This is “no stupid questions,” but asking rational questions about religion is a waste of time. In most religions, the answer ultimately “you are too stupid to understand the great plan of god.”
You can debate interpretation of religious texts, or how best to follow the laws religions set down; but questioning articles of faith is fruitless.
Christianity is especially full of self-contradictions and paradoxes: can God create a rock so big he can’t lift it? You can spend a lifetime poking holes in The Bible, and you will never get a rational, satisfactory answer that isn’t based on a version of “you are too stupid/not meant to know.”
Many religions are less paradoxical, but the monotheistic ones are mostly just an unbelievable shit-show, unless you’re especially susceptible to self-delusion.
No apologies to Christians: your religion is a fucking mess. You have to be particularly dumb to read the old and new testaments and come away thinking those are the same God. That the loving, caring one who sacrificed his son for people is the same one who allowed Satan to torture his most faithful worshipper on a bet.
Buddhism and most pagan religions make more sense. Buddhism in particular lacks most of the dependency on mysticism and unprovable articles of faith, and is almost more a philosophy than a religion. Buddhists, I can respect. But Christianity is all sorts of dumb.
Actually, taken by itself, the new testament is mostly OK; if you follow only Christ’s teachings, and ignore the peyote trips of post-crucifixion books, like, Revelations, it’s a solid basis for a society of decent people. But Christ was a liberal socialist, which is why most organized Christianity leans so heavily on the old testament and ignores Christ’s teachings of acceptance, communism, and forgiveness.
Buddhism as it originally was, was more of a philosophy and way of life.
However, as will all organized religion, Buddhism has morphed in Tibet (free Tibet), India, and other places into mysticism with gods, recurring semi-saviors through “reincarnation”, and classist systems and hierarchies. Sad, really. Humans mess everything up for personal gain and control.
You have to be particularly dumb to read the old and new testaments
Do you legitimately think that the same people who get into organized religion, that buy into thought systems that tell them how things are supposed to be and how they should feel about stuff, as a general rule have read their own source material that meticulously?
Yes. Some do. I was raised by a fundamentalist; they read the Bible constantly. Like, book clubs, a couple, three times a week, reading and discussing different parts of the Bible.
By the time I left that home (went to live with mom at 14), I’d read the thing myself four times all the way through, and various sections of it far more often. When dad visits, I hear audio book versions of it playing in the night as they’re getting ready for bed. Self-indoctrination.
IME, they’re not all that unusual in their church.
That’s why I said “as a general rule”. I’m not sure I would consider fundamentalists to be representative of your average Christian - their whole thing is Biblical literalism, after all… I was raised Catholic, in an era where we still had religious courses in school, and I can pretty safely say that pretty much nobody read it outside the bare minimum they had to for First Communion/Confirmation/wedding prep.
The running joke in between me and my wife (who was raised Catholic) is that I rail against papists and she laments the rise of the heretics. The last time either of us set foot in a church was a couple of years ago showing visitors the local cathedral.
When I was growing up, in the mid 20th century, I don’t remember “fundamentalists” being a thing. Bible study was pretty common in every church we attended; we moved around a lot between my 8th and 18th birthdays. It was just bog standard Protestant Christianity. But we did attend church a fair amount. For the few years after the divorce, dad had us in church twice on Sunday and once on Wednesday evenings. And I know we switched cities and churches three times in that period.
I think there are people who wear their religion as a justification for lamentable personal opinions but who know little about what it’s really about. Then there are people like my father who’ve made religion their personality and are deeply read, and who still somehow have focused on the most horrible take-aways. And then there are folks who talk the talk but don’t walk the walk, and this is probably the majority.
You don’t have to read it meticulously to see the contrast he’s taking about.
But few actually read it at all. They say they do, but their reading consists of looking up verse numbers they saw on bumper stickers, leafing through the first pages of Genesis, and occasionally reading a random page only to say to themselves, so silently that they are not actually conscious of it: “hm well I don’t know what all that old timey language means but I’m going to go see what’s in the fridge now.”
Oh, that’s for sure. The thing is, you need to be open to the idea that there could be contradictions to realize they are there. If you approach your readings already believing that you are a mere sinner who, in the end, can’t really understand God’s Plan™, it gets easier to brush off the inconsistencies.
