Do you believe in God?

"Yes, I believe the religion predominant in my society" isn't a badge of morality. It is a default.

You fool, it means God is divided against himself. Part of him wants groupthink, distraction, confusion, and separation. And part of him wants individuation, relationship, and revelation. If God is good, then it all must be redeemed and the former must be in service to the latter.

God killed all the people, women, children, fetuses on earth ... but let Satan be. Is this good with your morality? Take responsibility for the faith: "Yes, killing babies and protecting Satan is good with me. Amen."

Institute of Physics diversity survey. This is ofc unsurprising, pure atheism is rare among scientists. Our friend here is in fact not ostensibly a pure atheist, difficult to know what he rails against - bible literalism? Well it is obvious sacred texts require more subtle reading than being given credit here.

'Observable natural phenomena' excludes many "acceptable" scientific (non)-theories as equally as those shunned by SCIENCE. There is as much if not greater weight of evidence for deluges as there is for say universal common ancestry, for instance.

I agree science is by definition demarcated clearly from religion. Perhaps Fella is arguing with a straw man - the bible literalist who presents his beliefs superceding anything science has to offer - no doubt such folk exist, but it seems a strange target on these pages. The goodFella attacks clumsily "religion" in its entirety, while suggesting science has better answers.

There are however, times when science does hit a brick wall and finds religion lurking. A personal favourite - "inertia is caused by the immutability of God". That's quite literally the "current" understanding.

I confess my absolute novice understanding of this, but I do believe that gnosis means knowledge of God at a deep intimate level. The gnostics were/are Christians. They had/have alternate interpretations of the meanings of Genesis and so on, and many other fairly recently discovered works they believe/d in. To applaud this while dismissing with outright combativeness other interpretations is quite strange to me. The "orthodoxy" in Gnosticism is that the *true* God is unknowable while the creator/workman/demiurge of this Universe is a false divinity, "Ialdaboath" the God of Genesis, who is imperfect hence this world is imperfect. Is this not the same irrationalism?

Quite likely it means those religions, and many others, are ultimately connected and represent aspects of truth. Exoterically even, the Abrahamic religions are hardly disconnected are they.

What about the thousands of religions and gods past and present which were not Abrahamic? Those people believed those religions as a function of tribalism and with no revelation from an actual god behind it. That is the point. This is the nature of religious belief and there is just no reason to exempt the Abrahamic ones.

The official "Gnosticism" sects were are part of early Christianity, yes, but the term "gnosis" uncapitalized commonly refers to a phenomenon of personalized, experiential knowledge as opposed to reasoned, intellectual knowledge. I do find legitimacy to that, again, not as part of any particular official religion, but as a path and experience of being-based, personal experience based, internal knowing based, intuition based ... understanding. Luv that. It is the opposite of clinging to a group orthodoxy and apologizing for it as a way of life.

Because the social self establishes itself in the driver’s seat through the unavoidable socialization of every child, gnosis has to attach itself to organized, social religion and there are two contenders for humanity’s future: (1) Islam or (2) Christianity + secularity. There is no third option in reality.

Gnosticism grew out of the same soil modern Christianity did. Further, you don’t even seem to consider the role of Christianity in your early life on your current connection to gnosticism. You just foolishly assume there is no cause and effect.

Gnosticism clearly enters into the Christian story after Christ goes away and promises to send the spirit of truth to guide his followers.

And in ancient Greece what was gnosis? Maybe a personal, experiential, intuitive knowledge of spiritual mysteries?

Good luck with your mission to resurrect ancient Greece and compete against Christianity and Islam. You will fail.

Yeah the point being Christianity didn't invent the gnostic approach to spirituality, but it is the best part of it or of pretty much any major religion.

Jesus never called himself an inventor. He is a teacher of reality who laid the groundwork like no one else could. His teachings are not optional for anyone serious about truth and reality because he became unified with truth and reality.

How old is this mysterious god of yours?

Listen, there is a part of self which wants to make a final decision that God doesn’t exist. The good steward (refer to my recent thread) does not allow himself to be captured by this. You have allowed yourself to be captured.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are those captured in apologetics. You assume that I am one of those people, but you are wrong. It would be clear you are wrong if you weren’t captured. I would not be able to post what I post on this subforum if I were captured by either extreme.

