Do you believe in God?

If you see God as nature itself, then yes.

Kindly prove, or at least give evidence, that this "ultimate reality" is tied in with what you say it is. Oh, you can't? It's a religious presupposition. Sorry, I didn't mean to be unreasonable.

Newly executed double killer Charles Victor Thompson advises us to keep Jesus first in our lives. Just another of the billions of examples of using religion in a calloused, cynical, escapist, or self-deceptive way. There are millions of the extreme cases of these religious shenanigans where hardcore criminals, con men, holy rollers, imposters, poseurs, etc ... and billions of examples of the less extreme. One just needs to follow it to appreciate how and why religion is employed or followed in the psyche.

This thing in the church about abuse of the underaged and the permitting of it via conspiracy by the non-sicko perpetrators in power within the church ... that alone undercuts and counterfeits anything resembling godliness or godly inspiration going on in those situations. There are some things that just don't go together, that are impossible to exist together. To look at that and say, "I'm in, " or, "No, I'm not leaving it" ... is just a very special type of magical thinking. Forget reality. I want to believe this thing.

When you see an ancient text advocating for killing the likes of unruly children, non-virginal women, homosexuals, WITCHES! … you know it isn’t coming from omniscience, from goodness or from love. It comes from the flagrant, malignant biases of man. Now if I’m wrong about that and just a sinner, and there actually is or was a good moral imperative to kill witches and certain sinners … so be it. I guess I’ll be damned for not believing in such a thing.

It’s a thousands years pre-medieval superstition, this religion is. “I believe it. I can’t think of a more realistic metaphysics or a more moral system” … says the believer. Based on such absurdities in the doctrine as these heinous instructions to kill, there is a 100% chance the whole foundation of the religion is false, and obviously so. The omniscient god is about as real as the witches in these stories. I’m not demeaning anyone for falling victim to believing it, I’m critiquing the foundation of the religion. I'm glad to hear about how I am mistaken. Just point it out.

It's all a bunch of magic stories. Creating the universe by poofing it into existence is magic; healing people with a touch is magic; raising people from the dead is magic; stopping the sun in the sky is magic; feeding the multitudes with a few fish is magic; turning people to a pillar of salt is magic; turning water to wine is magic; plagues on command is magic; a talking snake is magic; parting the sea perfectly timed is magic; a rod turning into a serpent is magic; blinding a city is magic; living in the belly of a beast is magic; a donkey speaking is magic; people floating up into the sky is magic; smiting people by invisible beings is magic; hordes of the dead rising from their graves and marching through the streets (not mentioned by any historian of the day) is ridiculous magic; walking on water is magic; controlling the wind is magic; healing blindness with mud is magic; casting demons from people to swine is magic; healing a paralyzed person is magic; healing a blood disease with a wish is magic; healing deafness is magic; transfiguration is magic; killing a plant with a word is magic; speaking in tongues is magic; ghosts are magic; demons are magic; witches are magic; killing every man, woman, child, infant and fetus on earth but 8 might not be magic, but it would certainly be the most immoral thing ever done. This barely scratches the surface. It's just magic, magic, magic, magic.

Why does the religion consist of a bunch of magic stories? Because that is what they believed in the 1st Century. It wowed them and won them over. It competed with the other magic stories held as religions. I mean you had to outdo them to win against them. I could say something here, but it isn't my intention to insult or offend, but simply to point up starkly what it is. And what it is is a magic story.

To continue to give the nod of belief to such stories millennia later, is what more and more preachers are saying: none of that is real.

If the true believer really confronts this systematized magic nature of the religion and applies the simple reality test to it, it evaporates as feasible.

It's the most popular religion, so doesn't that argue for its truth? I don't think so. When Hinduism was the most popular religion does that mean it was true then? When Mount Olympus and Zeus where the dominant religion, was it true? I'm sorry, that argument is totally ridiculous.

The reason for the magical claims is that's what wowed and won over the superstitious people of the time. Again, to just swallow this as if still in the 1st Century is just a failure to have concluded such basic things as burning witches at the stake is not cool and holy just because it is in an ancient book of magic stories.

yall regards believe in god?

I have personal evidence there exists a God and that prayer works. But I don't believe in him, and he likely doesn't love you.

