Dissecting the "all religions are bad" argument

So be it. I know where you are coming from now. Thanks for being honest with your feelings. I do not judge you in any way. We will ALL answer to God for how we believe in due time. For the record, the Bibles creation story is not at all in odds with science. If God spoke the universe into being, it could have very well started with a "bang" and for that matter the "big bang" is just theory. If you do not believe in God it is really a crazy theory if you think about it. I mean everything suddenly developed by exploding from nothing? As for the age of the universe / Earth, if God is capable of speaking the Earth into existence then it would have the appearance of maturity. In other words, if God spoke Adam into existence and he was say 30 years old at the time he was spoken into existence, he would show as being 30 in any test that was run and would actually be a newborn. Same goes with the Earth. If it was spoken into existence, any test to indicate age would indicate it was as old as God wanted it to be the moment he created it.

 

fchowd0311, i could not care less what you believe to be perfectly honest. It does not impact me in any way. We will answer for your beliefs one day. How you believe is between you and God.

 

How petty does God have to be to judge a human soul's worth by whether a human can blindly believe in something with lackluster evidence?

That's the sole determination for whether someone eternally suffers?

 

Only a Christian or Muslim can imply to someone with a straight face that they are most likely going suffer for eternity and feel insulted that someone offended their belief system.

Less people care about your opinion here yet you keep on posting. I'll keep on posting my opinion.

 

@FranchiseBlade you are free to believe as you want. I just urge you that if your beliefs are different than most on here,do not be afraid to express them. We are not accountable to the people in this world but you are accountable for your beliefs and actions one day. Good day my friend.

 

I am not sure where your disconnect is but no I do not care. I will post my beliefs. I am not accountable to you or anyone else in this world but in the end but I will be held accountable just like you.

 

Everyone is free to believe what they want here. And everyone is free to express that they believe everyone here who isn't Christian is probably going to suffer for eternity and everyone here is free to state that everyone who believes in that was either brainwashed as a child or is an idiot.

 

Now you want to backtrack.

You know that you implied that we are going to hell. Don't backtrack. It's obvious in your doctrine as with Islam. Those are the only two major faiths today that explictly state that a lack of believe in system will result in eternal damnation and is inherently why these faith in their entire history are the most tribalistic and war mongering. When your belief system states that your group is going to heaven and the rest to hell, that creates a sense of supuriority and we know what a group humans do when they feel supurior to another group.

 

I am not sure what you mean by backtracking? You read a lot into my post that I did not put into that particular post but you are on the right track. The Bible says he who believes in Jesus is saved already and he who does not is condemned already. I do believe what the Bible says. I have never said anything different. Now if you believe or not, no I do not care. All I can do is present you with the truth and you can do what you want with that truth. I will lose no sleep over your disbelief if that is what you choose, will you.

 

Okay?

So you believe we are all going to hell. I don't understand where I misrepresented what you stated.

So my point still applies. It's part of why Islam and Christianty has such a violent history. They are both ideologies centered around the saved(the good people) and the Damned(the bad people). This basic rudamentary dichotomy is what allows wealthy intellegent leaders with nefarious intent to dupe the stupid commoner.

 

I doubt you care but you are completely wrong in comparing Christianity and Islam. One calls solely for the belief in Jesus Christ to know you will be saved and thus go to heaven. The other one is not so cut and dried. The only way you know you get to whatever heaven they think there is in ISlam s to die in jihad. So, to clarify, to know you get to heaven no matter what, one religion ask you to solely believe in the savior that was sent. The other ask you to die in Jihad. Again, I am saying what each holy scripture teaches is the only way you know you will go to heaven.

 

Every Muslim I know believes that good deeds and an expressed faith in Muhammad and Allah is enough to be certain. So you are wrong in that regard. I've not met a single Muslim in my entire lifetime who felt the need to commit suicide jihad in order to be certain they are going to heaven.

And you are just simply not bright enough to understand my premise. YOU might believe that a belief system that explcitly separates the condemned from the saved won't naturally produce tribalistic tendencies but reality and history state otherwise.

 

Okay please point to the SPECIFIC scriptures in Islam that says the criteria you mentioned is enough to get to the Islam heaven. I can point to numerous Biblical scriptures to back up my point.

 

Jeffrey Dahmer is in heaven now.

