Even if god exists religion can't possibly be the way to god

So I thought about this in the shower amd it makes sense to me, like praying and stuff never worked for most people I know, so a direkt link to god gotta be unlikely. That made me conclude that religion is probably fake, no matter if there's a god or not. Also people speaking to the same god being given a different set of rules sounds stupid, so at least most religions must be fake.

WeirdGoesPro ,
@WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

I’m 14 and this is deep.

Today ,

-like praying and stuff never worked for most people I know,-

Like they wished for a car or a pony and didn't get it?

bi_tux OP ,
@bi_tux@lemmy.world avatar

no, I mean like they tried to talk to god

Today ,

How did they know it didn't work? I don't really know how those things work, but I'm pretty sure that one is mostly internal.

Zahille7 ,

Goddamn, OP. I hope you were ready for walls of text splaying out people's entire opinions about everything on this topic.

Cybermonk_Taiji , (edited )

What other concepts does anyone believe so much they will kill and die for, that has not one single shred of observational evidence to support?

Any fucking thing at all?

BluJay320 ,
@BluJay320@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Race

OpenStars ,
@OpenStars@discuss.online avatar

People universally agree that Jesus Himself is a great dude - despite (because!) He told the over-religious Karens to fuck off, and just plainly do such things as take care of widows & orphans. So wherever you may end up, maybe start with that and see where it takes you?

frog_brawler ,

Using the term “universally agree,” on the fast and loose I see.

OpenStars ,
@OpenStars@discuss.online avatar

Obviously... sort of. Fascists hate him for bucking authority, neoliberals too bc how dare He prioritize anything at all over profit - like why take care of the poor when you can (literally) fuck them over, even use them as slaves?

Though I would think the word that they would take issue with would be the "great" part rather than the "universally agree" - they can all see who He is, bc His actions made that plain leaving no room for doubt (like He could be a loon but... whatever the reasoning, at least He lived authentically according to whatever principles He expoused) - they just don't agree that those properties are themselves what they want to see put into the world.

frog_brawler ,

There’s no evidence that Jesus ever existed at all; so for a lot of people, they’re indifferent.

Eheran , (edited )

First sentence in wiki: Jesus

Virtually all modern scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed historically.

Obviously you know better that there is no evidence, which I find amusing, given that you could not be further from reality.

article whether Jesus actually existed as a person

Seems like people downvoting me also do not like that fact that the person existed.

Uruanna ,

Notice how it says people agree but doesn't say there is any evidence.

The best we have is letters from a whole generation after his death, and it's only people saying "these guys say there was a dude a while back" , second hand comments, no living first hand account.

Eheran ,

Scholars agree on stuff there is no evidence for...? What? Did you even read the article?

OpenStars ,
@OpenStars@discuss.online avatar

That's literally what first-hand evidence is: an account from someone who met someone irl - e.g. John, Peter, Luke, Mark, etc.

Also in that historical context, the fact that there are letters at all is somewhat astounding, if Jesus were just some rando. At the very least they seemed to think that He was important.

The letters were not written until later though - b/c why would they be, if you had John + Peter + Luke + Mark all in one room, why would they be writing texts / emails / chats at one another? They still wrote it within their lifetime though, so "a whole generation after his death" is disingenuous - time passed, but those people who met Jesus were still alive, and wrote the letters, thus making them first-hand recordings of fact.

Not that I'm advocating that you become a Christian over all of this, just wanting to get that part of the story straight:-).

Uruanna ,

None of those are first hand. The gospels were written by other people more than a generation (60 years) after, not by people who were alive in that period of 30 years.

OpenStars ,
@OpenStars@discuss.online avatar

The gospels were dictated to someone who physically wrote the words down...

Oh wait, no I see the problem. Yeah at some point early scholars did get the timeline wrong and thought that the gospels were written 60 rather than 30 years after the death of Jesus. But there are TONS of holes in that theory - e.g. why not mention that the Jewish Temple had been torn down, which is like the largest event for them for thousands of years? I thought that this has been more or less universally debunked, but I could not swear to that especially for it to have permeated throughout the entire world.

