Religion/god is just wishful thinking.

[Godscreated]

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We know God exists in belief, we learn who He is from revelation, through His word or from Him.

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The collection of texts we call "the Bible" did not descend from heaven on a ray of light to a soundtrack of angelic choirs. The original texts were written by men, ordinary human beings, just like you and me. Anyone who wanted to believe that their writings were taken by dictation from a god would have to take their word for it. Those texts were then copied by hand (no printing presses in those days)--by men. Then re-copied and re-re-copied, by men.[1] The texts were then assembled by men, redacted by men, and declared to be "scripture" by men (non-Christian rabbis in the case of the Hebrew Scriptures, and late Roman prelates under the aegis of corrupt Emperors in the case of the New Testament). Unless you're reading your scriptures in Aramaic and Koine Greek, then what you have is the result of translation, re-translation, and re-re-translation--by men. If you have ever incorporated information from pastors' sermons, Bible commentaries, stuff you were taught in Sunday School and the like into your "knowledge of who God is," then that's yet another layer of human beings between you and any original divine impetus that the original writers might have claimed to have received. In order to take the Bible as "the Word of God"[2] you have to place unlimited, unconditional trust in all those human beings, who are no more divine than you or I.

As for your other channel of information, direct knowledge "from Him," the problem here is that millions of people claim to have the same kind of direct, unquestionable knowledge, yet they disagree with you on important matters, either as believers in other deities, or in versions of your own that you consider Vile Heresy.

One of the most wonderful things is the orixa' [deities]...And we feel confused and grateful at the same time, with this process of having an orixa'...and I feel very much this force, this major force, a force I can't explain. It exists between Heaven and Earth...There are mysteries that cannot be explained, and one of them is the orixa'

---Zeze, a young African Brazilian woman, in the film Candomble': A Religion in Brazil with African Roots (1989), translated from the Portuguese[3]

"First, the polythesitic traditions are invariably experiential, although this is also true for aspects of the Religions of the Book: for example, Hasidism, Pentacostalism, and Sufism. People come to know the deities in polytheistic traditions directly, via such modes as mediumism and shamanism, modes to which we shall return in succeeding chapters. This is one of the reasons for a multiplicity of deities. People with differing personalities and experiences meet differing deities. Without an enforced monotheistic creed, people are open to an abundance of numinous possibilities. Faith is both meaningless and irrelevant. We know what we experience; it takes no leap of faith to assume the reality of deities we have directly encountered. ...Arising from encounters in rituals, visions, and so forth, our acceptance of the validity of the experienced deities is absolutely no different, except more certain, than knowledge gained from sensory experiences."[4]

As non-believers, we are faced with countless claims from people who "know" that various deities exist with absolute confidence. Even within the monotheistic traditions, the believers, for all their professions of complete certainty, cannot get their stories straight. Hasidic Judaism/Reform Judaism/Kabbalah/etc., Sunni Islam/Shia Islam/Wahhabi Islam/Sufi Islam/etc., and the tens of thousands of varieties of Christianity. All of these people are quite sure that their gods exist, that they "know" them, and (in the case of the monotheists), that everyone else is wrong.

If gods and goddesses (or some single god or goddess) are/is real and they/he/she/it communicated and/or communed with humans in some way, we would anticipate that as people got to know them better, that human beliefs would converge on the reality. If you look at the earliest maps of the world, especially from different cultures and times, you will see that they differ a lot. But, as surveying techniques improved and people systematically explored and mapped the world, on up to satellite imagery, world maps converged toward a single set of shapes for continents, placement of rivers, etc. World maps in the U.S., China, North Korea, Zaire, etc. will all look virtually identical nowadays, apart from place names being in different languages. This is because we all inhabit the same planet. As we got to "know" it better, our knowledge turned out to be knowledge of the same thing.

When it comes to deities on the other hand, we have a situation where "different people meet different deities," and the gods a person believe in tend to reflect that person's psychology, culture, and upbringing. "Deities," in other words, tend to "behave" as if they are formed in the minds of their believers, rather than existing independently.


NOTES:

1. With the potential for error that implies. For example, the story of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery is not found in the earliest manuscripts of the Gospel of John. Nor does the "long ending" which includes post-resurrection appearances of Jesus appear in the earliest manuscripts of the Gospel of Mark. Though biblical scribes usually tried their best to transcribe the texts accurately (when they weren't inserting interpolations or removing bits that were problematic for their theology), they were only human. "The Bible" is a human artifact.

2. Ironically, there is nothing in any Biblical text to indicate that there would ever be such a thing as "the Bible" (a "canon" composed of the Hebrew Scriptures plus a "New Testament"), much less any hint of which texts it would contain. The preamble to the Gospel of John says that Jesus, not any compilation of human texts is "the Word." Your Bible is an idol.

3. Cited in The Deities Are Many: A Polytheistic Theology by Jordan Paper, State University of New York Press, 2005, ix (ninth page before regular page numbering, brackets in original)

4. Ibid, pp 13-14.

Your wall of text has no answer for this: We have a copy of the Book of Jeremiah that is 2300 to 2500 years old, and it 's word for word with today's translation, there are a few words different, but in no way do they change what the passage says. If this book is reliable to this great extent, then why do you presume the rest of scriptures have been altered. We have no original copies and never will, without them your points are meaningless.

