# What is your biggest problem with religion that prevents you from believing? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [May 10, 2016, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-biggest-problem-with-religion-that-prevents-you-from-believing/754500 "2016-05-10T19:01:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2016, 6:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-biggest-problem-with-religion-that-prevents-you-from-believing/754500/81 "2016-05-12T06:18:26Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > I have to admit I’ve never understood the arguments that are essentially boil down _“I don’t believe in God because he’s such an asshole.”_ I can see somebody rejecting God and refusing to worship God on that basis, but refusing to believe in him? Hitler is generally regarded as a terrible person and that’s a good reason to not be a Nazi. But saying you refuse to believe in Hitler is delusional. His horrible deeds didn’t somehow cancel out his existence. And the same argument applies to God. There’s nothing that says God can’t exist and be a narcissistic sadist. I bet no one didn’t believe in Zeus because he was an asshole. That was part of the job description. However the Christian God is supposed to be all-loving, so the fact that if he existed he’d be an asshole contradicts that definition of that god. Christians know this - thus the “those babies dying horribly were all part of God’s plan” defense. ---
**Author:** ![Jake\_Jones](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Jake\_Jones](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jake_Jones)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2016, 6:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-biggest-problem-with-religion-that-prevents-you-from-believing/754500/82 "2016-05-12T06:19:39Z")
> [@you\_with\_the\_face](#): > > It doesn’t make sense for a God to populate a planet with ignorant bipedal animals with the capacity to imagine, lie, and misinterpret even the simplest information and then hold them responsible for knowing–on faith alone–which supernatural explanation for creation is the true one. I was just going to boil it down to Occam’s Razor, but this answer deserves recognition. It combines cynicism and wit with a dash of dry humor into a single sentence in a way that would have made Douglas Adams proud to have written it. Well done, **you with the face**. Very well done. ---
**Author:** ![doubleminus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5daacb/32.png) [@doubleminus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doubleminus)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2016, 10:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-biggest-problem-with-religion-that-prevents-you-from-believing/754500/83 "2016-05-12T10:04:52Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > Why don’t you believe that you have a Unicorn in your living room right now? “Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib? Canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in the furrow? or will he harrow the valleys after thee? Wilt thou trust him, because his strength is great? or wilt thou leave thy labour to him? Wilt thou believe him, that he will bring home thy seed, and gather it into thy barn?” ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2016, 11:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-biggest-problem-with-religion-that-prevents-you-from-believing/754500/84 "2016-05-12T11:53:52Z")
The entire idea that gods are real is nuttier than a fruitcake. ---
**Author:** ![butterfiles](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b3f665/32.png) [@butterfiles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/butterfiles)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2016, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-biggest-problem-with-religion-that-prevents-you-from-believing/754500/85 "2016-05-12T12:36:53Z")
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![Moriarty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/moriarty/32/49_2.png) [@Moriarty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moriarty)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2016, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-biggest-problem-with-religion-that-prevents-you-from-believing/754500/86 "2016-05-12T15:24:30Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > …if I believed there was an all-powerful all-knowing being who was capable of causing me infinite suffering if I disobeyed one of his laws, I’d almost certainly obey his laws. This is a part of religion that seems most preposterous to me. I am being told that there is an all-powerful, all-knowing God who is waiting to find out if I’ve decided to believe in, obey, and worship him. Uh, if he’s omniscient, he already knows if I will believe in, obey, and worship him (even before I do). And the reason he already knows…he pre-ordained it. So, for those who believe in God, the reason I don’t is because that’s what God decided. And therefore he has no right to hold me accountable for what he created. Or else he’s a dick, so fuck him. ---
**Author:** ![shiftless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9c0ed/32.png) [@shiftless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shiftless)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2016, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-biggest-problem-with-religion-that-prevents-you-from-believing/754500/87 "2016-05-12T19:51:30Z")
Two pages of excellent reasons why religion has failed to prove that some sort of God exists but each one can be debated if we don’t assume this ‘God’ creature fits the given generalization. You can wrestle with religious folks all day and never pin them down on what exactly they mean by the word ‘God’, much less the other tenets of their belief. This is my problem with belief. Every religious leader I’ve ever met makes some claim, explicitly or implicitly, to a special relationship with one of these supernatural beings. Maybe they talk directly with him, as with Pat Robertson, or maybe they only claim to have studied and therefore know more about what he wants from us. Either way, you would think they could all get their stories straight if they’re talking about the same being when in fact they barely keep the basic facts consistent: powerful, invisible and he wants you to do what I say. So the question for me is not whether to believe in a supernatural being or not. He doesn’t bother contacting me directly to make himself understood so all the information I have about him comes from others. So it’s whether to believe some possibly self serving individual in the hope that he is the one single person on earth who happens to be in communication with the supernatural and understands what it wants or just ignore all these religious leaders and their bold claims. Wasted a lot of time on option 1 then found that option 2 works just fine with a lot less fuss. I pretty much ignore Shriners, golfers, model railroaders, Twilight series fans and a whole bunch of other groups too, unless one of their zealots gets hold of me at a party. It’s polite to just smile and nod until they wind down then change the subject. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2016, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-biggest-problem-with-religion-that-prevents-you-from-believing/754500/88 "2016-05-12T20:26:15Z")
> [@erocked](#): > > According to Christianity, God gave you free will. So technically (at least as technical as religion gets) it IS your cross to bear. No. If you give me something and then later come around and start to complain about how I’m using something, that’s your problem, not mine. Whether you’re a god or not, the math doesn’t change. The person who cares is the one whose problem it is. I don’t care what any god’s opinion is of what I’m doing, ergo it’s not my weight to bear. God can try and tell me that it’s my problem all he wants, but he’s wrong. If he didn’t want to give me freedom, he shouldn’t have given me freedom to start with. Or, if he really cares, he should just overwrite my brain so that I accede. He has that power, right? ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2016, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-biggest-problem-with-religion-that-prevents-you-from-believing/754500/89 "2016-05-12T20:55:40Z")
It’s just that it’s absurd. The entire idea is preposterous. I don’t see a contradiction between, say, God being all-loving and His followers being assholes. Hell, that’s true of everything; how many politicians swear to uphold the law and then break it? Humans are fallible. To me, I can’t believe in God because it’s ridiculous. It’s like believing in leprechauns or the Easter Bunny. ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2016, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-biggest-problem-with-religion-that-prevents-you-from-believing/754500/90 "2016-05-12T21:09:24Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > I bet no one didn’t believe in Zeus because he was an asshole. That was part of the job description. However the Christian God is supposed to be all-loving, so the fact that if he existed he’d be an asshole contradicts that definition of that god. Yeah, Greek gods and similar polytheistic religions were a lot easier to make sense of - the gods weren’t all-knowing, all-wise, or all-loving, they were bigger than life people who were jackasses at least as much as people were. The majority of religious rituals were along the lines of making a swap or paying protection money, it wasn’t as ‘pure’ as religion tends to be viewed today. And you didn’t believe that your set of gods were the only gods, other people weren’t wrong they just had a different set that they talked to, and you might adopt one from someone else’s pantheon completely sincerely. ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2016, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-biggest-problem-with-religion-that-prevents-you-from-believing/754500/91 "2016-05-12T21:21:58Z")
My problem with religion is it prevented me from believing. Religion is not for me, me being a child of God, now that I can, and do, dig. Don’t need a high priest telling me what God can and does or says, God can tell me directly and I can hear my parent God. Don’t need their interpretations of what they say God is teaching me, because God teaches me and points out their over abundant and ever present errors, don’t need their structure either, a worldly and satanic construct basically a pyramid scheme of unjust authority. The veil is torn, the holy and holies is mine to enter and possess freely and the temple can shove their temple tax up their collective asses - the children of God are exempt. The temples (religious structures) leaders have been defined as sons (children) of the devil in scriptures. ---
**Author:** ![spamforbrains](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e274bd/32.png) [@spamforbrains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spamforbrains)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2016, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-biggest-problem-with-religion-that-prevents-you-from-believing/754500/92 "2016-05-13T03:43:04Z")
> [@](#): > > Originally Posted by Little Nemo View Post > …if I believed there was an all-powerful all-knowing being who was capable of causing me infinite suffering if I disobeyed one of his laws, I’d almost certainly obey his laws. are you missing the part about all-powerful and all-knowing? If your god actually had those powers he wouldn’t need laws. You’d just behave in the way it wanted you to behave. The idea of throwing a bunch of people down on a planet and giving them some rules to follow and the winners get prizes sounds way too much like a TV reality show. How can you take it seriously? ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2016, 7:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-biggest-problem-with-religion-that-prevents-you-from-believing/754500/93 "2016-05-13T07:20:31Z")
> [@shiftless](#): > > You can wrestle with religious folks all day and never pin them down on what exactly they mean by the word ‘God’, much less the other tenets of their belief. That’s why I’m technically a theological non-cognitivist. It’s (in a sense) one step on from atheist. Not only do I have no belief in any god, I don’t actually accept there is any accepted definition of such a thing. ---