Wikipedia both backs me up on that one point:

Most scholars agree that they are the work of unknown Christians[49] and were composed c.65-110 AD.[50]

While in the very next sentence also debunking my claim that they are first-hand accounts:

The majority of New Testament scholars also agree that the Gospels do not contain eyewitness accounts;[51] but that they present the theologies of their communities rather than the testimony of eyewitnesses.[52][53]

So if we use that article as a surrogate for "world-wide consensus", then it sounds like we both need to read up on our knowledge of this theology:-D. I for one am fascinated - does this mean that those "first-hand accounts" were merely written in the style of a first-hand account, but also including someone in the community who really was there (they would have been about 60 years old at that point?) - at which point, what is the difference, really? - or... maybe the people were older & feeble (in their 70s?), so merely the result of prior conversations with them over the course of a few years?

frog_brawler ,

The majority of New Testament scholars people with an inherent pro-christian bias, that have dedicated their professional and academic lives to their religion, also agree that the Gospels do not contain eyewitness accounts;[51] but that they present the theologies of their communities rather than the testimony of eyewitnesses.[52][53]...

Uruanna , (edited )

The "gospels were dictated by first hand witness" idea is a massive problem because that's not first hand account at all, that's actually someone claiming that someone else told him "dude I swear I saw it happen in front of me as clear as I see you" (or worse, the guy who wrote it claims that he found this text written by someone else 50 years ago) and we somehow chose to believe both the guy who wrote it and the supposed guy who told him that. Having something dictated is second hand account, not first hand, because that's just changing the pronoun of the person speaking. And there were extensive analysis of the text itself to try to figure out what kind of person would have phrased this or that in certain ways, whether it says "I saw that myself" or "my uncle who works at Nintendo told me he saw it himself", and that analysis, done for the entirety of the Bible, has gone pretty far, including the gospels. As far as I know about it, the biggest point about that analysis is which gospel was written first and which ones copied from which ones or added their own thing, rahter than 4 different people recounting their memories of the same events.

I don't know about the timeline of the temple; I've heard it brought up before, but I haven't heard that it was considered conclusive evidence for dating the text, so I don't know more than that and how it holds to the text analysis.

frog_brawler ,

Wiki Jesus, nice!

https://theobjectivestandard.com/2021/04/creating-christ-how-roman-emperors-invented-christianity-by-james-valliant-and-warren-fahy/

tobogganablaze , (edited )

Wikipedia is a much better source then this Ayn Rand simp site.

frog_brawler , (edited )

That’s a new creative way to “tell me you didn’t read the link; without telling me you didn’t read the link.”

EDIT: Check the sources on these wikipedia articles... Every citation is from an author that has already made up their mind, and is writing for a similar audience. There's an obvious pro-religion bias within every citation.

baggachipz , (edited )

And nowadays, over-religious Karens (and political despots and greedy evangelicals) use Jesus to oppress and exploit others. If this Jesus had the power the fables claim, he would put an end to all of that shit, stat. Looks around and gestures

OpenStars ,
@OpenStars@discuss.online avatar

First part:

img

Second part:

img

But I am not prepared to take the latter on faith alone - b/c free will is a bitch. Allowing a Lord of the Flies type of situation means... well... this.

Do you ever wonder how life must have been in The Matrix? Like, I've heard that the Bay of Pigs scenario brought us within like a hairsbreadth of WWIII, and it was only narrowly averted by what amounts to a probabilistic confluence of factors, but if you modeled it multiple times you could end up with VERY different outcomes - like after the fighting settled USA on top, or Russia on top, but the vastly most likely ofc would be nobody on top but everyone (1st-world participants anyway) obliterated, etc. So would The Architect there allow those permutations, or did he guide them towards a desired end? And if so, why bother, if he got what he wanted regardless? Or perhaps he didn't really care one way or the other, so long as sufficient people were alive to steal their energy from, but b/c of the latter he would work to prevent such a worst-case (to the machines' purposes) outcome. But if the Russians were capable of threading that needle, and taking over the USA without obliterating too many human lives, then was there an incarnation of The Matrix where Neo (or you know, The One by whatever name) was born to a Russian province, a conquered USA? Fun thoughts...

