Morals of life

I just don't get. Religion is supposed to be the big morality provider and yet throughout history it has been proven that the biggest hypocrite when it comes to morality is the religious zealot or as he so likes to be called the 'evangelist'. You just have to look back through the past at how many evangelical Christians have been arrested for fraud or extortion...an awful lot. Even Joseph Smith the revered originator of the Mormon religion was arrested for fraud just before he 'invented' the myth for which he is now renowned.

I can see now the Mormons chomping at the bit and the majority of Christians nodding in agreement. :"Oh yes that Joe Smith was so obviously a fake". As much as I would agree with them I would also have to say that the only reason we know Mr smith was a charlatan was the fact that he lived recently within living record, and yet still millions of people believe he is a prophet. What does this say about Jesus or Mohamed? Guys that lived before reliable records and whose followings took remarkably longer to take hold. The fact that people follow a person or write positive things about a person does not make him divine; Joseph Smith should be testament to this fact. Humans need to believe in something, and if someone is charismatic enough then they will follow him. Jesus started a cult, as did Joe Smith, Jesus gave rules on living, as did Joe.
How are people supposed to believe in 2000 year old scripture when we see millions of others believing in a book that talks about magic underpants. We are not even going to mention Xenu and his DC10.

The chosen?

I have been told by Christians in the past that only those with a personal relationship with Jesus will gain entry into heaven. I have also heard more outlandish claims of Rapture and tribulation. I often asked myself if the Christian view is true, then what happened to the multitude of humans that appeared before Jesus? Did they go to heaven? Hell? Purgatory? Of course these people would include Moses, Abraham, David, Solomon and all of the other 'non-Christians' . You cannot change someone's religion posthumously just because they were in a religious book.

If the Christian propaganda is to be believed, Noah (even though he spoke to God and did his bidding) should now be residing next to Satan himself. I am sure few Christians would admit to this but I would like to hear their reasoning.

I was brought up a Christian but am now an atheist, but I am surprised how Christians presume I am going to hell because I don't believe what they believe. Now I have to say i don't care because I don't believe in heaven or hell but the fact they believe they are more worthy than me kind of bothers me....I don't know why. I guess I always wondered who would get preferential treatment: the good hearted Atheist, or the murderous Christian? Where are the lines drawn exactly?

Religious stupidity

I am sorry, but I didn't know what else to call this. I am going to make a recurring theme of showing some of the ignorance and hatred that religion creates in ordinary people. I just want to show how the 'scripture' of religions are often taken so literally as to turn people into nothing more than ignorant morons.

My first example is this guy:

Alternate life style or Perversion?

And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
John 8:32

Leviticus 18:22-24

Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination. Neither shalt thou lie with any beast to defile thyself therewith: neither shall any woman stand before a beast to lie down thereto: it is confusion. Defile not ye yourselves in any of these things: for in all these the nations are defiled which I cast out before you: KJV

Contrary to what the gay community wants to believe, people are not born gay or lesbian. God did not make you that way and he does not think it is ok. God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve!! Lets look at some scripture and see what God has to say.

No I am not a bigot, nor homophobic. I am a believer in the Holy word of God, and If the bible says its wrong, It is wrong. If you are read this and thinking hate you will feel hate.

Answer
Yes you are a bigot sir, and a homophobe and it is obviously your outdated religion that has made you so. I will just say (not that it matters) that I am not homosexual but I abhor any kind of bigot, especially those that feel they have a divine right to be so.

Which religion is true?

In today’s modern world we have over 10 major religions with substantial followings, hundreds of minor religions, and literally thousands of denominations of each-- each one with a slightly different belief system to the last. Christianity alone has over 18 major branches, some with decidedly different ideals. And this is just today.

The history of the human race is filled with many different religious beliefs, each one taken extremely seriously by its adherents-- just as seriously as people take their religion today. Be it Roman, Greek, Egyptian, or Nubian, the people who followed these religions believed in them completely. Even with the multitude of different beliefs held in the past and today every religious follower believes theirs is the true religion. They will all agree that every religion cannot be true. They will all agree in fact that only one can be true. They will not agree, however, on which religion that is.

