Unholy
07-02-2007, 08:00 AM
Religion, is it helping, or hurting?
Warning: If you are going to be a little ***** about the contents of this article, then don’t read it. I’ve warned you, you can’t take offence to this article, it is well reasoned, thought out, and provided in the most succinct and straight forward way possible. If you can provide counter arguments in such a well presented manner then I would be willing to hear you out.
People seem to think that Atheists, or to a less extreme extent, I’ll include agnostics, have life easy. They don’t follow a determined religion or faith, they don’t have to abide by these special rules depicted by a holy doctrine, they don’t have to keep days holy or repent for their sins. In fact, if there is no god, there would be no sin at all, removing this moral restriction put in place by this all seeing entity to give mankind a moral balance.
This on first appearance, may seem to be an attack on religion, putting restrictions on people lives, it however is not an attack, but showing that despite these restrictions, following a religion is an easy path. For starters, religion makes up the biggest part of the world. With the band of Atheists/Agnostics being between 15 and 20 percent of the world’s population, on a ‘religion vs. not’ comparison, it is easily the minority. This leads to the question of how many people who follow a religion are there because they made an educated decision, or because the people around them did it, a large scale form of peer pressure causing people to not just follow something but actually put their entire being into believing something just because others do, without even realizing it.
I was raised as a Christian boy, I went to church on Sundays, I went to a Christian school and I took religious classes. We started the day with morning prayer, we sang songs to the lord and we listened to scripture and learnt about the wonders of God. Then I reached the age of around 11, where people start to question these belief systems so religion fights back. I was brought forward many stories about God healing the sick, or things disproving evolution. In fact, my school refused to teach us evolution ‘because it was against their beliefs” I wasn’t even given the choice to hear the other side of the story. I was even told stories of “devil workers” that had actual super human powers because of their evil. Honest, these stories were told as truth, as happening to a teacher of mine, and for shortness sake, I won’t go into the entire thing.
So here I was, oblivious to the outside, used to affirming my belief with “I have faith” and “I wasn’t pond scum” and “If we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys today, why aren’t they evolving?” These are actual statements I had heard from teachers and others of my religious faith that I had adopted also as my evidence towards my beliefs. It wasn’t until I changed from my Private Christian school to a higher education public school that I was exposed to outside influence.
This could have been the devil tricking me, I however wasn’t presented a devil wrapped gift to tempt me from my path of righteousness, but a logical and well presented argument. It was so well developed and made so much sense, that my deep faith of the majority of my life, was already beginning to be persuaded. As I learnt the actual theory of evolution, I began to see just how ignorant those that had taught me previously had been. They were preaching the word of god, without even knowing the other side. What became important to me, was not whether there was a God or not, but seeking the truth.
If there was to indeed be an afterlife, it should be an essential part of life, obtaining access would be key. If this life is so short, surely eternity is far more important. With my exposure to evolutionary science, I did not see it as evidence that there was no God, nor did I see it as immediately true, but what I did see was that I was a really good explanation for something far beyond our comprehension.
As I got older and became I’d say, a little more cynical, I began to see just how often humans will find a supernatural cause for anything that they don’t immediately understand. Ghosts, Psychics, all that super natural higher than us assorted things, all are attempts by humans to explain something that isn’t immediately apparent to them. Being a great lover of magic as I was young, and refreshed to this day, it is easy to make an elaborate assumption for something that in principal was quite simple. If a card is lost in the deck, then located, the obvious conclusion is not that it was magic, but that the card was never actually lost. Yet with magic this is obvious, this is well known, and yet we subdue ourselves to believe and just enjoy the show at having no idea how we were deceived, yet we know we were.
This is where things get dangerous, when we are being deceived without us even knowing it. If you believe that Ghosts are real, and that you can actually contact the dead, then this supporting evidence will probably hold no value for you, and I am not here to try and debunk these beliefs as many people over the years have shown the ways of these industries to be fraudulent, yet people will still refuse to believe it is all a scam. These industries, use the unknown to their advantage, taking common principals and using them on the oblivious for personal gain. They are basically selfish magicians, taking the wonder and showmanship out of magic, and turning it into a vile and disgusting mutation of what would be a form of entertainment into a much more sinister approach leeching of the unknowing.
You may be wondering what this has to do with religion. If you are wondering this, then you have probably missed my point entirely. If religion is simply another easy explanation that humans believe because there is no proof against it, then this is cause for major concern. How would you feel if you were conned? Most people have probably fallen for a con in their life, tricked into believing a lie, or paying for something bogus, it happens every day. Of course, the best con, is one that you never actually understand that you are being conned.
