#religious immorality

[confrontingbabble-on]

Support equal rights. It means that those in an artificially privileged position in society...will lose their unfair advantage...and ability to keep others downtrodden...as they become equal to these others...

...and that will be hard for them to adjust to...

...but it is as it should be...

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

“If you believe that it is morally justifed that a person who lives a noble, compassionate, & honorable life, simply because it is the correct way to live, should be sent to hell for an eternity of torture and punishment for the sole crime of not believing in your god, then you are showing me exactly how skewed your moral compass really is.”

-- The Mad Rabbit

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

“I won’t be told, ‘I have a supernatural offer for you, and if you don’t accept it, you can be tortured forever.’ I won’t be talked to like that. That is the language of fascism and dictatorship. It’s directly immoral, and it’s a great relief to know that it’s completely mythical.”

-- Christopher Hitchens

The beliefs of theists are some of the most profoundly immoral you will ever find. Imagine a god this repugnant being venerated. Unfortunately, many do.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Matthew 12:31-32

Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men.

And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come.

Mark 3:28-29

Verily I say unto you, All sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme:

But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation.

Luke 12:10

And whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but unto him that blasphemeth against the Holy Ghost it shall not be forgiven.

Xianity is a blank check to do literally anything you like, as long as you stay buddy-buddy with Jesus. Bible god will supply whatever forgiveness you need, so you need never bother yourself with seeking it from the person you wronged.

Forgiveness by divine proxy.

This is the word of the lord.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

So, now we’re doing this, @sherlockkittens​.

I don’t care what you post

Yes, you do. Here:

Being so very anti-religion even comparing it to Mental Illness. Is further dividing Atheists and Theists

Once again, the division is between reality and delusion, between claims made by theists based on nothing but mere faith, and non-believers who reject them.

If you want to stop the divide, be silent. And we will be silent. You want us to believe. We just want you to shut your pie-hole. Stop telling us about your gods and we’ll stop telling you we don’t believe you, pointing out everything wrong with your ideas, and telling you that your ideas are stupid.

But remember, you came to me to tell me this. If you didn’t care, you wouldn’t have been in my messages.

I don’t force my faith down anyone’s throats,

Your presence, uninvited, in my messages to lecture me about how your religion isn’t merely an idea - when it is, by definition - that I shouldn’t treat it as such, begs to differ.

You wanted something from me, and you told me what it was from the outset. I took you at your word. Including:

There are certain quotes from the Bible that you have picked that you have done out of context.

No, I haven’t. I’ve even explained the context to believers who insisted it wasn’t true, wasn’t in there, or meant something else. Mostly because they’ve never read it. I’ve pasted entire chapters into my posts to expand their apologetic out into its full explanation. But you wanted me to accept your better interpretation instead. Because your bible makes your beliefs look bad. Mostly because they are.

However, Christianity is very different it is based on the view that Jesus had to die to save humanity from sin.

This is one of the most repugnant, nauseatingly immoral things I've ever heard. Killing someone who didn’t do something to absolve people who did.

Your blood-god couldn’t come up with a better way to absolve its own anger for the sin it created and let loose into the world than to torture a human being to death? What the hell kind of god is this, and why on Earth would you worship this monster?

If your god actually wanted to resolve the problem, it would have. Since in a moment (below) you want me to believe that it’s not resolved, and I’m still at risk, then this is not even a successful torture session. We know that since Jesus was divine and just went home. Blood spell undone.

If your god is a creator god, then it could resolve the issue however it wanted to. Change the rules (that it made) about the requirement for blood magic. Or quietly come to earth as a sheep and die quietly with no spectacle. But your god needs the drama and spectacle. It needs the attention and the bloodshed and the drama and the human angst. Your god is a pathological narcissist.

What’s worse, it means you never have to make amends or seek forgiveness from the person you hurt. Jesus already died to fix the problem. You can get your forgiveness straight from your god, and never ever trouble yourself about your victim.

This is called Scapegoating. Jesus was (in the sense the story says, since there's no evidence the bible character existed at all) lumbered with the sins of the village and then executed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scapegoat

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHYoXHYZZ9A

The old, primitive tribal superstition was to heave the sins of the village onto a goat and then send it out into the wilderness to die of thirst and starvation.

In Xianity, it's called Vicarious Redemption, or Substitutional Atonement. It's the exact same thing. Jesus is the goat.

It means you get to pretend you're not responsible for the things you've done. You get to wash your hands of all the bad things you've ever done because someone else has been punished in your place.

Except you actually can't. You cannot ever remove your responsibility, no matter what silly blood magic sacrifice you perform. That you believe such a proud commitment to immorality, to denying personal responsibility is a good thing is just astonishing.

In any event, I don't owe your Jesus anything. Any more than you owe Odin for destroying all the Ice Giants.