I’ve thrown enough buoys into the water. Recognize you are drowning or don’t. It’s on you. I’m out.

Anyone who wants to find me can find me on X / Twitter. It shouldn’t be difficult to find me.

And they might have disproved the thing about lightning, and the thing about earthquakes, and the leprosy/demon connection, but they haven't disproved that homosexuality is an abomination. So I'm sticking with it! Based on 1st Century beliefs. What's wrong with that?"

This great quote points up the terrible idea of venerating utter obedience as a virtue. Of course utter obedience is a vice, a weakness, an immorality. Everybody knows that, but they tend to forget it when it comes to religion, and then rarely will they question in. But it's much to their credit when they do.

Non-theists have a warped worldview according to some theists. As in, they don't believe in magic, they don't believe in supernatural, they aren't abjectly subservient and obedient to some imaginary thing, etc. etc. etc. more points than one could recount.

But I'm going to recount one more here. Non-theists have a warped worldview because they do not believe the mass killing of the entire human race (except for 8, I better add), including the slaughter of every infant, every child, every fetus on earth, all this in the Great Flood ... non-believers in that god are immoral and have a warped worldview because they do not believe such a thing is an act of holy righteousness, but assess it more as the ultimate immoral act. Way worse than Hitler.

But I would say that the true believers themselves do not actually believe this type of slaughter is moral or even real. That is revealed by their total lack of any respect for how horrifying and torturous this event would be for, say, mothers, watching all their children drown as they themselves gasp for breath. This never even gets mentioned in the stupid ass doctrine. And this reveals, that the whole story, while given lip service as being literal, is really just regarded as a fairy tale by even believers.

But they can't admit that. Because if you admit that key parts of the doctrine are just fabrications, just obvious religious constructs, then that principle quickly extrapolates out to the whole salvation idea being a fabrication (which they once sold to the public, by the way, and still do indirectly). The whole religion quickly unravels as a story unless you cling to such things as the slaughter of millions of infants and fetuses because they are evil as moral and literal. And so, a whole, whole lot of obedience, and no actual agency and morality being practiced, is necessary in this default back into barbaric, superstitious fictions of antiquity.

"In the west, people don't understand spiritual discernment." -- Franciscan Reverend Richard Rohr.

He's writing about Christians. The "all-in" on 1st Century magic stories is the opposite of discernment; it is the abnegation of thought. The fear of advancing out of pre-Medieval beliefs insisting that they are ultimate truth, is not discernment ... not by a long shot. It is folly. Irresponsible, immoral folly. Just take a look at the beliefs across the board from the 1st Century and it is clear how wise it is to adopt them. Ancient religion and reality are two different things, just as it is in all fields from that era. You don't get to overrule reality with magic just because they thought they could in the 1st Century.

"Let us be moral. Let us contemplate existence." -- Charles Dickens

Contemplating existence and developing systems of morality -- not blind allegiance to supernatural doctrines -- is the spiritual and moral path. Amen.

Even with Satan (or any other name for the evil-figure in a religion), religions believing in an all-knowing, all-powerful and loving God have a problem with evil. The arguments I get from believers seem unsatisfying. For example, a young child gets molested by some perverted pedophile. I think (or at least hope) whether believers or not, we can all agree that this is evil. The question for the believers is how can this happen with an all-knowing, all-powerful, loving deity looking out for us?

Satan just contradicts the all-powerful part or the loving part. Surely a loving God wants to prevent this child from being molested. That leaves “Satan caused this”. Well is God all-powerful or not? If He is then He could have stopped Satan. The only other excuse is that God didn’t know that Satan would cause this to happen. That contradicts all-knowing. Certainly there’s nothing inherently contradictory about a God who isn’t all-powerful, all-knowing, or loving - humans have invented many such gods. That isn’t the God that most Christians believe in though. It’s hard to see why a God with the properties of the Christian one would not stock something like this from happening. Even the usual “can’t mess with free will” dodge is unconvincing. An all-powerful, all knowing God would have known what the pervert would do and could have smitten him with a lightning bolt (or something like a massive heart attack if he didn’t want to be so dramatic) BEFORE he perpetrated his evil deed - no need to interfere with free will. I also question why the pervert’s free will trumps the victim’s. Surely the victim would not choose to go through an attack like that. A loving God would be more concerned about the victim than the perp, no?