That's interesting. Can you elaborate? Not sure entirely how to take it. I too have personal experience evidence for something like an "over-mind" or soemthing like that, in the form of outrageous, impossibly tailored synchronicity, to the extent that the author of a college textbook on it said it takes the cake and loves talking to me about it. He's a Freudian analyst.

"Why would God create Lucifer, knowing he would fall and become his arch enemy?" Why is it that God, not Lucifer, committed the act of slaughtering mankind in the most heinous crime ever committed in the real world or in fiction?

When a book says the equivalent of the cow jumped over the moon, you are not required to believe it in some twisted version of being moral. It's a twisted version in which believing and accepting a barbaric code of morality and justice, and in the process sacrificing one's mind and intelligence to that belief, i.e. being obedient to it, is considered the good.

Is it all just because it makes for a good mythological tale?

It seems people who believe in God are happier than those who don’t.

Evidence for that?

It’s just what I have experienced. I have mostly been agnostic my whole life. When I have chosen to believe there is a God and I pray to him I feel better. There have been times I went away from God and felt miserable. It may just be a placebo effect. I have now chosen to go the path that makes me feel better.

I have Liberal friends and I have Conservative friends. I find the Conservatives to be more into God. They tend to be more family oriented and more community oriented. They seem very fulfilled. My liberal Friends seem to be Godless and miserable. I think it’s because they adopt a victim mentality to life. Conservatives seem to embrace their fate and are better able to cope when things don’t go their way. Liberals tend to fight against everything and add extra layers of pain onto the intrinsic pain they are feeling. I totally get their skepticism of God. Unfortunately this puts too much pressure on them to do everything themselves even though some things are out of their control. Conservatives do what they can and then leave the rest to God.

I am not religious at all. This is more a spiritual thing for me.

I don’t like that Conservatives push their Christian agenda on others.

So no actual evidence, just your own anecdotes and opinions then? Got it. But you do realize, right, not everyone who is politically liberal is an atheist? Not everyone who is politically conservative is a Christian (I know that personally since I lean conservative and am an atheist). Taking political beliefs as a proxy for religious beliefs is an oversimplification.

Even assuming you’re right, though and that there is a correlation between happiness and religious belief, what makes you assume there is causation as well? I’d assume you are asserting that belief in God causes happiness, but even if a correlation does exist, that doesn’t follow. Why are people happy? Most people are happy when they can meet their basic biological needs, exist in situations where they have healthy relationships with others, don’t feel overly threatened by others, and are basically able to pursue whatever actions they wish (within reason and the bounds of civilized society)

Someone who is starving, is sick and unable to get proper health care, or is in an abusive relationship, for instance, might find meet idea that there is an all-powerful, loving deity who is always looking out for them with quite a lot of skepticism. Someone who is fortunate enough to live in a situation conducive to happiness might be more receptive to that idea. Perhaps the causation is reversed - happiness causes religious belief?

The data generally supports elway's claim. For example about 35% of consrvative Catholics report being very happy vs 25% of liberal Catholics. However it's more nuanced than that.

When we drill down a bit liberal Catholics who attend mass weekly report being happier than conservative Catholics who don't. Dig a little deeper and there's no happiness gap between liberal and conservative Catholics who are married with children.

Human beings do things that make them feel better (to a fault obviously, addiction, over-indulging, lying, being gullible, believing in untruths that promise them a big payoff, etc. ). Religion obviously falls into this category of: "they do it because it helps them feel good." To then say, "See, it makes them feel good so it must be true, " or something approaching that, is a total misunderstanding.

If someone is serious about this, they need to apply this principle to a bunch of different religions, see which ones adherents say it makes them happier (all of them), and then realize, whoops, that has nothing to do with whether it is true or not.

Believing in this fashion -- in the palpably not true or defensible, in that clearly not in evidence -- is not a virtue, but a vice. And THAT is the trick of religion, and an admittedly pretty ingenious one. They claim belief as some kind of high virtue, and the trap is sprung on anyone having difficulty then being reasonable about their beliefs. Because they are tricked into thinking that is immoral.

Obviously neither perrenialists nor religous pluralists would agree. But that's conflating religion with theology. The core claim of theology is that there is a transcendental reality. The details are secondary.

I cant support it but my hunch is not many religous people would agree with the claim: If some of the details of my religion are wrong, then God doesn't exist.

Well that’s evidence (maybe) for conservatives being happier than liberals. It’s not evidence for theists being happier than atheists, which was the actual claim. Like I said, using political beliefs as a proxy for religious ones is going to be imperfect at best.