If you were trying to con someone to do something you wanted them to do, there would be a number of ways to do this. Firstly you would appear to be a good guy, someone with a moral background so that people will easily trust you. Then once you have that person on side, you would offer them your point on view on things. Then whenever you encounter questions that would expose your con, you would say “Don’t worry about it” or “Everything is sorted” or “That doesn’t matter”. Meanwhile you would make out that you need to spread your ideas to others. This requires transport, accommodation, food, etc, so that they should give you money if they want to help you spread the word. Then you do this a number of times, and eventually you can stop spreading the word and they start coming to you.
To me, religion marks a striking resemblance to a con. You are taught something, usually like myself from a very young age, then when you question these ideas you are given often incorrect rebuttals offered as fact or are forced to remain oblivious and told that all will be ok as long as you have faith. Faith is not something I have a problem with, it’s blind faith that I have the problem with. I have no problem having faith that my mother would leave me to die on the side of the street, I have faith that the sun will rise tomorrow, I have faith that probably no one will ever read this but myself in a few years time when I stumble upon this and wonder what I was smoking at the time.
Religion doesn’t however offer faith in that sense, a faith based on previous experience. If offers blind faith, faith that should not only be unconditional but has no previous belief behind it. I will try and avoid pointing out the numerous inconsistencies with Christianity, such as praying for what you need, but if God gives you what you need, there is no point asking, and praying is actually a selfish act whether praying for yourself or for others. Praying would be trying to change God’s predetermined plans, and questioning God is without doubt a bad idea. Now that I’ve got that out of my system I will point out why religion doesn’t offer a basis for the faith.
I will use Christianity for a basis for most of this as it is the one I have had direct contact with and know the most about and I wish to remain as factual as I can to avoid assuming things. However most religions are quiet similar in structure and for those religions which aren’t, then they don’t’ share the characteristics that I find appalling with religion and are thus exempt from any of the ramblings in this document.
In Christianity you are given the Bible which although there is no actual evidence showing that any of it was specifically written at the time, nor that whether it is metaphorical, or literal. In fact very little is known about the specific validity of the bible when account events, considering great portions of the bible are songs, dreams, and written in collaboration by many people. Some would consider the bible like a old age Wikipedia, though sworn on by some, all Wikipedia articles are read with an air of caution because we know that anyone could have modified it at any time to say anything and unless its “Steve smells like ass” it could actually be quiet believable, but be the opposite to truth. The mere fact the bible is so inconsistent when it comes to what is good and what is bad, and many other things, would seem to be evidence to support this outlook that the Bible can hardly be seen as a solid source of evidence towards the religion.
Other than the bible the only evidence put forth is life. That God made life, because life is so complicated it couldn’t have possibly been created by chance. However, this is assuming God made life. It would be like stumbling into an inventors office only to find him dead, with no proof that he invented the things inside the office, it would be easy to take credit for them and no one would question it. There is no actual proof that God made life, he just simply happened to be there at the time. Man saw life, and didn’t find a creator for it, so man created the creator. Since whether or not created life is purely speculation it would seem apparent that there is actually no evidence towards the religion at all, and that total blind faith is required.
So what’s wrong with blind faith? The fact it’s based on ignorance. It’s not based on knowledge or fore-sight or any of the higher reasoning skills that separate us from the other species on the planet, it is based on absolutely nothing. You are supposed to believe, and that is it, then you are supposed to argue for this belief with no actual substantial evidence so you simply challenge people to prove you are wrong, rather than proving you are right. In law you are innocent until proven guilty. You are innocent, and they must prove that you committed the crime. In religion, they claim that they are right, then leave everyone else to prove them wrong. Assuming, that because no one can disprove the existence of God, that God must exist. This idea appears to be absolutely ridiculous to me, and how the majority of the planet can believe it I cannot fathom, yet people seem to think that because there is no evidence disproving their faith that their faith must be valid.
This leads into those that believe just because it is convenient. If there is a heaven, and you’re an atheist, you don’t get in (this is ignoring whether or not there is a hell or not). If you’re a Christian and there is no heaven, then you don’t lose anything. So really, being a Christian is really a get out of jail free card; you never lose, you just don’t win. This is actually one of the things that held me onto my beliefs for so long, I figured that I may not totally believe in God, but believing in him couldn’t really hurt. The reason I finally abandoned these ideas is because I realized that ignorant stance that it couldn’t hurt was exactly what caused problems.