But anyway, regardless of all the religiosity add-ons (people that try to use Him for their own selfish agendas), Jesus was just a most excellent dude!

img

As for whether He is (a) "God" or not, people ofc disagree. I think yes, but I also join with others of many faiths who regardless or even outright because of their religion - including atheism - try to be the change that we want to see in the world, without getting hung up on our philosophical differences. Ironically the main camp in opposition to that are fascists, which at this point heavily features evangelical so-called "Christians" in the USA (who are also so-called "Patriots", so-called Pro-"Life", so-called "defenders" rather than destroyers of democracy - they really aren't big on telling the Truth, even/especially to themselves!).

This is the part where shit gets tough, b/c words no longer have meaning, if we (the tolerant) allow (tolerate) people (esp. the intolerant) to call themselves whatever they wish. Ofc nobody for one second would confuse Trump himself as an authentic "Christian" - they just use him for their own ends - but what then is a "Christian"? Is it someone who, like Jesus, is most excellent to one another by showing LOVE (kindness, patience, gentleness, compassion, etc.), or is it rather someone who Karens people, literally killing them... or worse (diddling kids, slavery, wage theft that is... is that even any different?!?)

img

Ironically, Jesus is only ever recorded to HATE one group of people: the intolerant religious butthurt crowd who say one thing, do the precise opposite, but expect you to go along b/c if you don't they will literally, flat-out, straight-up kill you. As they did Him.

So yeah, I would hope that even atheists could join in on hating the "Christian"/"Patriot"/Pro-"Life" crowd, as Jesus Himself demonstrated that He did. To them I would say the message: don't let the fascists confuse you with "words" - just b/c they call themselves something doesn't make it true. What then is a "Christian"? Who da fuq even cares at this point, it may be a lost cause, but The (OG) Dude I thought was pretty cool:-), again imho.

baggachipz ,

I wish all (or even most) Christians were like you. We’d all get along better in the world. I can’t reconcile the state of the world with an all-powerful deity, but we are each free to see the world as we choose.

OpenStars , (edited )
@OpenStars@discuss.online avatar

And I wish most non-Christians were more like you. Regardless of our "beliefs", there is work to be done, to make life better for people - not "kill them all and let God sort them out later", but right here, right now. I have found it exceedingly easy to get along with most people irl - it's called "not being a dick".

Tbf, "religion" itself is an extremely debilitating mental illness (inducing cognitive dissonance) when wielded by authoritarians for ulterior motives, obviously including diddling kids but even more so (at a higher scale I mean), allowing those in power to parasitize off of the backs of those who actually work in society. Ironically that can be cured by reading more of (rather than less) the texts lifted up as "holy scripture"... which is why access to that is curated and heavily obscured as people rush forward to tell you "what it really means is..." (e.g. give me money, and more importantly OBEY).

img

In short, greedy people have made society the way that it is now, for their own purposes, and therefore there is heavy resistance to trying to do things any other way - people are literally killed who try to buck the system (e.g. Jesus to name just one:-D). Also, religious authoritarianism is only one (particularly effective) way to implement that greed, but it is not the only way e.g. dictatorships.

As far as an all-powerful diety, I have no problem envisioning that (once you get past the fact that most religous "authorities" lie - for their own agenda - e.g. is God "good" like Santa Claus, peeping on little children to make sure they eat their veggies and get in all of their nappies; or is He rather good like Azathoth/Cthulhu, in allowing us to do our own thing even if that literally ends our planet and all life on it, whoopsie daisy!:-P), but ofc it makes just as much sense to envision the opposite too:-). We don't need to be dicks about whether chocolate or vanilla is better - so long as we agree that murder is bad etc.

