pastebin - Something - post number 2161069

Well the first topic to address is why do you believe in Judeo-Christian God as opposed to Allah, Thor, Zeus, etc?

 

You happened to have been raised in the Catholic faith. You know what it's like to not believe in a particular faith because you're not a Muslim. You're not a Hindu. Why aren't you a Hindu? Because you happen to have been brought up in America, not in India. If you had of been brought up in India, you'd be a Hindu. If you had been brought up Denmark in the time of the Vikings you'd be believing in Thor. If you were brought up in classical Greece you'd be believing in Zeus. There's no particular reason to pick on the Judeo-Christian god, in which by the sheerest accident you happened to have been brought up with that belief.

 

So let’s take a look at your God, the Judeo-Christian God as described in The Bible, I might add that you pick and choose what to believe and what not to believe, no matter how fantastical (you believe Jesus was a zombie). However to be a REAL Christian you must believe everything there is in The Bible, you cannot go picking and choosing the parts you like as you go along (also known as making up your own religion as you go along).

 

The Ten Commandants;

 

1.      I am the lord thy God, Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

2.      You shall not make for yourself any carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments. –That includes the imposition of hereditary guilt (which I will touch on later) which is extremely immoral and unethical.

3.      Thou shalt not take the name of the lord thy God in vain, for the lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.

4.      Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.

5.      Honor thy father and thy mother. -The only commandment that comes with an inducement instead of an implied threat. Both the Exodus and Deuteronomy versions urge it for the same reason: “that thy days may be long upon the land which the lord thy God giveth thee.”

6.      Thou shalt not kill. – With the execption from God, if God commands you to kill it is okay – I can quote many Bible passages but I doubt you need them.

7.      Thou shalt not commit adultery.

8.      Thou shalt not steal.

9.      Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. -This is possibly the most sophisticated and moral of The 10 Commandants.

10.     Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor’s. –This commandment is by far the most immoral/unethical for many reasons; it convicts you of thought crime (thinking something, even unwillingly makes you guilty) and it is obviously written by a man and implies a female human is equal to an ox or ass and is property of the man.

 

So out of 10, I have just pointed out 4 to be blatantly immoral. 60% is not a good score. So why worship this God? I will reference the source material;

 

 

The Premeditated Murder of Children

 

In the book of Exodus the Israelites are held captive by the Egyptians, God demands that The Pharaoh free the Israelites but The Pharaoh refuses. In response God curses Egypt with a series of plagues yet The Pharaoh remains unmoved. The Pharaoh is asked once again to free the Israelites, yet as read in Exodus 10:27, “But the LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he would not let them go.” Subsequently God kills all the first born children of the Egyptians, as read in Exodus 12:30, “…and there was a great cry in Egypt; for there was not a house where there was not one dead.”

 

Given that God hardened The Pharaoh's heart so that he would refuse to release the Israelites the killing of the first born was actually unnecessary, yet God intentionally brought about this situation to give himself the opportunity to murder children. That’s premeditation.

 

The Act of Global Genocide

 

In the book of Genesis God decides that all of mankind has become too evil to be allowed to live, he then creates a global flood to destroy the earth and nearly everything is killed (sea dwelling animals, Noah, his family and his massive amount of pets did all right). The concept that literally everyone on earth was so evil they were deserving of death is absurd, and the bible doesn’t explain this in any detail.

 

More importantly, why did this situation come about in the first place and why was global genocide the only feasible solution? Given that the Judeo-Christian God is omnipotence it is baffling that God would do nothing and just allow mankind to descending into such an irredeemable state. It would have been fully within Gods power to correct this issue without resorting to global annihilation.

 

Slavery

 

The practice of slavery is universally understood to be morally wrong. It is plainly unacceptable to own human beings as if they were property. Everyone recognizes this, well except for God and a few hicks. The Bible does not condemn slavery; it actually explicitly permits slavery as seen in Leviticus 25:44, Exodus 21:6, Exodus 21:21, and in the New Testament, Ephesians 6:5, “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ.”

 

The Imposition of Heredity Guilt

 

There are numerous incidents in the bible where someone’s decedents are targeted for punishment because of the sins of their ancestors. Clearly seen in Exodus 20:5, “You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me,” As well as in Isaiah 14:21, “Prepare a place to slaughter his sons for the sins of their forefathers; they are not to rise to inherit the land and cover the earth with their cities.”

 

One of the central doctrines of Christianity is that everyone is inherently sinful and in need of forgiveness all because of the sins of Adam and Eve. The concept of being morally accountable for something you didn’t do and were never involved in is morally and ethically known to be wrong among any civilized culture. This is one of the most fundamental concepts of justice there are no grounds for assigning blame to an innocent person.

