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Originally posted by Halx
I'd prefer not to be argued with on these points,
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....then why did you post them here and not, say, in a journal?
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but respond to them however you wish. I'm simply thinking aloud to the forum. I have my views, you have yours. There should be no anger between us. I'll discuss if it's civil.
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These are interesting thoughts, but there are some assumptions that simply don't hold. (Keep in mind I'm a skeptic/agnostic myself, so I'm not arguing, simply critiquing in the interest of developing consistency of thought).
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1. There are hundreds of thousands of religions in the world... each one would have you believe that IT is the ONE.
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As others pointed out, while there are many religions that would have you believe they are the one true way, there are a number of notable exceptions: Buddhism, Bahai, many types of Hinduism, Taoism, etc. Note, though, that they tend to be Eastern in origin.
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2. A lot of religions stress humility. All religions have leaders. To lead is to disregard humility. "Do as I say, not as I do"?
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This one's already been challenged. True leadership demands humility. Just because someone claims to be a leader does not mean they really are. Look at the difference between, say, Jerry Fallwell and Gandhi. For that matter, Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha all exercised humility and recommended it for their followers. Just because the practitioners don't follow the recommendation doesn't negate the wisdom of the recommendation in the first place.
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3. Many people have very customized visions of God. "I refuse to believe God is _____." "My God is _______." I don't know if this is self-delusion or self-confidence.
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Neither. It is a human propensity to eliminate ambiguity. Note how prone you yourself are to this propensity in your arguments here.
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4. Man created God. God created man. What? How can God even exist by this logic?
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Others have addressed this better than I can.
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5. I'm going to write an essay one day about how devout religion is simply autoschitzophrenia.
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Er...okay. I don't know what autoschizophrenia is, but equating devotion with mental illness is a little insulting. You also need to draw a distinction between those who are devout and rational, and those who are fanatical. I doubt that there's mental illness involved, simply an amplification of normal human drives to simplify complex ideas and to be right at all costs. See above re: intolerance for ambiguity.
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6. I can convince myself that Jesus speaks to me too. Very easily. The human brain is able to do that. I completely understand the mechanism through which you are communicating to God.
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I think this is a matter of interpretation. If someone said Jesus was literally speaking to them, I guess I'd be pretty suspicious, too. But I know a lot of people who "hear" god in a number of ways - I take it to be their interpretation of events as "messages" from the divine.
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7. Here are two ways to look at religion skeptically. First is focusing on the fact that God is infallible. If God is infallible, then I have no options. I either conform or get left behind. This severely threatens my individuality.
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I don't see how "infallibility" = "conformity". This doesn't follow.
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I enjoy humanity because we are all different. If everyone in Heaven is a conformist, however, that wouldn't be Heaven. That wouldn't be very interesting to me at all. Don't give me that, "You're free to be yourself" crap either. I've seen how religion turns people into drones, no matter how individual they may seek to become.
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Again, you're painting an antire population of people in very broad strokes. In oversimplifying the experience of religion, you're falling prey to the very impulse you are decrying in them. Just because you end up at a different conclusion than them (no religion vs. religion) doesn't mean you're not just as human as they are.
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Second is focusing on the fact that God is *in* everything. First, that's creepy. So, God is evolution. God is science. God is nature. We have a conflict here. Where did my free will go? I'm not jiving in your world filled with God. Am I having these negative thoughts because of him? What's wrong with me? There must be something wrong with me. Where do you draw the line? Where does God end and Man begin? Well, the line is where ever you want it to be, isn't it?
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Deism (the concept that god is everywhere) generally does not presuppose a conscious, sentient "God". It's not "God is everything" but "everything is god." Key distinction.
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8. Religion is always changing. We have gone through thousands of years of constantly changing religion. There are no cold, hard rules of religion. Thousands of years from now, they will be looking back, reading our IRC logs from #christianity and #islamrocks, and they will be going, "Shit, those motherfuckers had it WAY wrong."
In short.. I'm not religious. I'm critical.
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The central flaws in your reasoning are:
1. religion != critical
2. all religious people believe in the same way
3. human tendencies toward oversimplification and rejection of difference are limited to those with religious beliefs
Physician, heal thyself.