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Why I refuse to believe


crasx

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Moved he so as to respect the other forums, and to voice my opinion as well as work out my own consciousness. I have been atheist for a good 10 years now and have had a lot of time to think about the oppressive world religion seems to create. I have come to the conclusion that while I can respect another's "need" to believe in a god I do not respect religious institutions and core teachings.

 

Consider this:

 

Here is what Christians believe. God is perfect and God is Just. To enter Heaven God requires us to also be perfect, because only through perfection can we be in His presence. In the years before Christ, God allowed for animal sacrifice for the atonement (payment) for sins (anything that violates the perfect nature of God). This made for ritualistic lifestyles that were difficult if not even impossible to live up to. God, wishing that no one would die and have to be separated from Him for all eternity, sent His son Jesus to die on the cross and later through the power of the Spirit of God was raised from the dead. Jesus then took His place in Heaven. Now the death chosen was the most horrific at the time and was stretched out and awful. He chose to do it anyway, even though He was without sin Himself. He did it to stand in our place for the punishment we were deserving of because we, of our own free will, did stuff that was sin (again anything done in selfishness that separates us from perfection). See someone had to pay the bill, so to speak, and Jesus through God's plan and the power of God's Spirit did just that. God did it this way because His nature demands justice and justice says that the act of any sin is punishable by death.

 

To get to Heaven you do not need to live completely sin free, because this is just beyond the grasp of our nature, but we must accept that Jesus paid our way. Only through Jesus can we get to the Father. Therefore yes I think that any person who does not accept that gift of God does in fact miss the boat to Heaven. Christianity does not discriminate against people based on race, social stature, national origin or past actions. It is truly the most accepting of all religions, because it allows for a fresh start on day one that you accept God's gift of Salvation. Nothing we do, no matter how good, balances the scales of justice. But the good news is that God doesn't require us to balance the scales but provided a way for it to be done for you.

 

Tangible proof, me. I was a bad guy at one point in my life, heading to darker places and God spoke to my heart. I gave my life to Him and turned myself into a punching bag for you. I try to live in a way that honors God, but I mess up. I assume that you will now set out to tear down the things I have said. You will say things like Why would a loving God send people to Hell. The answer is that He doesn't, we choose that path by rejecting the one He set out for us. I may not have all the answers to your criticisms, complaints and such but I know the truth because I live in its light. Truth sounds like foolishness until you know it. And foolishness can sound very much like truth if you do not.

 

You know what this says to me? God favors the rich. Specifically: "In the years before Christ, God allowed for animal sacrifice for the atonement (payment) for sins (anything that violates the perfect nature of God)". In the old days livestock was a form of wealth, it was used as a means of survival and income. If someone was poor and did not have livestock were they SOL when it comes to heaven? "See someone had to pay the bill" this type of thinking scares me. We need to "pay" for not being perfect by burning for all eternity? Being burnt is super painful! There's no way anyone could handle it for more than a few minutes, i mean those people who self immolate must be pretty freakin dedicated to their cause. Why does wealth matter in religion?

 

If "God is perfect and God is Just" and " God did it this way because His nature demands justice and justice says that the act of any sin is punishable by death." i have absolutely no problem giving him the finger if there is indeed an afterlife. There is no compassion or love in this at all and I want nothing to do with someone who does not love others.

 

Now thinking about mental health, the quote "I gave my life to Him and turned myself into a punching bag for you. I try to live in a way that honors God, but I mess up." this also scares me to no end. I have many friends on the autism spectrum and a few of them have no understanding of social etiquette, one of them walks around our cafeteria in his boxers and once took a dump in the shower. If we told someone like him to be a warrior of god, and he took the bible literally I honestly believe he would kill a lot of people.

 

So what am I saying with this? I don't know I just wanted to vent in a respectful way place. I've sat on the outside for a long time watching the way people act and think in the name of god, and i'm beginning to believe that atheism offers more morality because there's nobody to blame your faults on when you mess up.

 

edit: I a word

Edited by crasx
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also I want to clarify this is not why I do not believe, it is my logic for even if I am wrong about (the catholic/cristian w/e) god I do not care.

