and gleefully, with something so insidiously anti-human that it has held back human progress by at least a thousand years; and which now has the potential to wipe out humanity altogether.
Basically that.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