IzzyScissor ,

People agreed with this so much that at the time, they murdered him for it.

OpenStars ,
@OpenStars@discuss.online avatar

Meh, for them it was a Tuesday - it's just how authoritarians are - and rightly so even, if you believe that way (it is internally consistent I'm saying). Overzealous mods banning people and murder are differences in degree, not of kind.

But, if you believe the lore, Jesus being "God" meant that He actually had the upper hand and while he could have stopped it, chose not to, instead allowing them their freedoms even at that cost and significance, to both Himself personally and others in the community and even around the world. It's a fascinating tale! One that I believe but regardless even, there's depth there.

Or you could go the other route and presume that Jesus was not any kind of "god"... in which case he lacked the upper hand - or did he? He could have altered his behavior to fit in with the authorities of his day, but chose not to. Like Robin Hood, he dared to defy those conventions that he considered wrong, and died as a result, knowing that would happen.

So either way, he was genuine. How could you look at the likes of Mr. Rogers or Jesus and think "he's a bad dude"? Except ofc if you want to keep people in slavery and ignorance, i.e. the religious leaders. Jesus was a revolutionary, a bad dude as far as they were concerned, but a good one for anyone who enjoys the idea of someone being authentically whoever they want/need to be, or for an authoritian who believes in God, there's really a quite narrow range in-between occupied afaict solely by piss-baby fascists who believe neither, and in my comment I was not caring about those who preach intolerance.:-P But obviously you are right, they do exist.

Whatever someone's "religion", I say:

dare to be different

Coreidan ,

It’s a lot easier to control and oppress people when they have the fear of god in them.

Mr_Fish ,

Preface: I'm a Christian, so this will be about the Christian view on things. I can't really speak for other religions, since I don't really know enough about them.

On prayer: asking for miracles is not actually the main point of prayer, the main parts are listening to God, and God listening to you. Imagine a perfect parent/child relationship. Sure, there will be the occasional "hey dad, I need some money to make this month's rent. Can you help please?" or similar conversation, but most of the time it will be the child learning from the wisdom of the parent, or the parent helping the child vent. If you want to see an example of what Christianity says is the sort of things to pray, look at the book of Psalms in the bible.

On other religions: yes, of course at least most religions are fake. A false religion could be started by someone who believes they heard from God but got it wrong, or someone who wants to be the head of a religion for their own gain. Many religions warn about false prophets, so this is hardly a surprising thing.

aniki , (edited )

I wish I could bury my head into the sand enough to believe this clap-trap bullshit. Why does God never answer the prayers of amputees?

jackiechan ,
@jackiechan@lemm.ee avatar

Really loved your analogy of a parent child relationship. And parents sometimes have to say no because they know in the long run it’ll be better for the kid.

Very sad to me to see all the people in this comment thread so confident that God doesn’t exist simply because he doesn’t answer every single person’s prayer with yes. Did we create the entire world from nothing? Did we create ourselves? Do we control the weather or keep the earth in its orbit? God is so much bigger than any of us can even imagine, and so much stronger and wiser too.

I’ve seen God work throughout my life by answering prayers, and yes this means he has said no, but he’s also said yes many times. Gone through and going through very hard things, but God uses hard things to bring us closer to him.

I guess in relation to the very negative comments about God, all we can do as believers is pray he’ll open their eyes one day. The love and comfort you feel from a relationship with him is unlike anything else.

frog_brawler ,

Can an atheist pray to god to ask for the enlightenment of his/her/its believers?

jackiechan ,
@jackiechan@lemm.ee avatar

An atheist can 100% pray to God! I’m slightly confused by the second part. Are you asking if an atheist can ask God to make his believers not believers anymore?

frog_brawler ,

That’s right.

jackiechan ,
@jackiechan@lemm.ee avatar

I mean yes, an atheist can definitely ask God for that. However, I believe in predestination, which means that God already knows who will trust in Christ for their salvation. So, God will not allow one of his children to slip away from him. Short answer, I don’t believe God would say yes to that prayer when it comes to his people.

frog_brawler ,

So god never answers the prayers of atheists… sounds pointless.