Most religious people will dismiss the religions of the past as simple ‘mythology’ as though this dismissal automatically claims them false. They look on people from the past as having ‘quaint legend based belief systems’ although many of them were formed alongside, or even after their own religions.

If an objective individual were to look at the thousands of different religions that have peppered the history of the human race and look at their origins and mythology, would he be able to choose a definitive religion from the masses, one that stands out above the rest—the true religion. I doubt it. Each religion can claim to have the ultimate prophet, the ultimate truth, but really they are very much all the same. Religion has changed so little in thousands of years that its study can reveal only one conclusion: It is in man’s nature to want a creator. The creator will always be in the image of the believer, and its adherents will adamantly believe that theirs is the only way to salvation.

Ring a bell?

Comparing Science and Religion

What is it that makes the fundamentals of science and religion so incompatible with each other? Well to answer this I think we first need to know what science and religion are. Without diving into a dictionary or Wikipedia I would generalise science as being any process that follows the steps of the scientific method. The scientific method is simple: In its most basic form it comprises the steps of 1) determine a problem or question to be asked 2) Make an educated hypothesis as to the answer 3) test with experiments and observation 4) revise the hypothesis and retest if necessary 5) Conclude results in a legible and meaningful fashion for others to follow and repeat.

These steps are so simple that everyone does science everyday without realising it. For example: 1) What is the fastest way to work? 2) Hypothesis: taking the train 3) Test the time to work on the train 4) Train takes 1 hour, maybe the bus is faster- test the bus. Test all modes of transport. 5) Bicycle turns out to be fastest; tell your friends.

Okay, this is not exactly rocket science, but I believe it is science nontheless as it follows a logical path along the scientific method.
Religion on the other hand, in its basic form, is a belief system usually handed down from person to person with precise rules on how to live life or how to properly worship the chosen being or entity.
For one thing, as Socrates said in my very first post, this hardly stands up to the scrutiny of the scientific method. If religion were looked at through the scientific method it would come under the knife immediately. It doesn’t even pass Occam’s razor.

I know that religious people claim their religion as faith and often see science as the enemy to their path. However as I showed earlier, science in essence is the basis of every intelligent person’s everyday decision making process. What happens to the intelligent decision making when it comes to religion?

The main problem is the way it is transferred. One of the most important parts of the scientific method is the reporting of results so others can repeat it. This encourages a collaboration of minds which gives science its general path. If science begins to head in a questionable direction (which it will invariably do) there will be enough checks and balances from other scientists to disprove falsehoods, correct errors, and realign any misguided ideas. Basically science itself evolves through minute changes (some greater than others) by a myriad of scientists and their helpers testing and retesting hypotheses until general laws can be formed (and even then these can be thrown out).

To the religious this is the weakness of science. It can never know everything and is often wrong or unsure of itself. That is its nature. However this is where the strength of science and the weakness of religion lie. Science is open to scrutiny: in fact it welcomes it. Anyone, from any walk of life can contribute to the ideas that make up scientific understanding, and although they may not like it, scientists are always open to the idea of being wrong. Religion, however, never appreciates scrutiny. You will never find members of different religions discussing ideas, and using the evidence to discount parts of their own belief. Religion relies on written or verbal accounts passed down by ancestors, and is considered indisputable; any evidence to the contrary is disregarded out of hand with no sense of investigation. Religion never even entertains the idea of being wrong.

Herein lies the crux of the point: Science strives for truth by the evolution and selection of right from wrong over many generations. Religion just claims to be right.

Which one makes the most sense?