 

also I have never read the bible so I encourage you to correct my understanding of "god's word"

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The first question I would like to introduce is "what does it mean to be Christian?" You may talk to hundreds of preachers, and I'm willing to bet that you will not receive the same answers for everything. Christians and Catholics, along with many (if not all) religions are polarized. What I mean by "polarized" is that they all have inconsistent beliefs. There's been studies about this polarization. I read one in particular but can't bring it up at the moment because I forgot where I got the credible source (it's probably with my college database). You and I both know that if you followed the Bible religiously, you'd be doing some pretty messed up things. A.J Jacobs wrote a book about trying to live through the Bible, and he actually did a little presentation on Ted.com if you're interested in that. Although I would say that Atheists are more likely to blame themselves rather than blame someone else, you can't really dismiss the possibility that there are Christians who believe in "free will." I know many Christians who believe that God is simply letting the world unfold and people make their own decisions in life. Of course, there's going to be some Christians who believe that everything said and done is for religious reasons. Of course Atheism is going to offer more morality than religion because with Atheism...you either blame yourself, or you blame other people. It's a 50/50 shot. For religion, you can either blame yourself, blame others, or blame God. You have more options to choose from, so there's a 66-67% opportunity to blame something other than yourself. That's just common sense.

 

Everything is open to interpretation. You may certainly say that the only way to reach Heaven is being rich, but others may say that you only need to do good deeds. Not all good deeds need to be done financially. But consider this...if a rich man/woman donates money to charity, does that make him/her a good person? To the people receiving the charity, surely. But to God? If God is all-knowing, I'm sure he'll know which people donate purely because they are a good person rather than trying to impress their God. If you want to help your neighbor move, you help your neighbor move out of the kindness of your heart. But if you help your neighbor move because you're trying to find a way to have sex with her, then I wouldn't consider that a good deed if I were God. I believe getting to Heaven is much more complex than simply because you have the money to do a bunch of poop. As they say, it's not always what you say...but how you say it, or what you do, but how you do it. There are plenty of people who are poor but are the nicest people you will ever meet in your life, so this opinion of yours that you think "God favors the rich" can be true, but it really depends on what they do with the riches...I think.

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Yea I definitely realize people believe different things and I am much more open to a god that represents what I represent (Love, equality, compassion). I just don't see that representation of god very often outside of my personal connections (which I deliberately made because of their understanding).

 

With the fuss about god in schools one thing comes to mind which is the flying spaghetti monster. FSM is a religion claimed by most atheists to highlight why god cannot be in schools- because there are many different religions and you cannot pick and choose which ones to teach. So now my thought is that if there are so many different types of gods, and different profits, different rules.. how does one choose between them? And when you get people like westboro baptist church who use god's word to promote hatred how are we suppose to tell them they are wrong?

 

this is all just a messed up system I do not understand at all, but I think I am talking about something different anyway

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Yea I definitely realize people believe different things and I am much more open to a god that represents what I represent (Love, equality, compassion). I just don't see that representation of god very often outside of my personal connections (which I deliberately made because of their understanding).

 

With the fuss about god in schools one thing comes to mind which is the flying spaghetti monster. FSM is a religion claimed by most atheists to highlight why god cannot be in schools- because there are many different religions and you cannot pick and choose which ones to teach. So now my thought is that if there are so many different types of gods, and different profits, different rules.. how does one choose between them? And when you get people like westboro baptist church who use god's word to promote hatred how are we suppose to tell them they are wrong?

 

this is all just a messed up system I do not understand at all, but I think I am talking about something different anyway

 

Like previously mentioned, every church/preacher/whatever are probably going to believe different things. One Christian church may call themselves Christians, while other Christian churches might say "they aren't Christian!" There are a lot of things in Christianity that are open to interpretation, and there's a lot of things that religious people kind of...set aside and don't worry about too much because we don't like to feel caged. These days, we're more likely to do what we feel is the right thing to do, the moral thing to do, rather than worry about what and how we're sinning. I sin on a daily basis, but my intention isn't to go against God, my intention is to live and appreciate the beauty of life even if it was created through a series of chain reactions or a supernatural being. I'm an Agnostic Theist. I'm not concerned about how the Earth was created because it's something that I will never know in my lifetime. I believe that there is a God, and everything else is open to interpretation. I wasn't always a Agnostic Theist, and it took a while from me to transition from Christianity to such, but we all choose a religion based on what we find to be the most important beliefs of that religion. Of course a religion can't always have everything that we believe unless we make up our own religion, but for the most part...people choose based on how close that religion is to our viewpoints, or the viewpoints that we find most critical in a religion. Some don't even classify themselves as a religion, which is perfectly fine as well. But that's just from my own observation and with my personal experience. That's part of growing up...you learn a lot about yourself, you change opinions all the time, and we just like to understand things. The more we know, the more we're able to get a better understanding of ourselves, and that includes what we consider to be a true religion or a true belief.

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Not to be a voice of descent but the offerings were different according to income elvels. If you were a wealthy person and could afford it, you might sacrifice a Ram or even an ox. A sheep was considered the better of the sacrifices, but like you said not all could afford to purchase a lamb for the sacrifice. It was thus laid out in Moseic law that substitutes as low as a pidgin. Or if agriculture was your trade you might bring in your fruits or vegies to trade for a dove or some other acceptable offering. The poor were not left out in the cold, nor were non-jews as they had a specific area for worship of those who were gentiles (non-jews). God has always made a way, and in actuality christ said that He was here to preach the good news to the poor. He hung out with the poor and the lower classes of society almost exclusively, offering hope to those who would listen.

