(ThyBlackMan.com) I’m a freethinker on the subject of religion. I’m not a Bible thumper, I never attend church, and I don’t have much use for preachers. In fact, I just can’t see the logic in getting up early on Sunday morning and getting all dressed up just to go pay somebody to scream at me for two hours. I don’t see the logic in that, and I never did, even when I was forced to participate in the ritual as a kid. But I am a spiritual person, because logic, and the night sky, does inspire me to lean toward the belief that there is indeed a supreme force that governs the universe. After all, the universe didn’t just come from nothing. Some force had to caused the universe to spring into existence, and whatever that force was, I’ve chosen to call it God.
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Now, an atheist would undoubtedly tell me that I have no proof of the existence of God. The fact is, one told me that just today, and he was zealously insistent upon it. He dismissively suggested that by embracing the concept of God, it was tantamount to my embracing a belief in the “Flying Spaghetti Monster.” That was clearly a dismissive assault on my intellect, but I recognized that for some reason, many atheists tend to take great pride in being arrogantly disdainful of the intellect of believers. So instead of vigorously objecting, I simply took note. I did point out, however, that his tone sound quite similar to that of a religious zealot, to which he responded, that religion required faith, and atheists have no use for faith. They deal in pure logic. So I thought I’d examine that contention.
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I pointed out to him that it takes more faith to be an atheist than it does to be a believer, because believers do have the existence of the universe to point to as a basis of support for their belief, while all an atheist has is his belief, or “faith” that God doesn’t exist. Thus, faith in the non-existence of God is an integral part of what we have now established is his religion.
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I then went on to point out that in order to maintain the atheist position that God doesn’t exist, he bears the burden of having to prove that something (the universe) came from nothing – or that an effect was “initiated” without a cause, and, from out of nowhere. And since it is my contention that whatever force is responsible for the universe, order, and existence meets the definition God, how can an atheist know with any degree of certainty that nature, and/or the universe itself, isn’t God? After all, is it not true that the universe is responsible for the existence of all living things? That defines God.
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Thus, the debate, I went on, is no longer one of whether or not God exists, but rather, the NATURE of God’s existence. And that, in turn, leaves an atheists with only his “faith” and/or “religious” conviction to support his claim that God doesn’t exist. Therefore – contrary to what atheists would have us believe, and in spite of their renowned disdain for the silliness of religious dogma – atheism itself is nothing but another religion, and their denial of the existence of God is merely another religious doctrine. That pretty much shut down the discussion.
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But that said, neither do I buy into the way God is portrayed by religious zealots of the opposite stripe. The mere thought that in a universe with over 800 billion galaxies – with each containing an average of 300 billion stars, and with each star separated by light years of space – that God would be fixated on the infestation of a mote in the ghetto of an insignificant galaxy is beyond belief. But then, most religious doctrine go even further than that. They suggest that God is so fixated on us that he’s watching everything that each of us do, jumping through hoops, and performing magic tricks to get us to worship him (I’m using “him” to keep things simple). That takes us beyond delusional – it’s absolutely psychotic – the accompanying mood-setting music in the background notwithstanding. It constitutes an absurd attempt by man to turn God into some kind of circus performer.
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The mere assumption that God is preoccupied with everything we do is merely a reflection of man’s arrogance and exaggerated sense of self-importance, and the very idea of God being obsessed with trying to get man to worship him is patently ridiculous. That would be the direct equivalent of man spending every hour of every day trying to demand the respect of the germs under his toilet seat. That would be stupid, and while God may be many things, I doubt very seriously that stupid is among them.
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Thus, since I view the foregoing perceptions of God as so grossly out of touch with reality, it should go without saying that I don’t believe in Heaven or Hell. The entire concept just reeks of man’s tendency to threaten and/or bribe other men into subservience. And besides, if God was indeed watching and evaluating our behavior, he would have long since hit the delete button.
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So the fact is, we can only know God’s will by what he has done, and as I’ve said many times before, God made birds to fly, fish to swim, and man to think. He anticipated our needs when we were created, so he gave us the intellect to answer our own prayers, and the common sense to live the kind of life that would create our Heaven right here on Earth, if used properly; but if used improperly, we could also create our own Hell, which we have done. So we don’t require a Pat Robertson as God’s Special Envoy and Chief of Staff, nor do we need the Bible as a user’s guide to dictate how we should live our lives any more than fish need a swimming coach or birds need a compass to know which way is south, or a calendar to know when to head in that direction. Again, he blessed us with common sense to be our guide – at least, most of us.