Predestination - sounds like you’re talking about god’s plan… why pray then? If it’s already in a plan, it’ll happen. If it’s not in the plan, it won’t.

If god doesn’t allow his children to slip away, how do you explain the actual verifiable existence of atheists and people that formerly had religion?

jackiechan ,
@jackiechan@lemm.ee avatar

Well of course God won’t answer a prayer that would negatively affect one of his true followers.

I believe in God’s plan for the world as well as free will. I agree it’s paradoxical, but I’m not God, so I have made peace with the fact I will never understand that. I trust the Lord and know he’s beyond my understanding as a finite, mortal human. God wants us to pray because he knows it is good for us. Think of a relationship, you have to stay in constant communication to stay close. I feel farthest from God when my prayer life has been slacking.

God’s children are his chosen people, aka his true believers. I believe that people who have fallen away from their faith and never come back never had a real relationship with him to begin with. But, I believe anyone who has fallen away can always come back to him before they pass away.

These are really good and valid questions, and I’m happy to answer them. Praying for your heart, friend

frog_brawler ,

Why would you worship a God that casts aside so many people and condemns them to hell? Sounds more like a Devil.

aniki ,

What a bunch of horseshit. Your God is a monster.

TheOakTree ,

Well of course God won’t answer a prayer that would negatively affect one of his true followers.

...I’m not God, so I have made peace with the fact I will never understand that.

Could you share what makes you so confident in the first quote, despite what you say in the second quote? How can you know God would not or has not answered any prayers that negatively affected a true follower, and how can one define whether God has negatively affected a true follower when one cannot intimately know God's true intentions?

Mr_Fish ,

Well you can, but that doesn't mean God will do it. You're asking a father, who loves his children, to remove their choice in the matter and force them away, despite him knowing it's better for them to stay.

frog_brawler ,

If God never answers the prayers of non-followers; he’s really not convincing anyone new that he exists.

whotookkarl ,
@whotookkarl@lemmy.world avatar

It's not that intercessory prayer needs to work 100% to be convincing, it just needs to beat random chance and it doesn't do that.

Natural processes can describe how those things came to exist without needing to appeal to supernatural claims or gods.

You've seen things you attribute to a god, but people in other religions attribute the same things to their god and so far I don't think anyone has shown empirical evidence for any gods, and I don't know about you but I use empirical evidence when changing my confidence on whether something or someone exists or doesn't.

Many people have a negative opinion on organized religion because we can see the negative effects believing things without sufficient evidence can have on individuals and communities.

frog_brawler ,

In most parent / child relationships, the child outlives the parent.

Mr_Fish ,

Why would that change anything? Regardless of who dies when, a good parent wants to bless their child, and a child wants to learn from a good parent.

bunkyprewster ,

Other religions are fake, but my religion....

NABDad ,

I'm just going to drop this here:

https://whywontgodhealamputees.com/

Donut ,

Interesting website. They have a page about prayer too https://whywontgodhealamputees.com/superstition.htm

Wiz ,

I agree with this and do not dispute it.

However, I think there is value to the human mind in performing ritual, meditation, and positive thinking. We can think ourselves into feeling better. The placebo effect works, even in you know about the placebo effect.

Jesus didn't know about these things 2000 years ago, but the stories about him make him seem like a worldly rabbi. He might have seen evidence of people getting better from disease through the power of prayer. (Never amputees, though.) The human body can fight disease; it can never regrow a limb.

The human mind also tends to remember positive experiences, and tends to ignore things that don't seem to work. This is how fake psychics and cold readers work. You send out a bunch of guesses, and get a couple of "hits", and the client remembers the hits. We all remember the hits. It's harder to remember the misses. (Side note: I experienced a palm reader at a party and experienced this first-hand, and despite knowing their techniques, I still felt it a little.)

