“Bad god!” hits god with a rolled up newspaper

Clearly he wasn’t trained properly as a pup

It was a Chihuahua back then

Sadly the doggo walked all over the holy keyboard and wrote the old testament

Yes there are, it’s one of Jesus’ teachings.

I remember a song from my childhood which was sung in the church regularly. And a part of it says something along the lines of “where two or three come together in my name, I’ll be among them”. Which seems to be a “quote” from Jesus. It’s not only written in their books but also in their songs but the whole “we need your money to build bigger churches otherwise God can’t hear us” scheme is still going…

Book of Mormon

Dum dum dum dum dummm

Yeah, a couple family members converted a few decades ago and the Mormons sent us all a request to list all our ancestors so they could retroactively ‘save’ them. Most of my family being Lutheran, that didn’t go over well lol.

My grandpa, my uncle, and a few other family pranksters got together and gave them the most outrageous list they could come up with. I had a Mormon kid as a friend when I was young, and some days I wonder if they looked me up, and actually believed I was related to the King of Sweden.

I am in complete agreement with your statement, excepting the final line.

Organised religion leading society’s and their involvement in government is definitely detrimental.

What I aim to bring to light here is that religion, belief and faith in something greater than oneself is (in my belief) healthy for humanity when it is driven by personnel introspection.

I feel that all too often we have very intelligent people who completely ignore the entire prospect or field of spirituality due to the negative light it is cast in.

I’m also happy for people to ignore it but speaking from my own experience, I never thought to investigate this side of the human condition as I had wrapped all notions of spirituality up with the atrocities and lack of logic or reasoning of organised religion. Religion was bad and stupid and I wanted nothing to do with it. But I’ve since grown and adapted my world views & hope to share my experiences from an empathic viewpoint to maybe assist others who can relate.

When I say we need more faith, I don’t really mean faith in any particular god, entity, alien or higher power. I mean more so that faith in oneself, faith in the connected nature of all things and faith in the universe, this form of faith is a very empowering source of energy that we as a collective can draw upon.

It’s open to interpretation and appreciate your response.

They are lies to some and to others they are promises.

I don’t disagree that organised religion can and is very manipulative.

Sorry, I wasn’t very clear - was less about whether or not the guidelines are real or have an impact (which is arguable either way) but more so that people want to be reassured that they are ‘doing the right thing’.

And my reason for highlighting this is to provide an understanding for the people that do follow religion - that it’s a very natural human response to look for certainty or predictability and for some people religion provides that by providing a structure for them to build their moral compass and world views around.

Again, whether or not that’s a good or bad thing is up to the individual.

You mention justice and balance and I agree that balance is definitely required. Justice is a more complex notion, one which generally involves consequences or punishment.

I’m unsure of justice being useful, as long as we are divided and pointing fingers we will never truly meet our potential as a species. We can do amazing things when we work together.

When I say faith I am not implying that someone or something is going to intervene and save the day. I’m definitely not advocating inaction. But as I mentioned in another reply, faith in oneself and the people around them to make the right decisions and hold themselves accountable is a good starting point. Faith that this existence is just a tiny part of a much greater existence and faith that what you do matters regardless of how inconsequential it may seem.

Issue is you can believe anything from faith and thats why atrocities happen because x god told them too. Or X priest says this thats how cults exist a group of people believe crazy things with no evidence whatsoever. Which is exactly what faith is belief without evidence.

I’m glad to hear that, keep that communication going! I feel the same and it makes me smile knowing that there are similar minded people out there. Thanks for the kind words stranger, lead by example.

Then planes would never crash, there would be no crime, and all guns would shoot jello. Who wants to live like that?

Not dying of cancer is selfish. It mainly benefits yourself

How did they know it didn’t work? I don’t really know how those things work, but I’m pretty sure that one is mostly internal.

Die and come back to reality where you’re a 10 year old kid in a sci-fi arcade on a family vacation during summer break.

I don’t think Jesus ever existed. Show me 12 guys that experience something absolutely world changing, and none of them write anything about it for decades and then tell me they were factually motivated. This is the premise we’re dealing with.

We were all stupid gullible little kids learning this stuff. Most people are only doing it for the social network, but don’t understand it as such. The bias of disregarding all the opposing evidence causes cognitive dissonance and most of the bad behaviors of present society.

Pragmatically, a group of nobodies managed to survive Rome destroying their civilization because of stupidity and rebellious nationalism. This diaspora was a refugee crisis everywhere else. No one wanted them and their religion was a joke. They had no where to go, owned nothing, and were not even citizens of the lands they inhabited. Most were likely slaves. After a few decades, some started rebuilding a life. It was the perfect opportunity to fabricate some new religious thing if you were a displaced nobody. That diaspora wanted meaningful purpose to make them feel nostalgic over their religious past. The gospels are the tales of some nobodies that didn’t have to work because they sold themselves as the product that filled the niche needs of the more successful among that diaspora. They got put up in people’s houses and fed well. They likely did so until they got caught by some Romans while trying to grow their religious support base, or because they were overstaying their welcome everywhere they went. Like Paul was probably put on a boat knowing that he wouldn’t be able to return, probably a boat likely to sink, and one sent into a storm on purpose.

It is easy to say all the things that “thousands witnessed” when all those thousands are dead or displaced and unable to dispute anything you’ve said. None of them wrote down any part of their accounts for several decades. What kinds of reliable stories can you tell after several decades. To top that off, there are elementary school level copying errors that are blatant in nature. They are exactly what I expect from a con. You don’t have a case where there are 12 unique accounts or 11 if you want to be pedantic. I can easily picture myself in this circumstance, and I can easily see myself performing this exact con if my alternative was starving to death. There is nothing remarkable about the story. At the time, there were very few people that supported or believed it. A couple hundred years later it picked up steam. That too is obvious. Polytheism is like an anarchic political party. Any fool can conjure a political movement that has potential to overthrow governments using an obscure god of convince and a plausible story that feeds what others want to hear… Look at Julius Caesar. He largely used his religious role as pontifex maximus to gain power as a populist. Monotheism is far easier to control. The true purpose of religion is quite simple. It is a self sustaining way to suppress the peasantry. This is the common thread throughout all of history. Religion functions as a morality police system with a corpus that is just long enough to occupy the minds of the average person. It is a source of tribal isolation. It is not a meritocracy, so it will not evolve much with time. Conservative sadism and ignorance are an effective way to oppresses or suppress progressive societal elements that might question the corruption and ineptitude of the upper class. Religion creates little gullible pockets of people that are easily manipulated by the upper class and authority.

So no, there is no evidence for anything more than opportunistic cons and pragmatic government if you really strip away all the layers and look at it objectively. It is a system of feelings over logic because feelings disregard facts and make up their own like imaginary friends no one has ever talked to, or a magical future if you just go about your insignificant life while telling you it will be better next time. Or shit, how about we really rub it in: in the next life “the meek will inherit the earth.” That’s right, act as low as you can little peasants, and be happy about it. It will be better next time. Your imaginary friend said so about this place no one has ever seen or been to. The majority of humans believe shit like this. If you know this stuff well, you know I did too.

You can’t fix stupid in anyone else; only within yourself. Fighting or arguing with anyone that places emotionally derived belief over fundamental logic is a pointless and destructive waste of time. Sharing reasonable logic with those on the edge can be helpful, but like, I came up with all of this on my own completely independent of external sources.