                 

The Sanctioning of Infinite Punishment

 

Hell. How could a literally infinite punishment be considered fair? Even if we are guilty from birth what justice is there in a never ending punishment? Another essential concept of justice is that penalties should be proportionate to the crime that was committed. The idea of an infinite punishment implies that no consequence, no matter how sever, will ever be sufficient to satisfy the need of justice.

 

The Judeo-Christian God as described in The Bible above is nothing short of a moral train wreck, and is so morally and ethically inadequate that anyone with even the most basic grasp of right and wrong can comprehend that his moral failings are so abundant and so extreme that he is totally unworthy of praise, devotion, and/or adoration. But I am assuming you choose not to believe in those stories. So I will move on to more factual data.

 

The human species as distinct Homo sapiens existed on the planet for a while. Richard Dawkins, evolutionary biologist, thinks 250,000 years. Francis Collins, a very devout Christian, who sequenced the human genome project thinks minimum 100,000. So let’s say 100,000 years since we separate from the Cro-magnons and the Neanderthals as our own species, Homo sapiens.

 

Here's what you'd have to believe if you believe in this theology: for 100,000 years humanity is born, average 25% of it dies in childbirth or very shortly afterwards. Life expectancy, is approximately 25 for a very long time, infant mortality is extremely high, death by microorganisms we didn't know existed, by earthquakes that we thought were supernatural, by storms that we didn't know came from our climate system, by other events that arise from our being born onto a cooling planet with faults in its crust. Then man-made things: turf wars, fights over women, fights over territory, over food, etc. For the first 96,000 years of this experience heaven watches with folded arms with indifference, without pity and then around 4,000 years ago decides, "It's time to intervene… and it seems the best way of doing that would probably be in Bronze Age in the Middle East, making appearances to stupified, illiterate peasants. The news would get to literate and much more advanced China after about a thousand years after that."

 

The concept of God and religion in general are an insult to humanity. I am not  just an atheist; I am an antitheist – here is why;

 

God is a totalitarian belief. It is a wish to be a slave. It is the desire that there be an unalterable, unchallengeable, tyrannical authority who can convict you of thought crime while you are asleep, who must subject you to total surveillance around the clock every waking and sleeping minute of your life of your life - before you’re born and, even worse, after you’re dead. Basically a celestial North Korea. Why would you want this to be true? That is such a horrible fate. North Korea has a dead man as its president, Kim Jong-Il (dead) is only head of the party and head of the army. He’s not head of the state. That office belongs to his long deceased father, Kim Il-Sung. It’s a necrocracy, a thanatocracy, and most importantly, as of recent… a trinity. But at least you can fucking die and leave North Korea. God does not offer you that freedom.

                                                                                                                                                                 

Religion attacks humanity in its deepest integrity, in the core of our self-respect. Religion says that we would not know right from wrong, we would not know an evil, wicked act from a decent human act without divine permission, without divine authority or without, even worse, either the fear of a divine punishment or the hope of a divine reward. It strips us of the right to make our own determination, as all humans always have, about what is and what is not a right human action.

                                                   

Your argument is that because we don’t know how the universe started that there must be a God, but not just any God, but the God that you believe in. That is absurd, that is not how logic works. It is up to you to prove the existence of that God. Faith by definition is the belief in something with absolutely no evidence or proof and I refuse to do that simply because I’m not an idiot.

 

My whole take on politics (reason I have never voted) and religion is that I don't know what's best for other people, and when I see someone claiming they do I find it to be incredibly insulting. God is an imaginary bully. The Catholic Church says it is better to die of AIDS than to use condoms. The amount of unethical, immoral, and downright wrong things that religion tells people in the name of God is astounding. I cannot stress this enough, it is an insult to humanity.

 

Now you might counter with, “What if your wrong?” – I pose the same question to you? What if you’re wrong? Anybody could be wrong. We could all be wrong about the Flying Spaghetti Monster and the Pink Unicorn. What if you’re worshipping the wrong God? What if you're wrong about the great Juju at the bottom of the sea? The best document to disprove God is any “holy text”

 

In conclusion you have a few options;

 

1)      Admit you’re not a real Christian/Catholic and you pick and choose what you want to believe out of The Bible. Basically making up your own religion as you go along.

2)      Admit you worship an unethical and immoral supernatural being.

3)      Admit there is no God, and if there was a God – this God would be incredibly immoral and unethical and unworthy of any praise, devotion, and/or adoration.

4)      Admit you are incredibly foolish.

 

It’s much more disturbing, upsetting, immoral, and unethical to believe, let alone worship this kind of tyrant than to not believe. There is no way you have debate anything here simply because my stance is based on logic, reason, morality, and ethics. Your stance is based of faith (by definition believing in something without any form of evidence or proof), zombies, global genocide, old stories, etc.