All this makes me believe that our brains are generally susceptible to a construct like religion. And that there could be some value in meditation, ritual, and positive thinking. However religion is frequently a grift and makes people do bad things - it doesn't have to be, though. Being quietly spiritual is ok, which is what Jesus taught.

kryptonianCodeMonkey , (edited )

The idea of "the power of prayer" is stupid on the face of it. First, you're presupposing a omnipotent diety that can and does directly effect the universe, changing the outcomes of events based on it's desires, whims, plans, whatever. And you think THAT diety is taking requests? When "God answered my prayers", you think that had you not requested it, it wouldn't have happened. You think that God answers to your puny human concerns? That shit is arrogant as hell.

But furthermore, it also flies in the face of two other common beliefs about God, at least in Christianity. "God gave man Free Will" and "It's All Part of God's Plan(tm)" (don't get me started on how those are already two mutually exclusive ideas and hundreds of millions of believers just ignore that cognitive dissonance). Many of the things that one prays for, like "getting that job", "winning that award", "ending the war", etc. directly involve altering the decisions and actions of others, which means that God would be stripping them of free will. Also, the most classic call to prayer is to heal the sick, or preserve one's life. But surely if God has a plan for everyone's life, at minimum everyone's birth and death must also be planned. How can he answer your prayer to save your life if it's his plan for you to die, yet still have an plan he's always been following? The irony is that people like to pull the "all part of God's plan" platitude particularly when someone has died before their time.

The one that really makes me annoyed, or even angry, is when something terrible happens, people are hurt or killed, and someone who was supposed to or had almost been there says something like "God was watching out for me". It's so self-centered and arrogant to attribute your simple dumb luck to God's will in that situation. Because, not only does it assume you are God's most special little guy that he's constantly paying attention to and protecting, but also that God willfully condemned those others who did fall to this terrible fate that he supposedly saved you from. It's all arrogance. I can't stand it.

criitz ,

Like Carlin said

Well suppose the thing you want isn't in God's Divine Plan? What do you want Him to do? Change His plan? Just for you? Doesn't it seem a little arrogant? It's a Divine Plan. What's the use of being God if every run-down shmuck with a two-dollar prayerbook can come along and fuck up Your Plan? 

kryptonianCodeMonkey ,

Exactly. RIP, George.

davidgro ,

A similar thought I had ages ago is that if God exists, they would either want us to know about them, or not. It doesn't seem reasonable for there to be this weird in-between where it's possible to believe they don't exist if they want to be known... Or for it to be possible to believe they exist if they don't want to be known!

If I were a god that wanted privacy, I'd simply wipe the concept of god from all mortal minds and prevent it from reappearing.

If god did want worship it would be even easier to get it than just making everyone know about them (certainly an option!) - just manifest physically much more often and perform true miracles, none of this silly water into wine (or walkway) business, I mean like Actually moving mountains or something.

I believe the only case that is consistent with some people believing in a god and some not (or different gods) is there just aren't any, or at least they don't care what we think at all, which is similar to not existing and it's unreasonable that we'd 'guess right' about them without their help.

Drummyralf ,

I know this is just a showerthought, but what do you define as religion? The term religion doesn't necessarily need a God.

Or do you mean the 3 mainstream monotheistic religions? (Christianity, Judaism, Islam)

Ethalis ,

Unless, hear me out, god is a golden retriever and needs to be reminded how much of a good boy He is

shneancy ,

this golden retriever has committed many atrocities in the old testament

Iapar ,

"Bad god!"
hits god with a rolled up newspaper

SturgiesYrFase ,
@SturgiesYrFase@lemmy.ml avatar

Clearly he wasn't trained properly as a pup

RamblingPanda ,

It was a Chihuahua back then

programmer_belch ,
@programmer_belch@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Sadly the doggo walked all over the holy keyboard and wrote the old testament

j4k3 , (edited )
@j4k3@lemmy.world avatar

I find the argument for an afterlife humorous. Spend any time with a pet sleeping beside you and watch them dream. We are no different at the core. There is an abstract 'conscious' involved with dreaming. Do they have a god in their dreams. Is ours better than theirs, who is to say. I attribute such a thought to absurd human hubris.