Now you can argue “Well I didn’t ask him to.”. Maybe you didn’t but he did it for you even so. I’m not going to sit here and tell you that you should believe in God because Jesus died for you. I believe in free will you should come to God of your own free will.

If you looked up passive-aggressive condescension in the dictionary, you'd find this paragraph mocking it.

No, you're not telling me that I should believe in your particular god, but you are telling me about this imaginary debt you think I owe it, based entirely on your "faith," and then imply that I should do something about it or else ignore it at my own peril. That you warned me, and now I have only myself to blame. You know, for the unimaginable horrific torture your "all loving" god will inflict upon me. For not believing in it. Or acknowledging this "debt". That I never agreed to.

It's a threat. Wrapped up in smarm, but still a threat. Like the thug who comes around to "remind" the shopkeeper about their "protection" payment. "Nice soul you've got there, be a pity if it got all burned up."

You came into my chat to literally threaten me, and I'm the one who is furthering the "divide" between theists and atheists? Are you for real? You threaten people, then get sanctimonious when they reject you and recognize your threats are imaginary, then you blame them for the "divide." That you created by teating them like an escapee from your cult, rather than a fully-formed individual who isn't damaged or incomplete without your particular god. This "divide" appears to be the name you give to you not getting what you want, the result of non-believers not putting up with your arrogant shit when they don't have to. Is this how Xian love works?

Did you ask Odin to destroy the ice giants? Maybe you didn't, but he did it for you anyway. I'm not going to sit here and tell you that you should believe in Odin because he killed the Ice Giants for you. I believe in free will you should come to Odin of your own free will.

On a completely unrelated topic, did you know that Hel is an underworld realm ruled over by the Norse goddess Hel? And those who do not fight in the way of Odin end up in this cold, gloomy, depressing, melancholy realm with nothing to do for eternity? Isn't that interesting?

Tell me again how I owe someone who never existed for something he never did that I didn't ask for. Go on.

BTW, free will refutes any notion of your god having a plan. If you think your god has a plan for you, saying “I believe in free will” has just made him pfft out of existence. If you don’t understand this, consider whether you can eat anything for lunch tomorrow other than what your god already knows you’ll eat. If you can, he’s not omniscient, and there can be no plan. If you can’t, you don’t have free will.

Ephesians 1:4-5

According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love:

Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will,

Romans 8:29-30

For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.

Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.

If you believe in free will, then you’re denying your god’s will, and whom he has predestined to believe and be saved.

Which is to say, your god is responsible for everybody in hell. The bible says so.

Perhaps open a dialogue between Theists and Atheists in a calm debate.

You came to me to tell me, what was it?

Religion is not an idea it is a belief there is a distinction between them.

I showed you the meaning of idea and belief, that belief is a subset of idea; a belief is an idea that is accepted as true. You then pushed on about how...

we can argue the differences between beliefs and ideals until we are blue in the face.

Except that words are how we convey meaning. And if we can’t agree on what words even mean, and you didn’t, then there’s no point. As I told you.

And you steamrolled on ahead anyway. You didn’t want to get tangled up in words actually meaning things, you needed me to subjected to your testimony - again, uninvited, unbidden - about how... 

Religion is part of an identity,

Which is terrifying in itself. It makes you incapable of rationally analyzing an idea, because your personal identity is wrapped up on it. Which, of course, is what indoctrination is intended to do. So, that part’s working well.

God is also a part of this, He is inseparable from my identity.

Yikes. This is a lifelong commitment to irrationality and unreasonableness. There isn’t anything that would ever convince you that you’re wrong. You’re unable to learn, to grow, to abandon ideas and accept others, to have the joy of finding out you were wrong about something, to change your position, to seek knowledge and understanding, to pursue truth above all else, even if it’s painful.

This is like a bird cutting off its own wings and saying “this nest is my identity.”

You see that as a good thing. i find it horrifying and extremely sad. A thing you believe with nothing better than mere “faith” is “inseparable from [your] identity.”

You’re settling. This is giving up on life, it really is.

I’ve got news for you there are grey areas.

So much for the objective morality believers are so fond of.

Faith and Religion are not logical concepts they are emotional, and you can not separate the two.

Correct. And relying on your emotions is a cognitive flaw/bias called Emotional Reasoning. Which we already know are unreliable. Emotions are manipulatable, malleable and prone to misinterpretation. Unless you commit to living entirely by your emotions, you already know this is true.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/evolution-the-self/201706/what-s-emotional-reasoning-and-why-is-it-such-problem

https://www.healthline.com/health/cognitive-distortions#emotional-reasoning

Emotional reasoning is the false belief that your emotions are the truth — that the way you feel about a situation is a reliable indicator of reality.

While it’s important to listen to, validate, and express emotion, it’s equally important to judge reality based on rational evidence.

Researchers have found that emotional reasoning is a common cognitive distortion. It’s a pattern of thinking that’s used by people with and without anxiety or depression.

