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.
God created us to be hunter gatherers, everything after that is on us
Also, the pursuit of "knowledge of good and evil" in the form of agricultural advancement/cultivation is our original sin that separated us into classes, patriarchy, etc and reconciling that is what revelations is all about, when the meek will inherit the earth they have toiled in for millennia
I beleive the original sin was not knowledge of technology but the false knowledge of socially constructed differences. They put clothes on because they were, embarrassed? God was like, "oh no these fucks invented gender, well shit thats gonna cause alot of suffering and oppression, fucking fuck."
Free will means god is powerless to save us from ourselves.
Agreed, I only phrased it that way because the social structures came out of the changes in production. The sin is the division, absolutely
Well if you want to just limit yourself to abrahamic religions there is already millennia of theology discussing that question. But also religious does not imply a believe in god, and belief in god doesn't imply the characterization you gave of god. I'm not religious but this seems like a poorly thought out question with incorrect assertions built into it .
Ok, I took a total of 30 seconds to write up with that question as an informal way of asking other people their opinions since I decided to stop lurking.
I would go and read this "millennia of theology" but I obviously wanted to hear the opinions of other likeminded people first. I also understand the suspicion towards new accounts, but I see no reason to be this hostile, I mean no harm.
While I am no longer particularly religious, I am culturally Jewish and was raised Jewish. We don't really talk about God being universally "good" the way that Christians do. In the Torah, God does lots of things that aren't good and many of which cause suffering. God is worshipped in the way that somebody would respect their parents or swear fealty to a king, not in the Christian sense of being a perfect being.
My apologies, I will reformat the question to make explicit my implicit assumption that "religion" = "abrahamic religion".
What religion do you believe in?
Sorry I've never heard of Mahayana Buddhism, but I have always been curious about the concept of enlightenment.
May I ask what enlightenment means to you?
I have been absorbed in Buddhist readings lately and it makes me happy that there are people on this website I could talk about it with, as there is no Buddhist presence in my city. I would also add that the Noble Eightfold Path is an important aspect of enlightenment as it is how one achieves liberation.
Would you mind telling me about Mahayana Buddhism? Specifically how it differs from other forms of Buddhism. Most of the reading I have done is focused on the foundations and doesn't really delve into specific practices. Do you have any recommendations for readings on Mahayana? Thanks!
I believe that God is a rat bastard, if they even exist... but I also believe that my Grandma made really good food for Channukah, so I have some nostalgia for that and also the whole fighting back against Nazis thing. I guess I'm more culturally Jewish than I am religious.
Yeah, I get where you're coming from. Most of the time I feel like Jacob, like if I met God I'd want to beat the shit out of him and MMA for a full evening until it gets to the point that he has to break my hip or something to end it (my fav bit of Genesis, lol), I'd want to know why it had to be this. I'd be pissed if we met face to face. It's to the point that I dont think atheists have it right, theres just too much suffering and some of it so petty and targeted that it doesnt seem like random chance would be sufficient, if anything the Gnostics had it right - theres an evil creator demiurge that runs this shit.
When Satan first the black bow bent
And the Moral Law from the Gospel rent
He forgd the Law into a Sword
And spilled the blood of mercys Lord.you're mostly right i think, but i'd pick a monotheistic god that is responsible for (or just is) everything over a weak god and a devil battling it out for your soul. it's important to remember that christianity is weakly polytheistic among most denominations and has been for a while now
it’s important to remember that christianity is weakly polytheistic among most denominations and has been for a while now
is this because of the holy trinity or? I'm not religious but that that surprised me, wdym?
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
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
if you read the old testament closely other gods existing is absolutely a thing. A lot of Christians explain this away in various ways but the original Hebrew doesn't leave a lot of room for non biased interpretation.
Damn Christianity is so glad they've got Gob as a reference point. "Hey man, God already told us, shit sucks and.... that's the end of today's sermon, come back next week, give generously"
