To that person below who commented about believing in a god is retarded, you cant just drop a statement like that without any support, because the only person who ends up looking retarded is you. So, Ill try to pick up where you left off and maybe we can see an intelligent argument growing here, rather than some buffoons throwing insults at each other. My stance on religion is that man created god (or God) not the other way around. I say this because every culture has its own religion that it creates. There is obviously no way all these religions can be given to man through divine revelation (unless God/gods like to mess with us), which means most if not all religions were created by humans. Even if we look at the three major monotheistic religions, there are aspects of them that may suggest they were created by men. For example, in the Old Testament, God (or Allah or whatever) is depicted as a wrathful god, whereas in the New Testament, he is depicted as a kind and forgiving one. This shift in how religion portrays its deity implies this idea that religion was made by humans. If we take into account human nature, and how greedy and corruptible we are, it makes sense that people would want a system to restrain that. Its clear, even today, that justice on Earth is flawed and many criminals (or sinners) can escape punishment. Thus, it would make sense to create a higher judge for peoples actions, who would punish crimes with eternal flame, which sounds a hell of a lot harsher than what humans could do (literally). If we connect this idea to the shift in the New Testament, we can see again how this new version of religion reflects how humans may have created religion. Lets say that by that time all the fear that God instilled in people faded away, and so religion changed its message by showing a forgiving god, which would have a better reception with people, since people do not want to live their lives in constant fear. This means of instilling morals is more effective than its predecessor, which is why it has endured to this day more or less. Some of you may be asking why man would want to create religion. Other than the reasons Ive already listed, such as establishing order by creating a higher judge, it is an easy way to maintain power. Priests have enjoyed high statuses in almost all ancient societies, and continue to do so today, though to a lesser extent. At some point, the Catholic Church held so much power and wanted to maintain it that it persecuted people who spoke against it, such as Galileo. Thus, there is plenty of reason for creating and maintaining a religion. The more intriguing question is how. The answer to that is quite simple: people are malleable and easy to manipulate. Children are easy to manipulate and feed information to, which is how Im guessing most of you came to follow your religion and explains how it can easily permeate generation to generation. People also often listen to authority figures (priests) and accept their knowledge without question. This submission to authority can be seen even in modern psychology with the famous Milgram experiment. As for how Jesus worked, my argument admittedly begins to fall apart. I could be a presumptuous prick and try to deny his existence and that all those books were part of a massive conspiracy, but I will leave this part to other atheists who wish to supplement my argument. Ultimately, I am not saying religion is bad. As I said earlier, it gives people morals and adds an extra layer of order to society. However, I believe more so in progress and feel that believe that as humans we must challenge ideas to evolve. I merely post my argument here and eagerly await what I hope to be intelligent responses. tl:dr - Man created god, not the other way around. Religion was created to give additional order to society and maintain power. Religion is able to continue generation to generation because children have squishy minds. Ultimately religion itself isnt bad, its peoples dogmatic acceptance and inability to question it that worries me. Discuss. An add-on to my essay of a post, sorry if I excluded your religion or didnt discuss it thoroughly, Christians were my primary audience as they are the largest group. If you have any arguments you would like to make though, feel free to post them.
Posted on: Wed, 23 Oct 2013 06:18:28 +0000
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