Standing idly by

'In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends.' - Dr Martin Luther King

It seems to me that many Christians lay the fate and events of the World as a whole on the heads of two beings: namely God or Satan. Of course it is always noticed that whenever something marvellous happens in the World it is attributed to the miracle and love of God. If, however, something horrific or terrible happens it is obviously the work of Satan. I can understand the distinction here as God and Satan are supposed to be on opposite sides of the Good-evil coin.
What I do not understand is the Christians' ease at blaming everything bad on Satan and letting God completely off the hook. I always thought that God was the supreme being and therefore had the power to do anything that he set his mind to. If this is the case then surely this would make God guilty of doing evil through omission. If God is more powerful than Satan and he loves his people so much, then his sitting idly by and doing nothing as Satan runs amok with his evil doings makes God just as responsible for the outcome as his sinister nemesis. If you could stop evil wouldn't you do it? Then why doesn't God? Is it because he can't? Or because he doesn't want to?

'Evil prevails when a few evil men collaborate and good men do nothing'

Stand in Awe

I have heard it said by many people in the past that it must be difficult to appreciate the world and to stand in awe of its creation without believing in the creator himself. The argument is that people who do not believe in God will look around them at nature and have no real appreciation for the beauty of the design.
I say on the contrary, however - religion and a belief in God kills awe.
To back up this bold statement I will not jump to the obvious beauty and simplicity of evolution as I have done in the past as too many people still fail to accept or even understand its true nature. Instead I will deal with an example of much greater simplicity and that in which no man can say he has no belief--the Sun.
If religion were to have had its way, the Sun would have remained a hot glowing ball of light that revolved around the earth once every year and was put there by God to give us light. No more understanding would be necessary. Not exactly the stuff that sends men reeling with awe.

Science on the other hand tells us that the Sun is a burning ball of hydrogen and helium gas with a core, although at a density nearly 15 times greater than lead, undergoing nuclear fusion where hydrogen nuclei are joined together to form Helium nuclei at a temperature of about 15 million degrees Celsius. The Sun's energy output in a second is more than our whole world can use in a year. This ball of gas is big enough to hold over a million Earths in its huge form and of course it is its gravitational pull that controls the Solar System and not ours.
Now which of these understandings of our Sun will fill a man with the greatest awe?

God works in mysterious ways

Even when I was a boy I always considered this statement a cop-out. Any questions that I would ask that were maybe a little unorthodox, but what I would see as 'common sense' would more often than not be greeted with this supposedly unassailable argument 'God works in mysterious ways'.

It is strange how religious people are allowed to use this as an argument and not feel in any way that they have lost the debate. Another strange thing is that when things are unknown or not fully understood in science (which is expected to be the case) the religious apologists often step in and attribute God as the cause. What they don't seem to realise is they have been doing this for centuries. Something is unknown to science at a particular time; Oh well, it must be God then surely, what else could it be? Then a few years or decades down the road scientists will discover the answer, and strangely enough, it will not include God. Now for a time there will be a little gnashing of teeth and general ignorant disagreement from the religious folk, but eventually they will be forced to admit that the scientists are right (well most of them will anyway—there will always be a few extremists who think the Sun goes around the earth). Even the most ardent religious believer will these days believe that gravity, motion, stars, lightning, rock formation, and most other phenomena are naturally occurring and completely explainable, and therefore do not rely on any supreme being.

So where does that leave God? Well in the eyes of the religious believer, exactly in the same (albeit fluid) position he was before—in the areas that science cannot explain. I know, I know, you think they would learn.

Not too long in the past the majority of people (if we consider them Christian at least) believed that we were created on this Earth 'as is', meaning we started our existence in the human form we have today. This is a fair assumption, especially as the Bible specifically says that we were created in God's image, and what reason would there be to think otherwise? Science didn't know, so true to form, God took the reigns. Thankfully though, through a string of extremely intelligent and insightful people like Lamarck, we arrived at the genius of Darwin (and Wallace of course). His fantastically simple, yet extraordinarily powerful theory of evolution explained our origins perfectly. We did not begin our existence as humans, but evolved instead from the tiniest of lifeforms through tiny mutations over millions and millions of years.

Now it has to be said that the majority of normal, rational Christians believe in evolution. They have of course just pushed God's involvement back a few billion years as the 'catalyst' that started life off. Scientists themselves have many theories as to how life itself began and I am certain that one day we will know for sure and God will once again be relegated further and further back in time to the Christian final stand at the Big Bang (which incidentally has some very interesting scientific theories of its own).

