As a leftist athiest I just don't see how it would be possible to reconcile the reality of the horrific suffering humanity goes through due to our capitalist hellworld with the belief in an all powerful, all loving creator god as described in abrahamic religions.

Not here to be an obnoxious relijin bad dawkincuck debate bro, I genuinely want to learn something.

  • Spinoza [any]
    ·
    4 years ago

    because a loooooot of the committed christians i meet ascribe an unwieldy amount of power to satan and sometimes other cosmological figures. my aunt once told my two fighting cousins to knock it off, then sat them down and had a serious chat about how the devil was pushing them to fight in order to sow discord in the family. another person i know, after a trip to haiti, told me that they believe that the people who practice witchcraft down there are channelling the power of evil spirits/satan much in the same way as christians might use the lord's power to perform miracles or whatever

    none of these people would admit to being polytheistic. the thing is if you wanna be monotheistic, you gotta swallow the whole pill, avoid the problem of evil, and accept that god is responsible for cooking up the steaming slice of blueperry pie swirled in with fresh diarrhea that is life

      • Spinoza [any]
        ·
        4 years ago

        to me monotheistic is not an identity label. it is a description of a particular kind of cosmology (in the anthropological sense) that many self-identified christians reject. i should really clarify that i'm less talking about the rich, segmented, hierarchical cosmology of traditional catholicism, and i'm not trying to argue that angels are gods. the old testament also has a very rich but very different cosmology, and the devil in there doesn't end up being a particularly relevant figure.

        this also means that i very much overstated in my initial comment. i wouldn't say most denominations anymore, although the attitude has spread.

        it's the modern americanized evangelical theology i'm pointing at when i say these things. why? because they've gotten so horny for god that they refuse to accept what was once completely unquestionable - that god can be pretty nasty when he wants to be. poor job. the o.t. god never would have promised a utopia, and after constantine the newly institutionalized church had a lot of use for a pre-packaged belief system with a mean dude at the top. the devil can be blamed for the fall but he doesn't reappear as an active force beyond whatever other demons and evil spirits might be around until recently.

        but now, he's made a pretty big comeback in many circles. for the people who are actually fighting off satan every day of their lives, who actually believed obama worshipped the devil, and who actually believe that if you have sex you're letting him take control over you, and who use phrases like "attack and dethrone god", have a cosmology that far more resembles a clash of good and evil deities on the same playing field than it does that of actual monotheistic religions. the degree to which this applies varies from person to person, and i know plenty of people for whom it doesn't. but it is more and more prevalent