This is “no stupid questions,” but asking rational questions about religion is a waste of time. In most religions, the answer ultimately “you are too stupid to understand the great plan of god.”
You can debate interpretation of religious texts, or how best to follow the laws religions set down; but questioning articles of faith is fruitless.
Christianity is especially full of self-contradictions and paradoxes: can God create a rock so big he can’t lift it? You can spend a lifetime poking holes in The Bible, and you will never get a rational, satisfactory answer that isn’t based on a version of “you are too stupid/not meant to know.”
Many religions are less paradoxical, but the monotheistic ones are mostly just an unbelievable shit-show, unless you’re especially susceptible to self-delusion.
No apologies to Christians: your religion is a fucking mess. You have to be particularly dumb to read the old and new testaments and come away thinking those are the same God. That the loving, caring one who sacrificed his son for people is the same one who allowed Satan to torture his most faithful worshipper on a bet.
Buddhism and most pagan religions make more sense. Buddhism in particular lacks most of the dependency on mysticism and unprovable articles of faith, and is almost more a philosophy than a religion. Buddhists, I can respect. But Christianity is all sorts of dumb.
Actually, taken by itself, the new testament is mostly OK; if you follow only Christ’s teachings, and ignore the peyote trips of post-crucifixion books, like, Revelations, it’s a solid basis for a society of decent people. But Christ was a liberal socialist, which is why most organized Christianity leans so heavily on the old testament and ignores Christ’s teachings of acceptance, communism, and forgiveness.
Nice … now I need to learn more about Buddhism and use an ice pick to remove all the information I have about the Christian Bible.
Buddhism as it originally was, was more of a philosophy and way of life.
However, as will all organized religion, Buddhism has morphed in Tibet (free Tibet), India, and other places into mysticism with gods, recurring semi-saviors through “reincarnation”, and classist systems and hierarchies. Sad, really. Humans mess everything up for personal gain and control.
Do you legitimately think that the same people who get into organized religion, that buy into thought systems that tell them how things are supposed to be and how they should feel about stuff, as a general rule have read their own source material that meticulously?
Yes. Some do. I was raised by a fundamentalist; they read the Bible constantly. Like, book clubs, a couple, three times a week, reading and discussing different parts of the Bible.
By the time I left that home (went to live with mom at 14), I’d read the thing myself four times all the way through, and various sections of it far more often. When dad visits, I hear audio book versions of it playing in the night as they’re getting ready for bed. Self-indoctrination.
IME, they’re not all that unusual in their church.
That’s why I said “as a general rule”. I’m not sure I would consider fundamentalists to be representative of your average Christian - their whole thing is Biblical literalism, after all… I was raised Catholic, in an era where we still had religious courses in school, and I can pretty safely say that pretty much nobody read it outside the bare minimum they had to for First Communion/Confirmation/wedding prep.
The running joke in between me and my wife (who was raised Catholic) is that I rail against papists and she laments the rise of the heretics. The last time either of us set foot in a church was a couple of years ago showing visitors the local cathedral.
When I was growing up, in the mid 20th century, I don’t remember “fundamentalists” being a thing. Bible study was pretty common in every church we attended; we moved around a lot between my 8th and 18th birthdays. It was just bog standard Protestant Christianity. But we did attend church a fair amount. For the few years after the divorce, dad had us in church twice on Sunday and once on Wednesday evenings. And I know we switched cities and churches three times in that period.
I think there are people who wear their religion as a justification for lamentable personal opinions but who know little about what it’s really about. Then there are people like my father who’ve made religion their personality and are deeply read, and who still somehow have focused on the most horrible take-aways. And then there are folks who talk the talk but don’t walk the walk, and this is probably the majority.
You don’t have to read it meticulously to see the contrast he’s taking about.
But few actually read it at all. They say they do, but their reading consists of looking up verse numbers they saw on bumper stickers, leafing through the first pages of Genesis, and occasionally reading a random page only to say to themselves, so silently that they are not actually conscious of it: “hm well I don’t know what all that old timey language means but I’m going to go see what’s in the fridge now.”
Oh, that’s for sure. The thing is, you need to be open to the idea that there could be contradictions to realize they are there. If you approach your readings already believing that you are a mere sinner who, in the end, can’t really understand God’s Plan™, it gets easier to brush off the inconsistencies.