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That leads me to the concept of good and evil. Actually, it’s quite simple. “Good” is to act with common sense, and what most people call “evil,” is nothing more than ignorance. It’s as simple as that. Thus, the key to living a good life is to be an independent thinker, to use our intellectual capacity to explore what it actually means to live a fulfilling life, and to have the good sense to avoid the ignorant machinations of other men. I’ve boiled it down to one sentence – Never give anyone else’s ability to think priority over your own.
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At this point I’m sure that many have come to the conclusion that I have a disdain for religion, but that’s not true – I have a disdain for the ignorant way in which it’s practiced. There’s nothing wrong with religion itself, if that’s what butters your bread. Some people find it comforting and inspirational to “fellowship” with others. But the problem is, man tends to completely ignore the primary point of religion – to inspire one to treat his fellow man with more caring, and to reinforce the idea of living a good and honorable life. He embraces dogma instead, those things that make his religion different from everyone else’s, and that’s not by accident.
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The bottom line is, while we pay it a lot of lip service, man doesn’t want to “love his neighbor.” Due to his personal insecurity, and the resulting need to feel like he’s a part of a special breed that’s been anointed by God, he wants an excuse to hate, feel superior, and look down upon his neighbor, and religion gives him a “God-approved” pretext for doing just that. Man wants an excuse to say, “It’s not that I hate everyone who doesn’t look, think, and act like me – it’s just that God does.” That’s why what we refer to as “The Bible Belt” also just happens to be the most bigoted and intolerant region in the entire country, and you’ll find the same to be true throughout the world – the more religious, the more bigoted, narrow-minded, and intolerant. Does that sound like the work of God? Personally, I don’t think so.
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So I look upon organized religion as a form of ignorance, and as I mentioned above, I equate ignorance with evil. You show me a man who believes in talking snakes, and I’ll show you a man who may be learned, but he’s not very bright, so he can be convinced of anything. So does organized religion have to be evil? No it doesn’t. But wherever you find hoards of insecure and unthinking people, you’re also going to find excess, hatred, subservience, and greed – or in short, evil.
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Doesn’t it take more faith to believe that organize religion is a sham than to believe that God wants to be loved and have a relationship with his creation? We all have the need for love and relationships. We can say He is God. He does not need to love and have a relationship with us. He does not need but He can want to love and have a relationship with us.
We can go further and say that the Bible has been around for ages and has many years of research, old and new translations, etc., that no man has successfully refuted it’s claims yet. That God wants a relationship with us and one day sent His Son Jesus to die for us for this relationship. Sure the Bible has been used for evil, which brings me to my next point regarding good and evil.
Some people may say slavery was “good” and made good sense to achieve their goals. We can even say it made common sense to those in control. The same with Jim Crow. To the oppressed it was “evil” and made no sense to them; it was not common sense to them. So what is “common sense” and “good” to one may not be “common sense” and “good” to another. But there must be a higher good and all religions are about this higher good that we are aware of and must get to know. But only Jesus Christ claims to be from this higher good and is God’s Son.
In his famous book Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis makes this statement, “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
The main point of this discussion should be this, everything we have learned or done has been based on our freewill ability to choose. AS man is the top of the evolutionary chain of species, we need to accept our responsibility of being caretakers and overseers of life on this planet we call Earth. God does indeed exist, but due to science and logic we have tried to limit a force of being that is limitless. Any topic under the sun can be debated as one has to define what is good and what is evil. It is no secret that both exist, but to put either one in action a choice has to be made. Our understanding of this subject leaves us lacking as we are not on God’s level, but we love to think we are. This is our first mistake. Who among us has ever seen an atom on a daily ordinary basis? Without the use of microscopes and technology, we would never know of such.
As men, we are sssing many questions we have answered, only to find out that there is still so much that we do not know. Some mysteries need to remain just that, a mystery to be revealed by God when the time and purpose suits that to be done. All that matters is how we conduct ourselves on a daily basis with all of the trials and tribulations around us. God allows things to happen to us to serve His purpose and hopefully as men we can learn from all that occurs. This learning is to serve as history in the same manner that the Bible should serve. In growing up, I have heard different thoughts on various subjects under the sun. Whether something was right or wrong was left up to each of us as individuals to decide for ourselves.