So, why would I accept epistemology based on your mere emotions? Especially when someone else’s emotions say that some other god - or some other denomination’s version of your god - is “true”?

You think you’re solving the problem, but you’re not. You’re exposing all the problems with it, and why nobody should pay any attention to you. You’re agreeing that your belief is, by definition, irrational. It’s not logical and it’s not reasonable.

I’m not interested in ideas that are irrational. Especially when they’re incoherent, like a god who is “perfect” but needs worship, or is “good” but works in “mysterious ways.”

As I explained in great detail, faith can’t be used to obtain truth. Because nothing will ever falsify your faith, you’ll just sink in more faith to support it. Because other believers have faith you’re wrong and they’re right. Because if faith can lead them to believe false things that they cannot realize as false, than it can lead you to believe false things and never know it. And because there’s nothing - literally nothing - that cannot be held entirely by faith alone. Nothing so absurd, nothing so immoral, nothing so gross, nothing so weird that faith will not entirely support it.

And that you don’t get to determine their faith is not “genuine” while yours is. Especially when it amounts to you using faith to justify your faith, which is circular.

If you’re using faith, it means you don’t care about truth. And you’ve admitted it just now, in that you rely on how it makes you feel, not its truth.

Truth is demonstrated, not felt. True things are real, meaning they reflect reality, they exist in, influence and are influenced by, reality. If your thing is “true’ then it must reflect or manifest in reality in some way. If you can’t or won’t do the work to substantiate it - and it appears you feel like you’re completely immune to your Burden of Proof - then you’re also relieving me the burden of paying you any attention.

You may think what you are criticising are stupid beliefs but me and the 2.5 billion others disagree with you.

https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Appeal-to-Popularity

It doesn’t matter how many people think your religion is true. It’s either true, or it’s not, on its own merits, not because X number of people believe a thing. Remember when only a few people thought the Earth was spheroidal? Good times.

Also, I don’t care if you disagree with me. That’s my point. I can criticize, analyzie, scrutinize and mock your beliefs. Even - and especially - if you disagree. Because confirmation bubbles and confirmation bias, like emotional reasoning, are a real thing.

It is, for example, through confirmation bias that you frame your silly bandwagon fallacy as "2.6 billion others disagree with you". When that's just another way of saying that 5.2 billion people disagree with you. Even Xianity is a minority. But it's confirmation bias that causes you to see only the "hits" and not the "misses," that more people disagree with Xianity than agree with it. Even though that's irrelevant to truth anyway.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

If that bothers you, you need to ask yourself why it bothers you that I find your beliefs to be stupid. As best as I can tell, it appears to be because you don't want other people to figure it out too.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

https://www.livingwaters.com/ugly-baby-blindness-syndrome/

“wHeN iT sAyS ‘fEaR’ iT jUsT mEaNs ‘lOvE’!!!11!”

Ah yes, the ‘love’ of “the consequences of sin”, the ‘love’ of “Judgement Day or of eternal damnation in hell.”

Mark 10:18

And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God.

Isaiah 64:6

But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.

Ask me again why Xianity is repugnant and immoral, I dare you.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

I’ve never seen the multitudinous threads of Xtianity’s pervasive and wanton immorality coalesced and distilled into such a succinct summary.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

You can ignore this hehe. I'm from a mostly catholic/xtian country. My school hosts a mass every month and is atleast 90% xtian/catholic. There are a lot of people here who go to mass every week, donate goods and money to the church, and praise the lord. And a lot of those people are cheaters, perverts, and thieves. Sometimes, we dont even have enough money to pay the water bill because these g0dLy higher ups gobbles our school funds up.

Religion justifies any kind of behavior because they always have their god(s) to authorize an exception to whatever rules or standards they think should be in place. We see this all the time with Xtians being unfaithful at higher rates, and the percentage having abortions.

There seem to be two possibilities:

They agree with their religion, but their circumstances are special and not like everybody else, for reasons, or

They believe their Xtian denomination got these issues “wrong” and these are actually okay.

Either way, an exception is rationalized. “Having an affair is wrong... but this is different.” “My religion is right... except on this issue.” (Which really opens the door to the religion getting the existence of their god wrong, too.)

Giving another yank on the choke-chain they have their god on, to show it who’s boss.

Thievery can be justified because “god understands.” Cheating is handwaved because “god will forgive me.” Never mind the mere humans who are hurt in the process.

They don’t have to be responsible to their conscience or to society, because they answer to a higher power, and anything fellow humans might have to say on the matter is irrelevant. They’re in the clear morally, and their place in paradise is still secure, as long as their god is satisfied. Which is just a projection of themselves, since the gods always have opinions shockingly similar to the believer.

Their morality is as subjective as anyone else’s but they can feign the moral high ground by authorizing it through their hand-puppet god. So they’ll un-ironically still ask you how you can be moral without (their) god.

(Sorry, this question has been in my Inbox for quite a while.)