Religion — Page 80

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NeverarGreat said:

Mrebo said:

That is the gist of it 😛

It’s more profound than one might think at first glance. The idea that the rules of the physical universe bend toward a certain result is compelling. We also might consider it in terms of maximalization: where matter arranges itself on the most fundamental level in order to create the most complex and varied existence possible. I think that sounds more sensible than the idea that stuff just is the way it is because.

The universe already tends towards maximum entropy or disorder.

But for a reason? What reason? If the physical world exists in a particular form (down to the precise nuclear forces) in order to bring about a reality that contains consciousness, maybe the entropy and disorder naturally follows from that.

DuracellEnergizer said:

Mrebo said:

On one of my many dubiously open tabs I’ve had something I’ve wanted to share. Thought provoking for theists and non-theists about the nature of consciousness and design in the universe (crossing my fingers I copied the right url):

https://aeon.co/essays/cosmopsychism-explains-why-the-universe-is-fine-tuned-for-life

A shame the author appears to define theism solely by the traditionalist Abrahamic take on theism. As I’ve mentioned previous, I don’t believe in a God who is simultaneously omnipotent and omnibenevolent, and I know Zoroastrians don’t, Hindus probably don’t, etc, etc.

While I don’t see a conflict or problem with the existence of an omni-potent/benevolent diety, I agree the author was myopic.

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Sounds worse than not being raised at all, honestly.

Sounds exhausting. I don’t like normal rituals involved in religion.

suspiciouscoffee said:

Story time!

any time I’ve questioned it or even just not spoken in a tone that sounded convincingly enthusiastic or reverent, he gets pissed at me for “disrespecting God.”

God is not so shallow and predictable as all that. I would say fitting God into a nice comfortable box is disrespectful. He doesn’t care about liturgy for liturgy’s sake. If it means nothing to you, there’s no point in doing it. It’s important to have a relationship with God, but your relationship is yours. Not your Dad’s.

Not all the parts of the Body of Christ perform the same functions or can even adequately understand the value of the other parts. If liturgy means something to your Dad, that’s one thing, but if it means nothing to you, that doesn’t mean your relationship with God is flawed. It’s just different than your Dad’s.

I don’t know. I’m not trying to be disrespectful, I’m just stating my opinion, but the God of the Bible is incredibly shallow. Again, I’m just stating my interpretation informed by multiple readings of the text. The Bible itself refers to God as being jealous and vengeful. It’s not just the Old Testament either. All it takes is a lack of faith in him and his son in order to get damned to the eternal fires of hell for all eternity.

My pastor recently said the jealousy of God is comparable to the jealous love a person has for their spouse. And so God is jealous for you because he desires a close relationship with you.

I don’t think I can adequately explain my understanding of how Hell, being a permanent separation from God, is a default due to sin, and why no amount of “being a good person” in and of itself is adequate to overcome it.

Most people familiar with healthy relationships would say that jealousy, possessiveness, and threat of torture are problematic in a healthy marriage. As for hell, let’s not sugarcoat it. Nowhere in the Bible is it merely coined as a separation from God. It’s eternal torture, Jesus and his spokesmen were clear on that.

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TV’s Frink said:

Lol why would a perfect being such as God feel human emotions like jealousy. Or desire for that matter.

If God exists, it is not jealous. Nor does it desire a close relationship with you. That’s entirely on the human side of the equation.

The god of the Bible wasn’t described as being “perfect” in a way that we tend to define that word. All-powerful, maybe, but especially in the Old Testament he resembles a lot of the very human-like gods of other mythology.

ChainsawAsh said:

Agnostic atheist here who was raised Episcopalian and was an altar boy for years in his youth.

Something people tend to miss about Christianity is that the whole point of Jesus was to sacrifice himself to absolve humans of the sins and laws described in the Old Testament.

So the adherence of many “fundamentalist” Christians too the laws set down in the Old Testament seems ridiculous to me. In my mind, they ignore the most fundamental teachings of Christ, and if you do that, why claim to be Christian at all?

(Sorry, in a weird place right now, otherwise I’d just be avoiding this topic entirely.)

You’re right, but the New Testament is very conflicting on that too. Books like James tell Christians that they very much need to behave “morally” and that faith alone is “dead” without good works. As Duracell said, these documents were written by different people in different times and places, which means that it makes perfect sense that they contradict each other and it also means that the theology has to be extra complicated in order to reconcile the contradictions.

If God exists, would he not have to be perfect by default, being the highest standard? Unless there is some kind of super deity above him, I guess.

Even the idea of him being the only existing god isn’t clear in much of the Old Testament.

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And the trinity was never even an idea in the Old Testament, other than a cryptic reference to “us” in Genesis.