I'll expand on my response in the future but you have made some very glaring omissions.

Let's assume there is no devil:

Firstly God has given us free will and as such the person who is doing the molesting is unfortunately able to do so (with the obvious repercussions in this life and presumably they would go to hell in the next).

Your question is really "Why does God not directly intervene?" and the answer is obvious which is that we are not extensions of God, we are completely cut off from God. God is transcendent, which is a good thing, as you want to have your own thoughts and be your own person.

The example is a tragedy, and it is up to people to make those decisions to not harm others for the obvious reasons. However, it is entirely possible people wouldn't rape children or be serial killers if there was no devil.

Let's assume there is a devil:

The argument here is that literally God does not smite the devil, but merely asks the devil to stop with the exception of letting it know there will be inevitable consequences. The devil has done the most insane thing possible: it is in direct communication with God and says "stop me." to which God would potentially say "You should choose to stop." Why does God not smite the devil? To do so as the act of creating a system where this thing would exist, then eliminating it, could be evil itself and God chooses not to be evil.

What about the victim? It is supposedly a perfect system by which you die and everything is made right assuming you conduct yourself in an ethical and moral manner. The victim dies, is judged when they talk to God, and everything is made clear. The perpetrator dies and is presumably judged in a different manner than the victim (victim presumably does not go to hell whereas the perpetrator does) and actual justice is metered out for their behavior given all possible information that only God has access to.

Also, why does God not judge the devil for the holocaust as evil? It simply may not understand what it is actually doing to people in this reality and would view everything as simply the transfer of souls from this reality to the next with the intention of somehow polluting the afterlife which, due to God's direct intervention there and not here is not possible.

If you were to speak to God, and God asked you to do something you are kind of up **** creek because the outcome of refusing to do what God asks is a personal catastrophe (going to hell unless you simply thought you were insane and had an excuse).

There are very specific arguments as to why the devil might not truly understand wtf it is doing as it has intentionally cut itself off from God, but this is the real catch-22:

If you were an infinitely powerful demon and were able to front run peoples thoughts and turn them into your agents unbeknownst to themselves and were dealing with God who may be more than willing to, to protect you and the rest of creation, front run the devil how would you overcome this? You are basically compelled to do the dumbest thing possible which is always always always choose to do the most evil thing possible.

It sounds insane because it would be. Also the Universe is so massive everybody may look upon this planet just with horror and be glad that they were not born into it.

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But wouldn’t an all-knowing God understand the chaos and evil that such a thing would cause? Wouldn’t a loving God strive to prevent such chaos and evil. You still can’t have all three IMO. Either God doesn’t know what will happen, hence not all-knowing, God can’t stop it from happening, hence not all powerful or God knows the suffering His actions will cause, has the capability to prevent it and chooses to allow it anyway, hence not loving, at least IMO. I’ve heard the argument that some amount of pain and suffering is good in the long run, but why can’t the kid fall and skin his knee for that instead of being molested? Why are some children born with fatal diseases, live for a day or two (in pain the whole time) then die, instead of growing up and maybe having a fight with their best friend to give them the suffering they need? How does postulating a devil change this? If the presence of the devil means God can’t prevent it, then not all-powerful, right? If God doesn’t know the result of the devils actions, there goes all-knowing. If he both knows what the devil will do and can prevent it, but chooses not to, is that really loving? I know if my son were standing on the street with a truck approaching and wasn’t moving for some reason (maybe he’s having a seizure), I wouldn’t just say “well the truck driver should want to stop” and do nothing. I’d be pulling my son off the street out of harm’a way. Why does God not do this instead of allowing the devil’s actions to cause suffering?

I get the whole , evil doers will be punished and good people rewarded after death, but why should it be AFTER death? Why can’t God just protect people while they are alive? That’s a big reason why I’m atheist; the presence of a God as described by Christians just doesn’t make sense given these issues. An Old Testament, vengeful God, yeah maybe. A deist God who just sits back and watches it all (or maybe even forgot about the universe He created), possible. A loving one? Not so much.