The Truth Will Set You Free...
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| …from Religion |
📖 Why go to church? [2/2]
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This article is Part 2 of an email thread that began with the question, “Why go to church?”. Read Why go to church? [1/2] first.
This was the response to my initial response:
"We are all sinners and fall short of the glory of God. You quote much of the old testament. Jesus changed that, He died for our sins. I pray that you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior."This was my response:
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It’s true that I quoted the old testament. I’m glad we can agree that the old testament can be dismissed as irrelevant at best, but my main points deal with the new testament. The new testament condones slavery, yet claims god is love. Love does not condone slavery. This should be obvious to any thinking person. If you’re going to personify love, you have to do better than the new testament god, because that’s just another obvious failed attempt. It’s certainly not the word of Love. I hope I don’t know anyone who condones slavery. So, as far as I know, I don’t know anyone whose morals could be improved by this deeply flawed book. The god of the new testament as well as the old, has repeatedly fallen short of the most basic principles of morality, and that’s not love.
You don’t have to pray for me, because no one’s sins have ever been absolved by the killing of an innocent person. No human sacrifice was ever good news. That’s not how morality works. Every human sacrifice (murdering the innocent as atonement for sin) has been and still is a sick twisted act of unimaginable lunacy. Jesus did not end the belief in human sacrifice. The story of Jesus has prolonged this belief, as you exemplify by saying, “He died for our sins.” It doesn’t make it any better if it’s a good person (or a pure person without sin), as the sadistic theory goes. It doesn’t matter if it was last week or at the dawn of the age, it’s still an immoral act that would never be condoned by Love, let alone required by any moral being. Why couldn’t he just forgive people? Do you want to know how to forgive someone? You just decide to forgive them. That’s how you do it. How is it that the almighty god doesn’t have the power that every other living being has? At some point, your faith has to hold up to your questions, and if it doesn’t, then it’s time to change your belief system to a more rational moral view. To accept a human sacrifice as a legitimate effective act, is a moral low point to which I cannot stoop, and neither should you.
I understand why you believe it. Your parents, grandparents, and family going back generations probably believed it, because it’s embedded in the culture. In fact, the only difference between a cult and religion is size. Once a cult becomes large enough to influence an entire population’s culture, it acquires the status of religion. Popularity doesn’t make the beliefs any more rational. Thinking for yourself is difficult, which is why so few people do it. Even though, everything I said should be pretty obvious, it’s difficult for anyone to think outside their own cultural paradigm.
Your belief system requires you to not question. "Blessed are those who believe without seeing.”(John 20:29). Blind faith is seen as a virtue, when it’s actually a dangerous requirement of any religion. Since they are all made up, unquestioning blind faith is imperative to keep up the big lie. An honest belief would welcome scrutiny. "Lean not on your own understanding."(Proverbs 3:5). This fear of thinking should be your first sign as to the dishonesty of the doctrine. The fear of questioning is built into religion, as it is with any propaganda system. Allegiance to a party, team, or group, rather than principles, is not morality. Admiring the rich while obeying authority is not morality, it’s authoritarian. Anything worth doing in life (aside from immediate concerns of survival) ultimately deals in some way with questioning authority and the status quo. The least we can do is advocate for improving the system, while dismantling authority whenever it’s found to be illegitimate. And, that also holds true for any imagined celestial dictator. Don’t forget I went to church for twenty years, and every sermon had at least one message about the dangers of thinking, and the danger of any person who might make you question. Beware of the fast talker. It’s a ploy to make people afraid of rational thought, or any honest question about religion. Because, if you allow yourself to think for two minutes without fear, everything I just said will become absolutely clear.
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Post by: Kurt Riebel: artist, activist
#ThinkLove #ThinkLoveIdeas #Atheism #Resist @uResist
T H I N K L O V E I D E A S
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