[Atheist(KM)]

So, by your logic if its in my head and I believe it, its real LOL. Again prove it, I read your ''holy book'' and it offers nothing but unproven claims. Yes FSM has given me comfort my life is much more fun and comforting than it was when I believed in your imaginary friend, this one is more fun.I feel much happier as an atheist than I EVER did as a Christian. Also, how can you prove your interpretation is true and other churches are false 38000 different interpretations of that book they all can't be right and, somehow your feeling are infallible, talk about prideful. So again if you can't prove for certain that your ''god'' is God, he is simply just another claim that is extraordinary which requires evidence, like, vampires, unicorns, bigfoot, etc. Just because you have a book doesn't mean squat if it doesn't have EVIDENCE to back it up, all you've proven is its in your head, personal revelation alone isn't evidence, as my FSM example showed.

That's the best you've got for what I gave you, well...... please try again, this time use your brain.

What? Knowledge is demonstrable therefore show me the proof otherwise, you don't know for a fact. Like anyone making extraordinary claims REQUIRE, extraordinary evidence. Otherwise your claim is as valid as FSM and the invisible pink unicorn. I did use my brain, all you've gave me was, TAKE my word for it and how I READ the bible, yes clearly your interpretation is the only true one out of 38000 christian groups, prove it first. If you can't prove your belief isn't the result of a mental illness or delusional thinking I can and will assume such until, you have proof that what the bible authors say is true and your experience is valid. So, show me the evidence.

[Ryantology]

Your wall of text has no answer for this: We have a copy of the Book of Jeremiah that is 2300 to 2500 years old, and it 's word for word with today's translation, there are a few words different, but in no way do they change what the passage says. If this book is reliable to this great extent, then why do you presume the rest of scriptures have been altered. We have no original copies and never will, without them your points are meaningless.

1. There are 65 other books which are canon, so in 3000+ years we've managed to verify the authenticity of a whopping 1.5% of the books which were not arbitrarily discarded or lost. Given that the stories of the Bible were not all written at once by the same person in the same place, and the fact that many tales in the Bible are known to be inherited myths from older cultures (many of which have been substantially altered), if Jeremiah actually is as accurate as you claim, common sense tells us that it is almost certainly an outlier. It also does not take into account that the Bible is a recording of many stories which passed by word of mouth for decades or even centuries before being committed to parchment or papyrus, so there's no way of knowing whether the Bible got any of it right in the first place.

2. It doesn't matter if every single word in the Bible has been unaltered since the day each word first touched a writing surface, because that does not even suggest that a single one of those words is non-fictional, so really, it is your point which is meaningless.

[thesummerqueen]

Agnostic, this might just be me and my computer settings, but your religious views have pushed your posts so far to the right that I can't read them.

[iameatingjam]

This is why I have a hard time believing that all religious people actually think there is a god, sometimes I think they just want there to be. I felt that way once, albeit I was 11, I can still understand why people want there to be a god. They are afraid of death, they want to cling a hope that life continue beyond the grave even though rational thought says otherwise.

[Lord Privy Seal]

Your wall of text has no answer for this: We have a copy of the Book of Jeremiah that is 2300 to 2500 years old, and it 's word for word with today's translation, there are a few words different, but in no way do they change what the passage says.

Are you talking about the Isaiah Scroll, the one on display in the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem?

If this book is reliable to this great extent, then why do you presume the rest of scriptures have been altered. We have no original copies and never will, without them your points are meaningless.

If you had bothered to read my post, you would have noticed that I gave you examples of significant variances in Biblical texts. Unlike you, I do not have unlimited faith in the infallibility of all those men between you and the original authors. Not having the the originals of Biblical texts does not make your position.

[Godscreated]

Your wall of text has no answer for this: We have a copy of the Book of Jeremiah that is 2300 to 2500 years old, and it 's word for word with today's translation, there are a few words different, but in no way do they change what the passage says.

Are you talking about the Isaiah Scroll, the one on display in the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem?

No, the book of Jeremiah.

If this book is reliable to this great extent, then why do you presume the rest of scriptures have been altered. We have no original copies and never will, without them your points are meaningless.

If you had bothered to read my post, you would have noticed that I gave you examples of significant variances in Biblical texts. Unlike you, I do not have unlimited faith in the infallibility of all those men between you and the original authors. Not having the the originals of Biblical texts does not make your position.

I did not say not having the originals made my position, not even applied. Wish we did it would settle a lot. I know most of what you posted, most ot it is stated in the Bibles I use.

[Lord Privy Seal]

No, the book of Jeremiah.

Do you have a cite for this? I'm familiar with the Isaiah Scroll as a famously-preserved scriptural text, but I haven't heard of a comparable text of Jeremiah. In the interests of clarity, I'm not being antagonistic. I just haven't heard of this manuscript and would like to learn a little more about it.

[frz]

There are some people who just throws the book under their pillow like it has some magical force field that gonna protect them from harm and carry into their day while they don't bother to read 80, if not 95 percent of the book.

[Godscreated]

No, the book of Jeremiah.

Do you have a cite for this? I'm familiar with the Isaiah Scroll as a famously-preserved scriptural text, but I haven't heard of a comparable text of Jeremiah. In the interests of clarity, I'm not being antagonistic. I just haven't heard of this manuscript and would like to learn a little more about it.

The dead sea scrolls, it's not a complete scroll.

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There are some people who just throws the book under their pillow like it has some magical force field that gonna protect them from harm and carry into their day while they don't bother to read 80, if not 95 percent of the book.

That's not me, I'm doing a chronological read, I've never read the Bible this way, it makes things easier to follow, the chapters that are repeated in different books are read at the same time.