The religious high ground is what appears to be holding back humanity. Science, having to constantly battle with the overwhelming opposition of the religious community has been held back for centuries. You may claim that this is because scientists are amoral and that they are trying to play God. You see, if there is no God, than man is not playing God, but doing what God fails to do. If there is no God, man must provide what God refuses to, and do what he must to obtain survival. This would appear arrogant, self-righteous, or whatever you may feel, but looking through history other than the initial creation of the planet, everything we have today, man has made himself. You can claim God inspired man, or created that man for that task, but man has been looking after himself, and must continue to do so if he like every other species wishes to survive.
This would bring us back to my very first mentioning that atheists are free of moral restrictions in place by religion. Atheists however are generally not the ones that are just blindly following something they are told, atheists not only have to actively pursue the knowledge and evidence, but they must work twice as hard because being a science, questioning evolution is allowed, it’s not a taboo. These people want to know the truth because the truth is what will help mankind. They do not ignore God to be free from moral restriction, but they ignore god because the idea is holding back mankind.
Mankind has almost globally ignored all the Gods before our time: Egyptian, Greek, Roman, etc have all been considered fake gods. Almost ridiculous gods, laughable even “Sun God, hah!” yet there is a magical acceptance for the one god that you believe in, for some reason, that god isn’t ridiculous but he is majestic and all powerful. This belief in the fact that we should not question God is holding back science into the new frontiers because modern science is a lot like playing God. If it providing new things thought as impossible, or super human, and this is causing outrage that it is amoral to do such things.
How it can be seen that healing people can be considered evil I will never understand. Or moving into new fields never before conceived, can be considered amoral, or evil. I just want to see the best for mankind, I don’t want us to be held back by belief systems that are archaic. Reasonable in the days before there was science, but with science rapidly trying to make sense of the world, cutting it off to a belief in God not only seems ignorant but out right dangerous to the good of the species. If there is a God, and there is a Hell, I will proudly burn there for eternity for my beliefs, because if there is indeed a God that requires blind faith to prove loyalty, hindering man kinds development, then I say there has to be something seriously wrong with that God.
I will end this here, because well it’s a draft, so I can always add more later so it doesn’t really matter. All in all however I believe that this is plenty to prove my beliefs that are easily apparent now towards religion and may offer an understanding not only into my belief, but perhaps lead you to at least question your own, for I do not seek to destroy God, simply question him.
Warning: If you are going to be a little ***** about the contents of this article, then don’t read it. I’ve warned you, you can’t take offence to this article, it is well reasoned, thought out, and provided in the most succinct and straight forward way possible. If you can provide counter arguments in such a well presented manner then I would be willing to hear you out.
People seem to think that Atheists, or to a less extreme extent, I’ll include agnostics, have life easy. They don’t follow a determined religion or faith, they don’t have to abide by these special rules depicted by a holy doctrine, they don’t have to keep days holy or repent for their sins. In fact, if there is no god, there would be no sin at all, removing this moral restriction put in place by this all seeing entity to give mankind a moral balance.
This on first appearance, may seem to be an attack on religion, putting restrictions on people lives, it however is not an attack, but showing that despite these restrictions, following a religion is an easy path. For starters, religion makes up the biggest part of the world. With the band of Atheists/Agnostics being between 15 and 20 percent of the world’s population, on a ‘religion vs. not’ comparison, it is easily the minority. This leads to the question of how many people who follow a religion are there because they made an educated decision, or because the people around them did it, a large scale form of peer pressure causing people to not just follow something but actually put their entire being into believing something just because others do, without even realizing it.
I was raised as a Christian boy, I went to church on Sundays, I went to a Christian school and I took religious classes. We started the day with morning prayer, we sang songs to the lord and we listened to scripture and learnt about the wonders of God. Then I reached the age of around 11, where people start to question these belief systems so religion fights back. I was brought forward many stories about God healing the sick, or things disproving evolution. In fact, my school refused to teach us evolution ‘because it was against their beliefs” I wasn’t even given the choice to hear the other side of the story. I was even told stories of “devil workers” that had actual super human powers because of their evil. Honest, these stories were told as truth, as happening to a teacher of mine, and for shortness sake, I won’t go into the entire thing.
So here I was, oblivious to the outside, used to affirming my belief with “I have faith” and “I wasn’t pond scum” and “If we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys today, why aren’t they evolving?” These are actual statements I had heard from teachers and others of my religious faith that I had adopted also as my evidence towards my beliefs. It wasn’t until I changed from my Private Christian school to a higher education public school that I was exposed to outside influence.
