Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful. — Seneca
What’s a mob to a king? What’s a king to a god? What’s a god to an atheist?
What’s the atheist to the inquisition?
What’s the inquisition to- NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION!
Nonbeliever*
Nobody asked about religion.
Feel free to substitute “the existence of a God” for “religion” then.
Which one?
The spaghetti monster
Ramen to that!
Praise be Its Noodly Appendage
nah, religion seems like a scam that usually results in unhinged beliefs and abuse.
Not a fan generally speaking.
if you dig into any religions beliefs, it goes into some wild fairy tail stuff that just…doesnt happen.
Not to mention that folks tend to base their morals on religion, and religions have very flawed morals.
the difference between god and myself is that if I could, I would prevent a child from getting bone cancer.
Religion did have good morals in theory. Not in practice.
Also, unrelated to your points, religion didn’t evolve. It stayed about the same for thousands of years, despite new science.
Religion did have good morals in theory
Which one is that?
That jesus dude had some pretty liberal thoughts. Buddhism was a nice reaction to the caste system. The method of delivery may not be inherently moral, but it is possible to manipulate a population in a way overall beneficial to society.
That jesus dude had some pretty liberal thoughts
He personally, maybe. I didn’t know the guy. The religion that grew around him, though … not so much.
I’m not sure if it’s because of his father or he just had terrible editors for his posthumous book release. But some of the stuff in there is quite abhorrent.
It’s quite easy to find a lot of legitimately disgusting stuff in there, true. I’m on the antireligious apatheist side of things, so you don’t have to convince me on that. But I wouldn’t go as far as saying some religions’ fundamental pillars don’t have any good messages behind it. “Love one another” alone isn’t too bad at face value, isn’t it?
We a have so many other books now that contain all those good messages, even a lot more with more relevance to modern life, without all the terrible stuff and non-sense.
It just makes no sense to keep a 2000 old book around for a couple of good messages that are already thaught in many other, more modern stories and context.
The point was “do religions have any good in them”, not “are religious texts still relevant”.
i didnt say religion only had bad morals. broken clocks and such.
but christianity in specific has a lot of flawed morals that christians handwave. like Mary being 12 when she gave birth to Jesus, or pretty much everything old testament.
claims of a perfect and just omnipotent god while stuff like that flies is sloppy.
If you need to rely on an external force and fear of hell to have morals, you’re not a good person.
I’m an agnostic theist, I believe in the possibility of god(s) or god-like entities.
There is a quote I resonate with by Marcus Aurelius:
Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones. I am not afraid.
No.
Imo the more you think about it the more you realize that “god” is just a very human way to cope with feeling lonely or powerless, and life having no ultimate direction or purpose. People imagine a friend or guardian who has a plan and will set things right, and some use this shared fantasy to make others do what they want.
From the things I’ve seen in my lifetime I can only assume there’s no God, and if there is a God then he’s not worth worshipping for letting the amount of suffering exist as there is in the world today.
I don’t believe in any deities. Although, Greek mythology really would be cool if it was real.
Cool, and also terrifying.
Like The Fonz wielding a chain saw
I asked AI to draw that with interesting resultsI mean, it got the jacket sort of right 🤷
I had to ask it to tweak it several times hah
If there is a god, it takes a special sadist to allow the amount of torment present on earth.
So I prefer to believe there’s no higher spirit ravelling in the suffering of all creatures rather than there being a malevolent creator watching with glee as we die a slow, painful death.
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The researcher observing the lion didn’t create the concept of suffering tho
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I love what-if scenarios :)
I think you could go one step further with this theory and say that humans are not that important at all. I mean, why would we think we are? Because god told us so? Maybe he just said that to account for some variable and left it at that. Hasn’t looked back at what we were up to since.
In some distant corner of the universe is a much nicer planet where everyone is living in harmony and peace. We’re just the control group :)deleted by creator
When I was religious (I’m not any more) that was something that never actually troubled me. I believed that god was benevolent but that suffering must be necessary in ways that we humans can’t conceive of. Who were we to question the grander plan?
basically believing in god is akin to believing that this is all just a game of sims some twisted being is playing
Here we go…
EDIT: Surprisingly not as toxic as I thought…
Do you believe in Santa?
Apatheist here. Whether there is or isn’t a god, I don’t give a shit. Just stop trying to shove your shit down my throat and leave me the fuck alone.
You can’t disprove God because you can keep changing the definition. If I define God as the culmination of everything in the universe, you can’t really disprove that.
If you disagree with me, then I can just keep changing the definition of God!
Do I believe in god? No.
Do I deny the existence of god? No.
I don’t have evidence either way
Since science is deductive it’s probably impossible to prove the negative there, but I think there’s enough evidence beyond reasonable doubt that you can confidently deny it (unless your god is non-falsifiable, in which case it’s not worth discussion).
Same logic applies to unicorn and dragons, to be honest
they might exist, somewhere
No, not at all. I went to a christian high school and that experience removed pretty much any doubts I might have had.
I’m a happy atheist, don’t really care about all this religious stuff. I don’t mind that others believe, just as long as they don’t impose their views on others.I believe there is an all powerful being made of spaghetti and meatballs floating somewhere out there. May you all be touched by his noodley appendage!
R’amen