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  • 2 weeks later...

God doesn't care who's rich and who's poor. He only cares about the way you act and treat others in your life. You can do some terrible things in you're life, but if you truly seek forgiveness there isn't much he isn't willing to forgive you for. He also doesn't make people do anything. People who do terrible things chose that all on their own, whether they claim it in the name of God or not. He gave people free will. Included in that free will is the choice to believe in Him or not. I believe whether you want to believe, want to go to church every week, or not do any of that, as long as you live your life trying to do the best things for you and others, He sees it. And if there is a Heaven or an afterlife of any kind, then chances are you'll get rewarded for the way you chose to live.

 

Believe or don't believe, either way make sure you live so that in case there is some higher power than yourself, you aren't screwed in the end. I was raised Catholic, I still believe there is a God, but I'm not going to go ahead and tell every other religion in the world that they're wrong. Including atheists. Maybe you've got it right, but until we're all dead, that stands yet to be determined.

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  • 6 months later...

i agree with both sides actually. im split 50/50. scientifically i say no and believe in the evolutionary stages and the overall power of the universe so there i'd say i believe in the universe. now religiously id would believe until scientifically proven wrong.

 

i've wanted to share that for sometime and now im happy.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm not sure "god" would agree that you should believe in it because you want to hedge your bets. I'm sure that's a sin unto itself and if that's the only reason why someone believes I'm sure they'd be damned with the rest of them.

 

Secondly it's only your opinion that anyone can get into heaven if they're good. There's certainly no scripture that says "don't worry about following the rest of this book as long as you're nice to people." That's the insertion of your own beliefs into god's opinion. But ask any religious person and they all have a different opinion of what god thinks, because in the end that's all he is: everyone's opinion. Notice how god always agrees with those who speak for him.

 

Heck, I'll believe in god if there's evidence for it. But there isn't, so until that day...

Edited by Animal
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Everything we "know" about god is written by humans. Many stories in Christianity are just newer versions of much older stories, written about other gods, by other humans that current religious people deem wrong. Human involvement makes the entire thing imperfect, and quite frankly, corruptible. Mainstream religion has been used for thousands of years, effectively i might add, as behavioral control of large masses of people. The Bible is an interesting book, there is alot of historical knowledge in there, as well as stories that carry a good, sound moral lesson, but in no way the word of any god....in my opinion, which is very much biased towards logic and interest in human behavior...especially ancient humans, who were very superstitious and ignorant to many of the simple sciences of the world that are taught in grade school today. This paranoia and lack of scientific knowledge would have had ancient humans thinking that just about everything was controlled by powerful gods. These ancient times were when all of these wonderful stories were written, and I do appreciate just how wonderful they are, just from a different point of view. I also respect anyones right to believe what they will, most of the moral lessons that religious people live by are good ones, so what's the harm? Whatever helps people find peace in the world. It does however get scary when the ultra religious try to govern by it...we've seen that play out in history all too many times.

 

I do believe in something more than we can understand, does that mean that I could believe in an all powerful being? Who knows....there are probably many things alien to us that could seem that way, but in either case, I do know that there is a basic energy that powers life, and we would be foolish to think that nothing at all happens to it, but I feel pretty confident that it will be nothing like anything written in any human religious writings.

 

The beauty of it is, we will all find out someday :)

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  • 3 weeks later...

I believe in keeping up with the times... Other than historical reasons or to relish the "good ole days", holding onto to the past is futile. You aren't riding horses, are you? You traded that house phone for a cell phone. Goodbye 8 tracks, hello Ipods. You decided to swap out library books for a computer and the internet. Electronic cigarettes are much more practical than the archaic method of releasing nicotine upon combustion and inhaling tobacco smoke. Most of you use refrigerators instead of ice houses these days. Kids grow up with this "new" technology and anything older is irrelevant. Society did not advance forward because people refused to accept the flying machines of the early 1900's. They welcomed the new practical technology and information. Some people seem to be greatly offended when "new" information replaces information they held so closely to their heart, even going as far as searching for other information to refute it. Why do people not search for information to refute the increasing capacity of SSD drives? Because SSD drive technology doesn't conflict with ideas they feel passionately about. Holding onto any system or methodology for emotional reasons and you will become just as irrelevant as A.M. radio. Change is good, embrace it.

Edited by NOFX
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My best friend and I adopted the belief of Monkeyism years a go.

For anyone who may not be a believer, that's the belief that if god(/s) does(do) exist, that she(they) are monkeys.

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