I always had a problem with this reconciliation of evolution and God though. Let's look at a general belief today (although most people will probably not think it through like this): God starts the universe off with a bang (an event that takes an awful lot of energy but only millionths of a second) and then watches and waits for several billions of years as the Universe expands and gives birth to stars. Then he watches as our Sun and Solar System form and our Earth takes shape and evolves from a lump of molten rock and iron into a planet with oceans and continents (or more likely an ocean and a continent). Here he suddenly decides to create life. Does he create life in his own image? Does he create intelligent beings that can worship him in prayer and be tested on their suitability for heaven? No. He assembles a few chemicals. By this, I do not mean that he assembled billions of chemicals to form a complex living organism. No, he assembled a few strips of amino acids to form the simplest of organic molecules and let them get on with it. That was all he did (if that). Doesn't it sound a bit like overkill to have this supreme omniscient being doing a job that a four year old and a box of organic lego could perform? Anyway apparently he did nothing else for another few billions of years until we arrived and he sent his Son to see us (Who happened to be human...but that's another story).

I hope people can see where my problem arose as a kid. I would ask questions like: “If we are made in God's image and God is an ultimate being, then why didn't he make us 'as is', why did he wait all that time for us to evolve?”

“God works in mysterious ways” was of course the usual answer.

Sometimes I would get the “God is infinite and so time has no bearing to him” but that still never explained why he wanted to wait and was really no different from the 'mysterious ways' answer.

Another problem I had was with how much control God supposedly had. If we believe in evolution completely—as I do and most rational people do these days (we will ignore creationists for now-I did say rational) —we have to believe that evolution has no 'design', no preconceived plan as to what will be made. The mutations that occur in living things are random genetic anomalies and cannot be predicted. Once these mutations express themselves physically, they are subject to environmental factors and the organism will find the mutation either a help or a hindrance and therefore either be more or less successful than its peers. This is natural selection (albeit in a simplified form).

The environmental factors are of course not controllable either. The climate, being only a small part of the environment, is affected by the natural 'evolution' of the Earth—volcanoes form and spew out gases which change the atmosphere; other life forms (animals, plants etc.) are taking in and giving out gases all the time. These other life forms play an even more important role within the environment as they compete with each other for niches, for food and habitats and may be predator or prey. Each of these living organisms has also evolved through random mutations and the pressures of natural selection, and in turn affects the natural selection factors present on all of the other organisms around it.

My point is this: If each organism is undesigned and has evolved in a direction governed solely by its surroundings, and these surroundings are caused by organisms or other factors which are themselves undesigned and moulded through environment, then it has to be statistically impossible to predetermine how any organism will evolve. It would be impossible to 'guess' how organisms would evolve over only a couple of evolutionary changes (as we could not know how these changes would affect the environment and hence affect the next naturally selected step) so it is foolhardy to think it would be possible to predict the changes that would occur from a simple bacterial cell three billion years ago to any present day organism. My question therefore, is how could God make us in his own image if, left to evolution, there is no way he could predict how we would turn out. In fact the chances of there being a 'we' at all (as we know it) are pretty slim.

“God works in mysterious ways” maybe? More likely the Christian answer would be that God could control and plan the random mutations, the natural selection that occurred, and our ultimate evolution to Homo sapiens sapiens. My question would be why? If God really is that powerful (and he would have to be to have constant control over every genetic mutation of every living creature, not to mention the control of every nuance of the climate, atmosphere and geological change) then surely it really would have been easier just to make us as we are if that is what he wanted all along. Less of a headache I would imagine, build a world full of animals, insects, plants and the like, make them unchangeable so they don't evolve and that's it, job done. Humans could have been worshipping him for billions of years not just a few thousand. For an all powerful supreme being, the process of going through billions of years of evolution to reach a few thousand years of one particular species seems awfully inefficient, and to be honest--incalculably complicated tasks aside--not too smart.

“God works in mysterious ways”. Yeah right.