(January 3, 2017 at 11:54 pm)Astonished Wrote: I can't post a link yet but it's something I heard in the Seth Andrews "The Thinking Atheist" podcast, the episode where the topic was "Psychoanalyzing God" (this is the only context in which I will ever deign to capitalize that hateful word, and it kills me even now to do it).
So, this preacher calls in to the show and they get on the topic of god communicating clearly to his creation if he wanted them all to be able to understand how to worship properly and that his failure to do so is the reason things are so fucked up.
The preacher said something that made me literally want to vomit in disgust at his stupidity. He said that god communicating his message clearly to every one of his creations would violate their free will.
What. The. Fucking. Fuck.
This whole free will thing already drives me up the wall, but dragging the clarity of a religion's message and its portrayal of its deity into it just destroys it. But when Seth tried to explain to this preacher that free will has less than nothing to do with the clarity of the means of communication between a creator and its creation. The preacher could scarcely have reacted differently than Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel. He literally did not understand how this could be. He literally could not see this thing that I could have pointed out in the first grade.
Someone please tell me I'm not deluded for thinking that religion genuinely decreases intelligence. Please. I'm willing to be a hypocrite and accept something that isn't true at this point as long as it keeps me from crying myself to sleep with how pathetic our species is capable of being.
Actually I've posted something similar.
I don't believe in Freewill but the idea here is the same.
I framed my argument out with the movie The matrix as it's core premise.
Let's say we all now live in the matrix, but living conditions are reversed. In that in the matrix we are living as close to hell as we can be without teetering all the way in. Sin is rampant and the world around us is a cesspool because of it.
Now let's say this life we live this matrix was given to us to create whatever we though we wanted using whatever means we wanted (sin) This fallen world as crappy as it is in places is the ultimate result of very very little obvious oversite from God. Why? because it is meant to reflect who we really are.
Now in the crappy little matrix world enter God/Christianity and all that it promises with "no proof." For Most of you the world goes on. Because that is who you are.
Now Imagine God woke everyone up from the matrix showed them around the real world and all he has done and all he has planned for each of us, and then put them back in the matrix world we created. Could you continue to live this life knowing it was false? that nothing you did here really mattered? Could you continue to be who you are now with out trying to hide yourself under 'good deeds?'
Now pay attention (because here is the part you don't seem to get)
What if... Heaven and Hell were not about morality or deeds??? What if you could not work your way to heaven??
So you spending your life trying to be a good christian was spent in vain, and Jesus casts you into Hell anyway even after all the stuff you had been doing? Would you want to spend the rest of your time wondering what went wrong?
What if this life was about being given enough time to understand your own nature? To understand who you really are. Now, introduce an absolute of God that no one can deny... If you do not come to God unprovoked then your life becomes about earning what you can not obtain, and everyone goes to Hell. As humility and faith are keys to our salvation. Put in an absolute and those keys are no longer needed.