Modern humans have existed in some form for only 100k years, while 99.9% of all life that has ever existed is extinct. What kind of omnipotent god is that shitty at dust, ribs, and apples that they failed at everything.

The real clincher for me was simply realizing the fundamental nature of stars and the processes that fuel them. That lead me to ask, if god really exists, why didn't they note a single scientific anomaly that is undisputable. Absolutely everything found in any religious writing is fundamentally human. There are clever observations, but every single thing mentioned could be observed or fabricated. There is no higher evidence whatsoever, no ontological knowledge of the universe.

The only people that speak in riddles are con artists. Religion is the highest level of achievement in the skills of con artistry. The best criminals are those you've never heard of, but the pinnacle of achievement is those that do it in plain sight.

shneancy ,

I think all religions were either started, or greatly fuelled, by psychedelics. For example: the description of the apocalypse in the Bible sounds like a bad trip, animals morphing into each other and all. Ah yes, a "vision of the end"- did it happen right after eating some funny mushrooms or perhaps some nice cactus eh?

also i think jesus had early onset shizoaffective disorder like his mum before him but that's by far my edgiest take

j4k3 ,
@j4k3@lemmy.world avatar

I don't think Jesus ever existed. Show me 12 guys that experience something absolutely world changing, and none of them write anything about it for decades and then tell me they were factually motivated. This is the premise we're dealing with.

We were all stupid gullible little kids learning this stuff. Most people are only doing it for the social network, but don't understand it as such. The bias of disregarding all the opposing evidence causes cognitive dissonance and most of the bad behaviors of present society.

Pragmatically, a group of nobodies managed to survive Rome destroying their civilization because of stupidity and rebellious nationalism. This diaspora was a refugee crisis everywhere else. No one wanted them and their religion was a joke. They had no where to go, owned nothing, and were not even citizens of the lands they inhabited. Most were likely slaves. After a few decades, some started rebuilding a life. It was the perfect opportunity to fabricate some new religious thing if you were a displaced nobody. That diaspora wanted meaningful purpose to make them feel nostalgic over their religious past. The gospels are the tales of some nobodies that didn't have to work because they sold themselves as the product that filled the niche needs of the more successful among that diaspora. They got put up in people's houses and fed well. They likely did so until they got caught by some Romans while trying to grow their religious support base, or because they were overstaying their welcome everywhere they went. Like Paul was probably put on a boat knowing that he wouldn't be able to return, probably a boat likely to sink, and one sent into a storm on purpose.

It is easy to say all the things that "thousands witnessed" when all those thousands are dead or displaced and unable to dispute anything you've said. None of them wrote down any part of their accounts for several decades. What kinds of reliable stories can you tell after several decades. To top that off, there are elementary school level copying errors that are blatant in nature. They are exactly what I expect from a con. You don't have a case where there are 12 unique accounts or 11 if you want to be pedantic. I can easily picture myself in this circumstance, and I can easily see myself performing this exact con if my alternative was starving to death. There is nothing remarkable about the story. At the time, there were very few people that supported or believed it. A couple hundred years later it picked up steam. That too is obvious. Polytheism is like an anarchic political party. Any fool can conjure a political movement that has potential to overthrow governments using an obscure god of convince and a plausible story that feeds what others want to hear.. Look at Julius Caesar. He largely used his religious role as pontifex maximus to gain power as a populist. Monotheism is far easier to control. The true purpose of religion is quite simple. It is a self sustaining way to suppress the peasantry. This is the common thread throughout all of history. Religion functions as a morality police system with a corpus that is just long enough to occupy the minds of the average person. It is a source of tribal isolation. It is not a meritocracy, so it will not evolve much with time. Conservative sadism and ignorance are an effective way to oppresses or suppress progressive societal elements that might question the corruption and ineptitude of the upper class. Religion creates little gullible pockets of people that are easily manipulated by the upper class and authority.