The main point in this is to demonstrate that everyone is not capable of making rational decisions which is why there are prisons. One of the first we have to admit is that we can make ourselves prisoners of thought as we all have made decisions on things based on emotions rather than facts. The Bible has instructed us not to follow traditions, vain questionings, gossip, etc. As being the beings we are we continue to go against the grain and do it our way, which is not His way. Then when outcomes happens once again we question why? In the end why does not matter as what is is what is.
Like it or not good and evil are going to happen everyday until we are made perfect. This does not mean that we can not continue living, but rather that we take imperfections and try to make things better no matter what. I often wonder what did eating of the tree of knowledge actually entail, as the Bible portrayed Adam and Eve being naked originally not a sin. It was the fact that they ate of the tree and then hid their nakedness and tried to cover themselves up. If anyone tried that today, they would be arrested for indecent exposure.
The fact that we live only to die is not without dispute. However, I think the manner in which we live has to account for something beyond our limited understanding. It is all in God’s hands as far as I am concerned, so let His will be done. Peace out, Papacool.
Stephen,
The Bible is also unsubstantiated. For the first 300 years of Christianity, there was no Bible as we know it today. Christians had the Old Testament Septuagint, and literally hundreds of other books from which to choose. The Catholic Church realized early on that it had to decide which of these books were inspired and which ones weren’t.
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The debates raged between theologians, Bishops, and Church Fathers for several centuries as to which books were inspired and which ones weren’t. In the meantime, several Church Councils or Synods, were convened to deal with the matter, notably, Rome in 382, Hippo in 393, and Carthage in 397 and 419.
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The debates sometimes became bitter on both sides. One of the most famous was between St. Jerome, who felt the seven books were not canonical, and St. Augustine who said they were. Protestants who write about this will invariably mention St. Jerome and his opposition, and conveniently omit the support of St. Augustine. I must point out here that Church Father’s writings are not infallible statements, and their arguments are merely reflections of their own private opinions. When some say St. Jerome was against the inclusion of the seven books, they are merely showing his personal opinion of them. Everyone is entitled to his own opinion. However, A PERSONS PRIVATE OPINION DOES NOT CHANGE THE TRUTH AT ALL. There are always three sides to every story, this side, that side, and the side of truth. Whether Jerome’s position, or Augustine’s position was the correct position, had to be settled by a third party, and that third party was the Catholic Church.
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Now the story had a dramatic change, as the Pope stepped in to settle the matter. In concurrence with the opinion of St. Augustine, and being prompted by the Holy Spirit, Pope St. Damasus I, at the Council of Rome in 382, issued a decree appropriately called, “The Decree of Damasus”, in which he listed the canonical books of both the Old and New Testaments. He then asked St. Jerome to use this canon and to write a new Bible translation which included an Old Testament of 46 books, which were all in the Septuagint, and a New Testament of 27 books.
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ROME HAD SPOKEN – FOR GOD – AND THE ISSUE WAS SETTLED.
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http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080928064041AATOZUD
This is off topic nevertheless:
Genesis 1:1
1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
Romans 1:20-23
20 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:
21 Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,
23 And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.
The theory of evolution is factually unsubstantiated. Evidences given for it such as transitional fossils(there are none), the geologic column(only exists in textbooks), or vestigial organs(there are none) have long been proven false by secular scientists. Real observable testable science shows evolution to be nothing more than a theory built as a house of cards. http://www.answersingenesis.org/get-answers#/topic/evolution
Dr. Kent Hovind vs. Dr. Richard Weisenburg(Temple University Philadelphia, PA)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKc_iiNLJHI
Dr. Kent Hovind vs. Dr. Ben Waggoner(University of Central Arkansas)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woOxMkX9tJI&list=PL6-cVj-ZRivpHQhRLUXmLV3nxZ_kWtND-
http://www.answersingenesis.org / http://www.icr.org / http://www.evolutionvsgod.com
Thank you, Thobbs.
Excellent article! This is exactly how I feel about religion and the whole concept of god. I couldn’t have wrote it any better myself!
Now a little wiser about what I read on this website, I immediately scroll to the bottom to see who the author is before I read one single word. Glad I did this time because after seeing it was Eric I know it was convoluted garbage written by a FBI or CIA implant to gauge sentiments on various topics. If labeled a heretic you’ll probably be targeted by the IRS.
“Silly Rabbit, Tricks are for kids”
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