The simple obvious answer is that there is no God. If there is, I want no part of an afterlife with him.
“God is so moral that he doesn’t need earthly morals” is an absolutely laughable justification. May God strike me dead before I click the “reply” button, if I’m wrong.
Hey, that’s chill. I’m not trying to appeal to people to change their opinions on whether there is a god or not. I’m simply arguing that if what is said about god is true, then taking the moral high ground because you’re the better being doesn’t really mean anything.
“Hey what did you do that landed you up in eternal pain and suffering?”
“Oh, I’m just morally superior to the being that put me here.”
The same goes for religious people blaming the bad things in their life on anything other than the same all powerful being.
The religious blame the bad things on Satan, not God. Pretty convenient. God gets all of the credit an none of the blame. It’s delusional.
Also, what rational argument suggests there is eternal pain and suffering? Some old Mediterranean folk lore twisted through time, with more Faust and Inferno (Dante) than scripture in the current belief? I don’t see any reason to rationally believe there is eternal pain and suffering.
IDK, I was going for the more extreme groups of religious groups. In some religious beliefs your belief in god has less effect on your post death outcome. Maybe in those you become a cat rather than burn in eternal pain for not believing in xyz god.
In high school I wrote a paper about the dichotomy of religious beliefs portrayed in Beowulf. My paper was about how the embracing of a new religion was personified by the acts of good being attributed to god, but the acts of evil were attributed to the non-biblical and villainous entities being portrayed by pagan representations. Essentially, as new cultures adopted Christianity they had a core issue in assigning blame to god for the ills in their lives so they were instead assigned it to something else that was still familiar (another cultural belief). This lead to a short period in which these peoples earnestly believed in both religious pantheons.
“Hey what did you do that landed you up in eternal pain and suffering” “oh, I’m just morally superior to the being that put me here”
From what I understand, the “eternal pain and suffering” is just not being near him for eternity, but that’s the thing with religions usually there are 100s of different interpretations of stories that were written after thousands of years of oral tellings. “If what is said about God is true” becomes a moot point because no one agrees what he said. Who knows if not believing in a god can cause eternal pain and suffering or what that suffering entails if it exists. The story had those details once it was written down, but who knows if it was there in the original oral telling.
I personally believe that the stories are just outdated allegorical stories. Satan and the many other people punished by “god’s wrath” in the beginning of the Bible are just allegorical figures for people who don’t follow the virtues of the story. I mean Satan’s fall from grace was because he thought he was superior to god, which is how you describe atheists that use a moral argument to justify their atheism (they’d probably be more agnostic than atheist though if they are entertaining the thought that god could exist).
If you look at the Bible as a collection of allegorical stories on how to live a good life, then it becomes clear why “god” and his rules often suck in a modern context. It is a guide to living a good life thousands of years ago, and human beings and life has become much more complex as time has gone on. We need to acknowledge and criticize how awful the bible’s and other religious teachings are, so we can move on and write a new guide on how to be good people who live good lives.
The simple obvious answer is that there is no God. If there is, I want no part of an afterlife with him.
“God is so moral that he doesn’t need earthly morals” is an absolutely laughable justification. May God strike me dead before I click the “reply” button, if I’m wrong.
Hey, that’s chill. I’m not trying to appeal to people to change their opinions on whether there is a god or not. I’m simply arguing that if what is said about god is true, then taking the moral high ground because you’re the better being doesn’t really mean anything.
“Hey what did you do that landed you up in eternal pain and suffering?”
“Oh, I’m just morally superior to the being that put me here.”
The same goes for religious people blaming the bad things in their life on anything other than the same all powerful being.
The religious blame the bad things on Satan, not God. Pretty convenient. God gets all of the credit an none of the blame. It’s delusional.
Also, what rational argument suggests there is eternal pain and suffering? Some old Mediterranean folk lore twisted through time, with more Faust and Inferno (Dante) than scripture in the current belief? I don’t see any reason to rationally believe there is eternal pain and suffering.
IDK, I was going for the more extreme groups of religious groups. In some religious beliefs your belief in god has less effect on your post death outcome. Maybe in those you become a cat rather than burn in eternal pain for not believing in xyz god.
In high school I wrote a paper about the dichotomy of religious beliefs portrayed in Beowulf. My paper was about how the embracing of a new religion was personified by the acts of good being attributed to god, but the acts of evil were attributed to the non-biblical and villainous entities being portrayed by pagan representations. Essentially, as new cultures adopted Christianity they had a core issue in assigning blame to god for the ills in their lives so they were instead assigned it to something else that was still familiar (another cultural belief). This lead to a short period in which these peoples earnestly believed in both religious pantheons.
From what I understand, the “eternal pain and suffering” is just not being near him for eternity, but that’s the thing with religions usually there are 100s of different interpretations of stories that were written after thousands of years of oral tellings. “If what is said about God is true” becomes a moot point because no one agrees what he said. Who knows if not believing in a god can cause eternal pain and suffering or what that suffering entails if it exists. The story had those details once it was written down, but who knows if it was there in the original oral telling.
I personally believe that the stories are just outdated allegorical stories. Satan and the many other people punished by “god’s wrath” in the beginning of the Bible are just allegorical figures for people who don’t follow the virtues of the story. I mean Satan’s fall from grace was because he thought he was superior to god, which is how you describe atheists that use a moral argument to justify their atheism (they’d probably be more agnostic than atheist though if they are entertaining the thought that god could exist).
If you look at the Bible as a collection of allegorical stories on how to live a good life, then it becomes clear why “god” and his rules often suck in a modern context. It is a guide to living a good life thousands of years ago, and human beings and life has become much more complex as time has gone on. We need to acknowledge and criticize how awful the bible’s and other religious teachings are, so we can move on and write a new guide on how to be good people who live good lives.