This could have been the devil tricking me, I however wasn’t presented a devil wrapped gift to tempt me from my path of righteousness, but a logical and well presented argument. It was so well developed and made so much sense, that my deep faith of the majority of my life, was already beginning to be persuaded. As I learnt the actual theory of evolution, I began to see just how ignorant those that had taught me previously had been. They were preaching the word of god, without even knowing the other side. What became important to me, was not whether there was a God or not, but seeking the truth.
If there was to indeed be an afterlife, it should be an essential part of life, obtaining access would be key. If this life is so short, surely eternity is far more important. With my exposure to evolutionary science, I did not see it as evidence that there was no God, nor did I see it as immediately true, but what I did see was that I was a really good explanation for something far beyond our comprehension.
As I got older and became I’d say, a little more cynical, I began to see just how often humans will find a supernatural cause for anything that they don’t immediately understand. Ghosts, Psychics, all that super natural higher than us assorted things, all are attempts by humans to explain something that isn’t immediately apparent to them. Being a great lover of magic as I was young, and refreshed to this day, it is easy to make an elaborate assumption for something that in principal was quite simple. If a card is lost in the deck, then located, the obvious conclusion is not that it was magic, but that the card was never actually lost. Yet with magic this is obvious, this is well known, and yet we subdue ourselves to believe and just enjoy the show at having no idea how we were deceived, yet we know we were.
This is where things get dangerous, when we are being deceived without us even knowing it. If you believe that Ghosts are real, and that you can actually contact the dead, then this supporting evidence will probably hold no value for you, and I am not here to try and debunk these beliefs as many people over the years have shown the ways of these industries to be fraudulent, yet people will still refuse to believe it is all a scam. These industries, use the unknown to their advantage, taking common principals and using them on the oblivious for personal gain. They are basically selfish magicians, taking the wonder and showmanship out of magic, and turning it into a vile and disgusting mutation of what would be a form of entertainment into a much more sinister approach leeching of the unknowing.
You may be wondering what this has to do with religion. If you are wondering this, then you have probably missed my point entirely. If religion is simply another easy explanation that humans believe because there is no proof against it, then this is cause for major concern. How would you feel if you were conned? Most people have probably fallen for a con in their life, tricked into believing a lie, or paying for something bogus, it happens every day. Of course, the best con, is one that you never actually understand that you are being conned.
If you were trying to con someone to do something you wanted them to do, there would be a number of ways to do this. Firstly you would appear to be a good guy, someone with a moral background so that people will easily trust you. Then once you have that person on side, you would offer them your point on view on things. Then whenever you encounter questions that would expose your con, you would say “Don’t worry about it” or “Everything is sorted” or “That doesn’t matter”. Meanwhile you would make out that you need to spread your ideas to others. This requires transport, accommodation, food, etc, so that they should give you money if they want to help you spread the word. Then you do this a number of times, and eventually you can stop spreading the word and they start coming to you.
To me, religion marks a striking resemblance to a con. You are taught something, usually like myself from a very young age, then when you question these ideas you are given often incorrect rebuttals offered as fact or are forced to remain oblivious and told that all will be ok as long as you have faith. Faith is not something I have a problem with, it’s blind faith that I have the problem with. I have no problem having faith that my mother would leave me to die on the side of the street, I have faith that the sun will rise tomorrow, I have faith that probably no one will ever read this but myself in a few years time when I stumble upon this and wonder what I was smoking at the time.
Religion doesn’t however offer faith in that sense, a faith based on previous experience. If offers blind faith, faith that should not only be unconditional but has no previous belief behind it. I will try and avoid pointing out the numerous inconsistencies with Christianity, such as praying for what you need, but if God gives you what you need, there is no point asking, and praying is actually a selfish act whether praying for yourself or for others. Praying would be trying to change God’s predetermined plans, and questioning God is without doubt a bad idea. Now that I’ve got that out of my system I will point out why religion doesn’t offer a basis for the faith.
I will use Christianity for a basis for most of this as it is the one I have had direct contact with and know the most about and I wish to remain as factual as I can to avoid assuming things. However most religions are quiet similar in structure and for those religions which aren’t, then they don’t’ share the characteristics that I find appalling with religion and are thus exempt from any of the ramblings in this document.
