I think that what all religions offer is a purpose in life. I am an agnostic but an atheist by belief who simply would like to understand everything he can. Lots of it is mathematical, but I would still like to understand quantum theory, even religion. The idea that religion gives rise to morals is fatuous. Some of the most evil people in the world profess to be the most teligious. (Ted Cruz, i am looking at you; do you really think that Jesus would accept that the highest purpose in someone’s life might be to lower taxes on the wealthiest and end social security for the rest of us?)
I’m no biblical scholar, so I would like to see some scripture to support that, to fight my ignorance. And not just the absence of affirmative statements about the afterlife. I need to see verses that convey the belief that death is final.
Read Matthew Chapter 22. You’ll read how the Sadducees, Jewish traditionalists, tried to trip up Jesus and prove there is no afterlife.
The Sadducees were not atheists. They believed in God and his commandments. They just thought it was prideful and impertinent for mere humans to think God owed them a reward for doing his will.
Consider that in 1950, the number of Christians in China was rare. Probably in the neighborhood of about one or two million people in China were Christians. Today there may be one hundred million or more Christians in China. Those hundred million can scarcely all have been descended from the original one or two million.
For that matter, Christianity began with an extremely small group of people in Palestine almost 2,000 years ago. Then it expanded rapidly over the next few centuries, reaching millions of people across the Roman Empire, despite persecution by the Roman authorities. It can hardly be the case that they were all descended from the original few followers in Palestine.
So many polite answers.
The reason, of course, is that humans are generally stupid and/or uneducated. That’s it.
The major way Christianity spread in Europe was by conversion of the ruler, who then made it illegal not to be Christian. The first generation practiced their religion in hiding, but it was mostly forgotten after a few generations,
Plus, most pagan religions didn’t really care if you believed or not. Only Christianity spouted crap about burning in hell if you weren’t saved.
Christians might be wrong, but they were good marketers. Kind of like the people in Glengarry Glen Ross.
Impersonal evil: as incentive to think, to improve, to build better houses, better warning systems. We are called by God to improve not only ourselves personally, but the world around us. The potential for vaccines was always there, but someone had to come up with them. If we lived in a cradle world we wouldn’t grow personally, because someone whose every need is met before he can even realize he has it doesn’t grow; he may get bigger but doesn’t grow, in the same way that cats who have spent their whole life as pets are psychological kittens even if they weight 40lb.
Personal evil: that line about “making us in His image” doesn’t mean He looks like a mean old dude sitting in a too-elaborate chair, but that we can be creators like He is Creator, and we can choose like He can choose. In order for us to be able to choose, we have to have things to choose between, we need to have more than one option and those options need to have actual consequences. Note that this is a response that’s compatible with Catholic doctrine but not with those that believe in predestination.
And the other major way was through the poor and the slaves.
Couldn’t all of this have been accomplished in a “My Little Pony” universe, where evil is relative trivial? God called upon us to develop vaccinations: why smallpox, when mumps would have done the job? God permits us to choose: why Hitler, when the local schoolyard bully is sufficiently evil?
Now, maybe we are in the “My Little Pony” world, and the really nasty possibilities, which God has ruled out entirely, would cause our guts to tie up in knots if we were to envision them… Still, I think the question is valid: why does God permit horrible evil to exist, when a much lower scale of sorrow and pain would suffice for these moral purposes.
If your kid misbehaves, you slap his hand. You don’t shove him into the fireplace. What have we learned from The Holocaust or the Great Leap Forward that we couldn’t have learned – and hadn’t already learned! – from the suppression of the Huguenots?
A world where consequences are never serious would be a cradle world. And as for our learning speed that’s our problem, not His. He made it possible for us to learn: if we don’t wanna, He’s not going to force us.
Job never shrugged off his adversity. He cried out to God all the time begging for mercy and understanding and eventually death as well… He however bared through it all and is revered as one of the most faithful, God fearing men in the history of the world (or religion - depending on beliefs).
Abraham and Job are Old Testament references and are considered (in most religions following biblical doctrine, that is) non canonical and void of significance. Most religions follow the teachings of Christ written in the New Testament and emphasize God’s lack of interest in and his ignoring man all together. This (by biblical standards) is to; hopefully, enlighten man. That we should realize our only salvation lies in the shepherding of Christ. The hardest thing people find doing is this. To live Christ-like is not easy at all and many who choose to are burdened with “plagues”.
As far as death goes. Ecclesiastes 3 will settle the certainty and absoluteness death has on Earth. Thought out the bible the only two constant and constant reference to man and fear is death.
We all die. How we die is chosen by God or left to our iniquities in the absence of forgiveness. However, the only positive reference to death is; ironically, in the book of Revelation. (2:10 - “Remember that after all this to be faithful unto death. There I will give you a crown of life”)
No, but in that decision to ignore HIM we commit to persecutions of Satan. Its a sad truth we are bound to regardless are faith or commitments to religion. Two words correlate the different meanings of the word fear. They are in Hebrew I believe and are supposedly the key to helping people know who is trying to lead them and when.
Catechism is for closers? 
I don’t think “persecutions” means what you think it means 
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:rolleyes: “Chinese Christians” is not a random sample of people around the world.
You appear to be mistaken about what I am claiming. “Every person who ever existed throughout history everywhere in the world always is of the same religion as their parents, and nobody anywhere at any time has ever converted” is definitely NOT what I am saying, and yet it seems to be the claim against which you are making (a poorly supported) argument.
