On Thu, May 2, 2019 at 10:41 PM Samiya Illias <[email protected]> wrote:
> *Considering how vast we have come to realise the Universe to be, do you > honestly think our praise or our insults affect God in any way?* > No I don't think so but the religious do. When I was a grade school kid I had a Catholic catechism that I was suposed to study, it was a series of questions and answers. One of the questions was "Who made me?" and the answer of course was "God made me", that one didn't bother me but even the next question did "Why did God make me?" I had been taught that God was the prime mover, God was the ultimate reason for everything, but if God did things for a reason then obviously He can't be the ultimate reason; and the answer to that stupid question bothered me even more. It came in 3 parts: 1) to know Him In other words to believe He exists, and the less evidence there is that He does the more virtuous the belief. At the time I couldn't figure out why this would be a good thing and I still can't, it seemed more like a good definition of stupidity. And besides if an omnipotent being wanted to convince me He existed He certainly could. The fact that He didn't must mean He didn't want me to believe He existed. 2) To love Him I was told I sure as hell had better love Him because if I didn't a good and loving God would fiendishly torture me for an infinite number of years; and that is the sort of line I'd expect from a human huckster trying to convince me to swallow their particular brand of religious snake oil and is not something I'd expect from a being who was great enough to create the cosmos. 3) To worship him, sometimes stated as to serve Him. So I'm supposed to believe the primary motivation of God, the Prime Motivator, is to get more flattery. Even ignoring the obvious logical contradiction, if that was a person's primary motivation (as it is for Trump for example) it would be considered very small minded, but for a omnipotent omniscient being it's utterly ridiculous. > > *Do you even realise how great the Creator of all this must be?* > Yes, I know exactly how great God is. 42. > > *Do you think God would need any appreciation from us?* > I certainly don't think a omnipotent omniscient being, if such a thing could exist, would be interested in our obsequious flattery, but religious people think differently and that's why they go to houses of worship once a week to brown nose God and hope all the flattery will convince Him to give them stuff, things that range from a better parking space to driving the infidels into the sea. > *Our collective crime* [...] > Speak for yourself, I've committed no crime. That's another hallmark of religion, trying to make people feel guilty for existing. Well I don't feel guilty even if one of my ancestors did eat an apple when told not to, and if God doesn't like it God can lump it. > > [...] *is that we abused our free will* > Free will? What in the world does that mean? > *to go against the Universal Laws.* > I'm not a perfect person but I always obey Universal Law; for example in my entire life I have never once violated the commandment to conserve angular momentum. *> Remembering God through prayer, and Praising God by repeatedly declaring > that God is free from all imperfection, helps us to* [...] > The religious believe that repeatedly declaring that God is sooo big and sooo strong and sooo super nice helps you to keep that super nice being from sticking you into a torture dungeon for eternity. But I don't believe that, I believe the God described in the Bible or the Koran is far more evil than the Satan as described in those books because nothing, absolutely nothing, is more evil than torturing somebody for eternity, not even if it's for the crime of eating a apple when told not to. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
