"I wanna ask you something, but need it to stay confidential. Your a well educated man and obviously from your different posts, I can tell how you feel about religion. I have placed myself in the Agnostic category, I know that alot of people think it's because of my music genre. I listen to rock and metal and also play in a metal band, but I just feel that there is a lot of contradictory in Christianity. I also feel that the King James version of the Bible is of course not a full religious text. I have read that the Koran is the only 'full' religious text left on the planet and that the King James version was modified for what he wanted people to believe. I was just looking for some educated answers. If you could briefly fill me in on your thoughts, I would appreciate it."
- Staying Confidential
Confidential, I do not believe in any god whatsoever. I find it odd that this would be a minority view or be shocking to anyone. After all most adults do not believe Zeus, Thor, Santa or the tooth fairy and there is no more objective evidence supporting the existence of a magical father-figure in the sky than any of those other myths. But, the power of tradition and self-delusion is strong.
Further, I do not see one particular modern, monotheistic religion as any better than any other. Islam, Christianity and Judaism are all equally full of error, illogic and outright hatred.
Error: Can you really believe that a flaming shrub talked to some guy in a desert? Or that a man was murdered by the Roman legions and came back to life only to fly off into the clouds? Or that a man flew through the air on horseback from one “holy” city to another only to then fly up into the clouds (a common theme).
Illogic: Consider the problem of evil. All religions say that their god is “all-good” and “all-powerful” and yet there is always evil in the world. And not just the evil that people do to each other (which the religious explain away as their god giving humanity free will) but the earthquakes, tsunami, genetic diseases and more that kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people every year. If god is all powerful then he either causes such disasters to happen or allows them to happen and is then himself responsible for doing evil. If you are all-powerful, then you are all-responsible, if you are all-responsible and you allow evil to exist, then you cannot be all-good. Believers explain this away by saying that “god works in mysterious ways”, but that is a dodge. What “plan” could an all-powerful, all-good god have that requires innocent children to die in a Haitian earthquake as buildings come down around them or due to birth defects? The whole concept of an all-powerful god is completely illogical and morally offensive.
Hate: Since any human with average intelligence can see that the idea of an all powerful god is ridiculous, the only way traditional religion can perpetuate itself is through fear, ignorance and hate (with a little guilt thrown in for good measure.)
Richard Dawkins says it best: “The god of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticide, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sado-masochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” Even if such a god existed, I don’t believe it would be worth worshiping.
Undeniably, there are some positive things in what many people see as “holy” books. Directives to love your neighbor, or give to charity or not kill people. I was raised well enough that I do not need the ever present fear of “eternal damnation” to prevent me from killing another human being. If someone does, they should just go to a hospital right now and turn themselves in.
All of the positive messages in those old books, what few exist, are buried in centuries of superstition, whose inherent contradictions allow “prophets” and preachers to scare followers to provide them with power and profit; usually by convincing their “flock” to feel guilt about things they should not and hating those who are different. I myself never enjoyed being compared to sheep.
Albert Einstein didn’t believe in a personal, “magic” god either, and so was not conventionally religious. But that does not mean that those of us who reject the naïve thinking that leads to such belief are without deeper feelings on the mysteries of the universe. Einstein said, “The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as all serious endeavor in art and science. He who never had this experience seems to me, if not dead, then at least blind. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is a something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious. To me it suffices to wonder at these secrets and to attempt humbly to grasp with my mind a mere image of the lofty structure of all that there is.”
No god necessary. Just a mind willing to appreciate and explore the unknown. I will end with a statement that reflects what I accepted a long time ago, “There is probably no god. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” I would only add that we should also allow everyone else to do the same.
There are great, effective systems of ethics that have no need for any god, thousands of years old and yet as new as each person that discovers them. If you want to discuss these ideas more, I would be happy to do so.
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