Yes, *some * of those 100M Chinese Christians you pointed to will be converts. There must be, or have been, at least a few (same is true in Central and South America), since there was once a time when there were none. But a great many of them - possibly even most, at this time - will tell you that they were Christian since they were a child. But even if lifelong Chinese Christians aren’t the majority in your cherrypicked example, they will be elsewhere in the world. By itself, the population growth of China between 1950 and now can account for nearly tripling the number of Christians in that time. Give me thirty million Chinese Christians in 1960, and 56 years later they will be outnumbered by their Chinese Christian children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The picture gets a bit fuzzier if conversion happens over time instead of all at the outset, but of course we’re talking about one subgroup in one country where things are in flux.
Even if lifelong Chinese Christians aren’t the majority in your cited example, what about the 1,300,000,000 Chinese who aren’t Christian? Presumably the majority of them inherited their beliefs from their parents. (a reminder: “majority” does not mean “all”)
And what about all the animists, Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists and Christians in the rest of the world?
Lemme ask you this: if I survey everyone in the world (not just Christians in China), do you think that MOST of them will say “my religion is the same as that of my parents”? Or do you think relatively few will say that?
Clearly there’s a very large number of people practicing a religion that is not the same as what their parents practice. And there are many who had two parents with different religious beliefs. Religious demographics change. The distribution of Americans into various religions and denominations is not the same now as it was in 1950. Some groups are larger and some are smaller. In 1950 it was different from what it was in 1900. Whether a strict majority would say that their religious beliefs and practices are exactly the same as that of their parents, I don’t know.
Maybe they would, maybe not. But to just say “it’s hereditary” clearly fails as a total explanation of the existence of religion, just like the post that says “A greedy for-profit priesthood”, or the one that says religious people have “low intelligence” and then links to a Wikipedia article showing that there’s no consistent relationship between religiosity and intelligence.
There’s a huge middle ground between “serious” and “hellishly horrific.” Babies born with birth defects that cause them to die in agony in the first minutes of life. What does God think he’s proving?
He’s not going to force us…but he is also refusing to use his power and his love.
Here’s the thing: I can create a better world than this. God is not perfect, because just about any human you may name could do a better job.
Why do religions still exist, when it is obvious (and backed up by statistics!) that God doesn’t answer prayers? For every one of the faithful that God has saved from a tornado, five others have died. For every football touchdown that Jesus gets thanked for, there are ten turnovers on downs.
Religion has made a lot of statements about reality…that don’t pan out.
But to say, “It’s not hereditary at all” would be a worse model of what is actually observed. There is a reasonably strong correlation of the faith of one’s upbringing to one’s current faith.
No one has been foolish enough to say it’s totally hereditary, just as I’m sure you would never be so foolish as to say that upbringing has no relationship at all. Upbringing has a strong causal relationship.
This is why it is valid for skeptics to ask the faithful, “What if you had been born to a Hindu family?” You would likely be a Hindu. That’s just how the odds shake out.
(Smart people don’t smoke cigarettes for the same reason.)
Back to the common assertion that people embrace religion because they fear death.
Hindus believe in reincarnation. “Aha,” says the skeptic. “Reincarnation is a comforting myth that tells people they’ll go on living forever.”
Well, no. In fact, HELL no. To a Hindu, reincarnation is not a joyous thing to be embraced. A devout Hindu doesn’t relish coming back to live on Earth again and again and again. Mohandas Gandhi spoke for most when he called reincarnation a great and painful burden, one that most Hindus want to ESCAPE from by seeking Enlightenment.
So, if Judaism doesn’t have any definitive teachings on an afterlife… and Hindus find their concept of the afterlife extremely unpleasant… it sure doesn’t sound as if those religions are offering anyone any comforting myths.
So… if even many faithful Jews haven’t believed in an afterlife, why do they remain faithful? Why do they follow the commands of a God who isn’t promising them any reward?
Well, because he’s GOD! He is creator of all things, and he has a right to ask anything of us without promising us anything in return.
Remember that, when Job is suffering, he spends the almost all his time angrily yelling at God and demanding an explanation (whoever made up the phrase “the patience of Job” has never read the Book of Job). When God DOES appear to Job, does he say, “Relax- you’ll go to Heaven when you die”? Nope. Does he give Job any kind of explanation? Nope. All he tells Job is “I’m God, you aren’t. I created everything and I understand everything. You don’t. When you question me, you’re way above your pay grade. All you need to know is that I have my reasons.”
And that suffices for Job, as it’s SUPPOSED to suffice for all Jews.
See, the payoff for devout Jews is not Heaven. It’s not even an explanation of the Meaning of Life. It’s just assurance that there IS a God behind it all, and that there IS a Meaning (even if we’re not privy to it).
I think it’s complicated. Which is why they still exist. The number one reason is brainwashing of children. Have you ever noticed how many religions have policies that strongly encourage or even force their members to reproduce in large numbers? Producing more future believers. I have trouble believing that very many adults would convert to any kind of religion if they were somehow raised in a completely atheist society and not heavily exposed to religion while very young.
The number two reason is that encouraging and establishing religions allows certain people to control the rest of the people. If you were just a basic politician and you announced a new rule that was harmful to most people and then say “god wants this” you’re much less likely to be stoned to death by your victims.
Then there are the people who yeah, are afraid of death, and afraid of reality, and would prefer to live in a fantasy world where instead of random utterly stupid events happen that hurt and kill, there is actually a plan and it’s all for the best, somehow, and there will always be a happy ending if only you believe.
And then there are social interactions and fitting in. Quite a few people “go to church” solely to engage in social interactions and to fit into the community. Many don’t actually believe in the religion but they enjoy this aspect.
Wait…what? “Most religions”…are you sure? It sounds like you are a committed Christian, but I presume that you don’t really mean to say that most world religions read the New Testament as gospel.