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.
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.
“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?”
The entire idea that gods are real is nuttier than a fruitcake.
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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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
**What is your biggest problem with religion that prevents you from believing? **
A strangely worded OP. Religion doesn’t prevent me from believing anything.
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.
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.
I don’t believe because I don’t have faith.
I have no problem with religion.
Interestingly, Mel Gibson caused a bit of a stir some years ago when he said basically the same thing about his wife:
If you believe in a religion, wouldn’t it prevent you from believing in things that contradict or deny that religion?
Honestly, it is mostly the people.