God is not angry, god doesn't judge, god is not jealous, god does not torture, god does not order genocide, turn people to salt, tolerate rape and slavery, condone sacrifice ... that's all religion. None of that is love. It was made up by pre-medieval man as a projection of needs, guilt, shadow, fear.

If Jesus is the archetype, then you are god, meaning the kingdom is within, and he is no exception, no stand in, no savior, no sacrifice. Again that is all religion. Religion got it wrong: it replaced experience with belief, it replaced god with rules, it replaced sojourning with obedience, it made god external up in the sky or somewhere, it replaced love with fear while lip servicing love. Being religious is a giant defense mechanism attempting to ward off actual existential issues.

Some kind of Jungian AI below captures it beautifully.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TX5ka_TlAmE

To be a believer is to have faith in a story ... a story with witches, ghosts, the laws of nature being suspended, superstitions galore, talking animals, a god directing genocides and slavery, billions of people being held responsible for the acts of two, sorcery, the casting of spells, demons, a zombie parade in Jerusalem ...

And of course none of that passes muster unless operating under the "mind on religion" principle, meaning, operating in a context where reality is dismissed in favor of an ancient tall tale. If the book said "and then the cow jumped over the moon, " the believer says, "Yeah, god can make that happen." And any semblance of reality testing is sacrificed to the belief system.

If a religion requires you to suspend reality in order to believe it, you are on the wrong track with about a 99.99% certainty. Square that if it is based on tales from thousands of years ago from superstitious cultures. There are spiritualities that do not suspend reality.

I just read The Sermon on the Mount and work on the teachings, and so I consider myself a Christian in that sense. Whether any of the stories are historically true isn't a factor. I see them more as explanations of those teachings, or examples of how good things happen if you follow the teachings or warnings for if you don't. So it doesnt really matter to me if say Jesus produced miracles or even if he existed.

But that's what works for me. I just figure since the practice of mantra is so widespread among religions of the world, just believing works for some. So I don't have an issue with people doing that for themselves, but more with the people who think what works for them is the only way.

Every ancient Historian points to some 'Jesus' figure existing. Someone existed from which all of this came. However truthful to which religion, or Belief system, that would be viewer discretion is advised. I was learning about this a bit earlier and how we know from history that Christ(the Trinity version.) didn't follow the 'legend' criteria. I mean, it's interesting. It's safe to surmise that someone saying 'Christ didn't exist', they're flattering themselves thinking anyone should listen to them. We know someone existed around that time from which the Bible, Quran, Torah... etc... etc.. maybe like the Jews say, Jesus was a magician. Then Atheism, oh boy..

“What good is it to me if Christ (the Word) was born in Bethlehem once, if he is not born in me?” -Meister Eckhart

"Sin is an imaginary concept that religious cults invented in order to sell imaginary solutions to gullible people."

That's a mouthful with a lot of truth. "Gullible" is a bit onerous there; one need not be overly gullible to accept the prevailing religion of their culture as ipso facto true. But as one expands their horizons beyond Sunday School lessons, and when one is confronted repeatedly with contrary evidence to the religion, and presented repeatedly with how utterly chimerical it is ... then, to cling to it in place of free thinking is indeed gullible, and worse.

When we join a religion for community, for expediency, for cultural identity, etc. ... apart from the notion that it is "the one true" religion, or even true at all, then the gullibility factor is not present. They aren't swallowing whole cloth the obviously fictitious as literally true. Critical thinking about a chosen religion can be present in this type of practice.

Critical to seeing the crux of the quote is appreciating that there isn't necessarily "sin" just because people do wrong, and there is no supernatural salvation just because people do wrong. Those ideas are conflated into the religion so utterly, that to contest the ideas of sin and salvation to a believer ... well, they take that like: "What? Does this guy not see all the wrong, even evil, in the world?" See, they have utterly conflated human behaviors with religious supernatural realms. That's an unnecessary, unwarranted step: "You did wrong ... that is against god's will and he is going to smite you in the end." When actually, it is just doing wrong. All the rest -- "God will judge you for that, you need salvation for that" -- is made up religion. And as the quote says, was literally sold to people (and under threat). That part isn't so much gullibility as vulnerability, and lack of individuation. As in: "What did they say in Sunday School? That is the truth. Final answer. It's basically heresy to go against this."