 

Point 1. The Big Bang theory is the best theory we have to date to describe a large number of phenomena regarding the universe. Evidence based on the Cosmic Microwave Background shows that at every point in the universe is a very weak energy, and that for the most part all of it is at roughly the same temperature. It also leaves a pattern that when comparing it to the modern universe, has similarity. It is literally the oldest light we've been able to observe and with that light are able to infer the conditions of the universe within it's first second. There's evidence and testable theory to the Big Bang. A biblical quote where some dude writes, "And then there was light," does so little to describe the universe, that it barely describes anything at all. There's nothing to be learned from it. There's nothing to test of it. Subsequently, it's a weak theory.

Point 2. The age of the Earth is roughly 4.5 billion years old. We know this from carbon dating and by determining the age of other celestial bodies in our solar system like the Sun and Mars. All planets in our solar system are roughly the same age and were formed around the same time. The best theory is when our very own Sun became a star. From observations, astronomers have been able to watch stars form. They form by a large quantity of gas clumping together and then collapse under it's own gravity. This collapse causes nuclear fusion giving birth to the star. This very violent process causes some gases to be expelled from the star and instead orbit around it. Some of the gases orbiting around the newly formed star clump together and form planets, moons, asteroids and comets. In the Bible, a dude takes 7 days to make the Earth and it was created thousands of years ago opposed to 4.5 billion years ago as science has shown. There's mountains of evidence to show the age of the universe, the age of the Earth and incredibly accurate ways to describe how the universe came to be right now. There's none of that in the Bible. Zip. Zilch. Nada. There's nothing to test unless you take the words at face value, where you literally believe the Earth was made thousands of years ago. No rational minded scientist will take you seriously because evidence says otherwise.

Point 3. If Adam was a 30 year old newborn, they could check his DNA and see if his telomeres are that of an infants, or someone later in their adult life. So yes, you could test that most likely. Except, there's been zero evidence in the roughly 200 thousand years humanity has been around of a person emerging from nothing and becoming a 30 year old man. Even Jesus had to be born and become an adult.

Point 4. The creation story in the Bible is boring as hell. I forget who has this quote as their signature, but I want to say it's durvasa. It's a Feynman quote. "I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong." In a scientist's description of creation, you find out that the universe is 13.8 billion years old. And at the very first moment in time the universe was created, the universe was also at its hottest temperature as well. I also know what happens to the universe in it's very first second of time. I don't get any of that from the Bible. I don't get told about how galaxies form, and in those galaxies, how stars form, and from those stars, how planets form, and from those planets, how life formed. With scientific observation, I do know how galaxies form, and in those galaxies how stars form, and from those stars, how planets form. Scientists don't know how life formed, but that's okay because there are so many truly interesting theories they're testing to figure that out in the meantime.

In the meantime it's okay to be wrong as long as you're working towards the right answer. Your "faith" makes you incapable of that though. You assume you're right just because, and it's lazy thinking honestly. The Bible just says God made man and from man, woman and that's pretty much it. Booooooooring. It's also wrong, but also incredibly boring. The author couldn't come up with a creative way of how the universe was created except to make up some imaginary all knowing figure. Booooooooooooring. But you do cml. If you truly believed in a creator, I think that creator would feel disserviced to see you view the universe it created as something that makes your imagination feel comfortable and not appreciate it for what it really is.

 

I read that literal truth of the Bible is fairly recent:

Karen Armstrong, a most popular liberal living historian of religion writes, 'Before the modern period, Jews, Christians and Muslims all relished highly allegorical interpretations of scripture. The word of God was infinite and could not be tied down to a single interpretation. Preoccupation with literal truth is a product of the scientific revolution, when reason achieved such spectacular results that mythology was no longer regarded as a valid path to knowledge.'

 

That you can't define something you don't have the full perception to realize doesn't mean it doesn't exist or that it's not possible. For the rest of time, human beings will discover, perceive, and invent things never thought possible. Science has its own hubris.

 

I think a reasonable statement would be "there is no scientific evidence for a literal soul at the moment". Onus is on the claimant to provide evidence. So the ones stating that there is a literal soul ought to prove it.

 

Christians were a persecuted and a small but growing minority until 313AD when the Roman Emperor made it legal and allowed open worship. By 391, the old gods were banned across the Roman empire. The rest is history. Politics and religion seem to be the root of most religious strife and discrimination as government is used as a means of legislating/enacting such things. I think economic growth and trade is the factor that creates stability and peace. Obviously this is a very general "dissection" but history is complex.

Religion is merely another vessel in which man can exert power over another man with politics just making it more powerful. Each shift varies with each religion and the good to bad ebbs and flows.