**Author:** ![Isamu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/7c8e57/32.png) [@Isamu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isamu)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2016, 7:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-biggest-problem-with-religion-that-prevents-you-from-believing/754500/94 "2016-05-13T07:26:16Z")
\*\*What is your biggest problem with religion that prevents you from believing? \*\* A strangely worded OP. Religion doesn’t prevent me from believing anything. ---
**Author:** ![Totenfeier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/4bbf92/32.png) [@Totenfeier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Totenfeier)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2016, 11:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-biggest-problem-with-religion-that-prevents-you-from-believing/754500/95 "2016-05-13T11:35:29Z")
> [@Annie-Xmas](#): > > Christianity has the biggest loop hole in the world. You mean to tell me that you can rape children, steal, lie, break every rule there is and then, at age 95, if you accept Jesus, you go to heaven? In the meantime, the people who believe in any other religion who never do anything more than take the occasion pen home from work are commend to hell? Bullshit! > > If the 9/11 hijackers accepted Jesus right before they hit the buildings, or Ted Bundy did as the juices sizzled through him, that got them to heaven? > > Also, if god(s) there be, how do they think that the universe they created isn’t good enough for us? We got to make up tales of magical sky pixies! When I took my students through Elie Wiesel’s _Night_, I always pointed out that, according to traditional Christian belief as they understood it (small-town rural American South), the Jews who died in agony in the gas chambers of the Holocaust (including saintly rabbis who taught generations and always did good deeds for their fellow men) woke up screaming in hellfire, whereas any of the brutal camp guards who had feelings of remorse, repented, accepted Jesus, and were run over by a transport truck thirty seconds later, got to spend an eternity of bliss in heaven, perhaps even celebrating the damnation of Jews as a demonstration of God’s justice. Oddly enough, I never got in a bit of trouble for this. I hope that means that they were thinking. ---
**Author:** ![YogSothoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/8edcca/32.png) [@YogSothoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YogSothoth)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2016, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-biggest-problem-with-religion-that-prevents-you-from-believing/754500/96 "2016-05-13T16:08:37Z")
Biggest reason is that it doesn’t make any sense. 2nd reason is that the god described in Christianity is a nasty, spiteful, vindictive asshole who I will never follow. Even if god proves himself, I could not bring myself to follow him 3rd reason is that I don’t know enough about other religions to bother learning why I should believe them. ---
**Author:** ![Misnomer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/misnomer/32/14897_2.png) [@Misnomer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Misnomer)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2016, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-biggest-problem-with-religion-that-prevents-you-from-believing/754500/97 "2016-05-13T17:10:59Z")
I don’t believe because I don’t have faith. I have no problem with religion. ---
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2016, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-biggest-problem-with-religion-that-prevents-you-from-believing/754500/98 "2016-05-13T17:24:54Z")
> [@Totenfeier](#): > > When I took my students through Elie Wiesel’s _Night_, I always pointed out that, according to traditional Christian belief as they understood it (small-town rural American South), the Jews who died in agony in the gas chambers of the Holocaust (including saintly rabbis who taught generations and always did good deeds for their fellow men) woke up screaming in hellfire, whereas any of the brutal camp guards who had feelings of remorse, repented, accepted Jesus, and were run over by a transport truck thirty seconds later, got to spend an eternity of bliss in heaven, perhaps even celebrating the damnation of Jews as a demonstration of God’s justice. Oddly enough, I never got in a bit of trouble for this. I hope that means that they were thinking. Interestingly, Mel Gibson caused a bit of a stir some years ago when [he said basically the same thing about his wife:](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mel_Gibson#Religious_and_political_views) > [@Wikipedia](#): > > When asked about the Catholic doctrine of “Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus”, Gibson replied, “There is no salvation for those outside the Church … I believe it. Put it this way. My wife is a saint. She’s a much better person than I am. Honestly. She’s… Episcopalian, Church of England. She prays, she believes in God, she knows Jesus, she believes in that stuff. And it’s just not fair if she doesn’t make it, she’s better than I am. But that is a pronouncement from the chair. I go with it.” ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2016, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-biggest-problem-with-religion-that-prevents-you-from-believing/754500/99 "2016-05-13T18:41:33Z")
> [@Isamu](#): > > \*\*What is your biggest problem with religion that prevents you from believing? \*\* > > A strangely worded OP. Religion doesn’t prevent me from believing anything. If you believe in a religion, wouldn’t it prevent you from believing in things that contradict or deny that religion? ---
**Author:** ![MeanJoe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/meanjoe/32/5693_2.png) [@MeanJoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MeanJoe)\ **Post date:** [May 13, 2016, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-biggest-problem-with-religion-that-prevents-you-from-believing/754500/100 "2016-05-13T19:20:43Z")
Honestly, it is mostly the people. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-biggest-problem-with-religion-that-prevents-you-from-believing/754500.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-your-biggest-problem-with-religion-that-prevents-you-from-believing/754500.md?page=6)