In Christianity you are given the Bible which although there is no actual evidence showing that any of it was specifically written at the time, nor that whether it is metaphorical, or literal. In fact very little is known about the specific validity of the bible when account events, considering great portions of the bible are songs, dreams, and written in collaboration by many people. Some would consider the bible like a old age Wikipedia, though sworn on by some, all Wikipedia articles are read with an air of caution because we know that anyone could have modified it at any time to say anything and unless its “Steve smells like ass” it could actually be quiet believable, but be the opposite to truth. The mere fact the bible is so inconsistent when it comes to what is good and what is bad, and many other things, would seem to be evidence to support this outlook that the Bible can hardly be seen as a solid source of evidence towards the religion.
Other than the bible the only evidence put forth is life. That God made life, because life is so complicated it couldn’t have possibly been created by chance. However, this is assuming God made life. It would be like stumbling into an inventors office only to find him dead, with no proof that he invented the things inside the office, it would be easy to take credit for them and no one would question it. There is no actual proof that God made life, he just simply happened to be there at the time. Man saw life, and didn’t find a creator for it, so man created the creator. Since whether or not created life is purely speculation it would seem apparent that there is actually no evidence towards the religion at all, and that total blind faith is required.
So what’s wrong with blind faith? The fact it’s based on ignorance. It’s not based on knowledge or fore-sight or any of the higher reasoning skills that separate us from the other species on the planet, it is based on absolutely nothing. You are supposed to believe, and that is it, then you are supposed to argue for this belief with no actual substantial evidence so you simply challenge people to prove you are wrong, rather than proving you are right. In law you are innocent until proven guilty. You are innocent, and they must prove that you committed the crime. In religion, they claim that they are right, then leave everyone else to prove them wrong. Assuming, that because no one can disprove the existence of God, that God must exist. This idea appears to be absolutely ridiculous to me, and how the majority of the planet can believe it I cannot fathom, yet people seem to think that because there is no evidence disproving their faith that their faith must be valid.
This leads into those that believe just because it is convenient. If there is a heaven, and you’re an atheist, you don’t get in (this is ignoring whether or not there is a hell or not). If you’re a Christian and there is no heaven, then you don’t lose anything. So really, being a Christian is really a get out of jail free card; you never lose, you just don’t win. This is actually one of the things that held me onto my beliefs for so long, I figured that I may not totally believe in God, but believing in him couldn’t really hurt. The reason I finally abandoned these ideas is because I realized that ignorant stance that it couldn’t hurt was exactly what caused problems.
The religious high ground is what appears to be holding back humanity. Science, having to constantly battle with the overwhelming opposition of the religious community has been held back for centuries. You may claim that this is because scientists are amoral and that they are trying to play God. You see, if there is no God, than man is not playing God, but doing what God fails to do. If there is no God, man must provide what God refuses to, and do what he must to obtain survival. This would appear arrogant, self-righteous, or whatever you may feel, but looking through history other than the initial creation of the planet, everything we have today, man has made himself. You can claim God inspired man, or created that man for that task, but man has been looking after himself, and must continue to do so if he like every other species wishes to survive.
This would bring us back to my very first mentioning that atheists are free of moral restrictions in place by religion. Atheists however are generally not the ones that are just blindly following something they are told, atheists not only have to actively pursue the knowledge and evidence, but they must work twice as hard because being a science, questioning evolution is allowed, it’s not a taboo. These people want to know the truth because the truth is what will help mankind. They do not ignore God to be free from moral restriction, but they ignore god because the idea is holding back mankind.
Mankind has almost globally ignored all the Gods before our time: Egyptian, Greek, Roman, etc have all been considered fake gods. Almost ridiculous gods, laughable even “Sun God, hah!” yet there is a magical acceptance for the one god that you believe in, for some reason, that god isn’t ridiculous but he is majestic and all powerful. This belief in the fact that we should not question God is holding back science into the new frontiers because modern science is a lot like playing God. If it providing new things thought as impossible, or super human, and this is causing outrage that it is amoral to do such things.
How it can be seen that healing people can be considered evil I will never understand. Or moving into new fields never before conceived, can be considered amoral, or evil. I just want to see the best for mankind, I don’t want us to be held back by belief systems that are archaic. Reasonable in the days before there was science, but with science rapidly trying to make sense of the world, cutting it off to a belief in God not only seems ignorant but out right dangerous to the good of the species. If there is a God, and there is a Hell, I will proudly burn there for eternity for my beliefs, because if there is indeed a God that requires blind faith to prove loyalty, hindering man kinds development, then I say there has to be something seriously wrong with that God.
I will end this here, because well it’s a draft, so I can always add more later so it doesn’t really matter. All in all however I believe that this is plenty to prove my beliefs that are easily apparent now towards religion and may offer an understanding not only into my belief, but perhaps lead you to at least question your own, for I do not seek to destroy God, simply question him.