So no, there is no evidence for anything more than opportunistic cons and pragmatic government if you really strip away all the layers and look at it objectively. It is a system of feelings over logic because feelings disregard facts and make up their own like imaginary friends no one has ever talked to, or a magical future if you just go about your insignificant life while telling you it will be better next time. Or shit, how about we really rub it in: in the next life "the meek will inherit the earth." That's right, act as low as you can little peasants, and be happy about it. It will be better next time. Your imaginary friend said so about this place no one has ever seen or been to. The majority of humans believe shit like this. If you know this stuff well, you know I did too.

You can't fix stupid in anyone else; only within yourself. Fighting or arguing with anyone that places emotionally derived belief over fundamental logic is a pointless and destructive waste of time. Sharing reasonable logic with those on the edge can be helpful, but like, I came up with all of this on my own completely independent of external sources.

shneancy ,

wonderfully written! yes I absolutely agree with that perspective. Additionally having a mascot in the form of a guy who wholeheartedly believes he's the son of the God (and is also god in a way because we can't get polytheists about it of course) is a great marketing move. People always have a hard time trusting and identifying with some ethereal entity up in the sky, there's a reason why all gods have human (or animal) faces, if Jesus was fully made up or inspired by a mentally ill guy who was completely delusional but still kind that's another thing lol

Wiz ,

Show me 12 guys that experience something absolutely world changing, and none of them write anything about it for decades and then tell me they were factually motivated

Literacy and writing were uncommon then, though.

frog_brawler ,

https://theobjectivestandard.com/2021/04/creating-christ-how-roman-emperors-invented-christianity-by-james-valliant-and-warren-fahy/

TWeaK , (edited )

My go to phrase for Mormons is something like "I believe that, if there is a God, he wouldn't be so vain as to require constant worship, and instead he would just want us to 'live in his image'".

It's fun watching the cogs turn in their heads when you say something like that.

rockerface ,
@rockerface@lemm.ee avatar

Pretty sure there are lines in the Bible that directly state it is enough to pray in your heart, without any outward symbols or churches or the like. So yeah, that's not only a witty comeback, but also a good point from the consistency view

ComfortableRaspberry ,

I remember a song from my childhood which was sung in the church regularly. And a part of it says something along the lines of "where two or three come together in my name, I'll be among them". Which seems to be a "quote" from Jesus. It's not only written in their books but also in their songs but the whole "we need your money to build bigger churches otherwise God can't hear us" scheme is still going..

Speculater ,
@Speculater@lemmy.world avatar

Little know trivia in the Book of Mormon, you get a chance to convert after death if you haven't already!

TWeaK ,

Book of Mormon

Dum dum dum dum dummm

Kolanaki , (edited )
@Kolanaki@yiffit.net avatar

IMO, if God exists it's nothing at all like what any religion says. If a god exists at all, there are only two possibilities I think it could be:

  • Non-intelligent happenstance. The universe itself. The laws of physics. Whatever; it's a concept and not a literal entity.

  • An intelligence that created humans and/or other life here or there, but is not really "God" in anyway described by man. They're just highly intelligent beings that bioengineered us long, long ago.

The existence of an afterlife though is more complicated. There's two possibilities, at least IMO:

  • There is nothing after death. No soul that lives on or moves on. There is just the meat in our skull hallucinating things based on external stimuli from reality to make sense of it all until the electrical signals stop and we cease to exist.

  • There is something beyond current understanding where consciousness comes from and it can exist in some form after death. Whatever it experiences after death would be something of an afterlife; though it is probably nothing at all like what any religion describes. It may not even be possible to describe it at all because it's just super weird.

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