I wasn’t raised with a religion (parents were both atheists), but when i was around 15-16 I got curious. I started attending the youth group at the local feel good church up the street and literally every single sermon was about how teenagers have urges, but we must resist them as sex before marriage was a terrible sin.
Well after a couple months of weekly don’t have sex meetings the cops showed up to arrest the youth pastor for something like 27 counts of statutory rape. He had been sleeping with all the girls in the youth group ranging from 18 all the way down to the 13 year-olds.
The only reason he got caught was because two of the girls got into an argument about how they were his one true love, and one of them called the cops on the other one because she got called a bad name. That ended my very short experiment with religion, bunch of fucking hypocrites pretending they’re better than other people while doing exactly what they tell others not to… at least the sex I was having was legal.
It sounds like the sum total of your experiments with religion were experiments with Christianity. That isn’t a very sound methodology for experimentation.
I’ve looked into many other religions since then, but I was able to satiate my curiosities through purely academic means. In other words I didn’t find it necessary to drink the flavor aid in order to scratch an itch.
Yes, I’m a scientist, and my scientific views have lead me to adopt religion. I’m always interested in correctly applying the scientific method to find the truth
Which religion do you follow that wasn’t conceived of, had a holy text written by, and teachings propagated by humans?
Over the known course of human history there have been at least 18,000 different gods, goddesses, various animals, or objects that have been worshipped by mankind. What they all share in common is they’re all fictious constructs created by ignorant humans in an attempt to explain natural phenomenon that were beyond their ability to make sense of through logical scientific means.
That being said I will concede that I still believe in the possibility of a higher power as I think it is just as ignorant to claim nothing exists as it is to claim something does without any verifiable evidence. However if such an entity does exist it is so far beyond our ability of comprehension that any claims to know its motivations or what it expects of us are ludicrous fiction at best, or intended as tools of manipulation at worst.
The truth of the matter is we will never know one way or another for certain. So why live life based on outdated beliefs/morals from ages past?
I operate on the principle that if a God exists, and they are a just God, then I’ll be judged by my actions, how I lived my life, and whether I was a good person who has done right by others, and not based on whether or not I professed my faith in and worshipped their existence. If a God exists that would punish me for all eternity for not believing in, or worshipping them, then they’re not a just god and would be unworthy of said worship.
I use simple science to evidence the existence of the gods. Richard Dawkins is actually responsible for the scientific breakthrough that proved theism.
See, Dawkins came up with this model of the “meme” and the field of memetics. The core concept is that ideas spread through the human population like germs. They reproduce, mutate, and some ideas are fitter than others. In other words, they’re subject to evolutionary pressures. They behave just like living organisms. They grow and change in order to secure their own survival and dominance in the ecosystem.
So if ideas are alive, and some ideas are the gods, then the gods are alive as ideas. They act to secure their own existence. Take the cultural genocide enacted by Christians on the rest of the world during colonisation. This is easily explained by an idea that wants to be the only god anyone believes in, and which can act to this end. Because the strains of the meme which propagate the most are blind and hateful loyalty. The Christian god really is alive and he really does control Christians. He’s an idea, and he wants to be in everyone’s head.
Every god worshipped by some religion, no matter how small, is real. They are made real by worship.
Sense is made by the observer. Let me illustrate with an example. Suppose I were trying to determine whether pills can really cure illnesses. So I ask my friends where I can get some pills to do this experiment, and they refer me to their ecstasy guy. I try experimenting with ecstasy to find if it can cure the common cold, covid-19, and cancer. After rigorous trials, I correctly determine that ecstasy cannot cure any of those illnesses. And then I read the incorrect conclusion that pills don’t cure illnesses. My mistake was over generalising. It was a bad methodology.
Likewise, many people experiment with only one religion and determine religion is bad. Just like in the example I experimented with only one pill and determined pills aren’t useful. It’s the same mistake.
I wasn’t raised with a religion (parents were both atheists), but when i was around 15-16 I got curious. I started attending the youth group at the local feel good church up the street and literally every single sermon was about how teenagers have urges, but we must resist them as sex before marriage was a terrible sin.
Well after a couple months of weekly don’t have sex meetings the cops showed up to arrest the youth pastor for something like 27 counts of statutory rape. He had been sleeping with all the girls in the youth group ranging from 18 all the way down to the 13 year-olds.
The only reason he got caught was because two of the girls got into an argument about how they were his one true love, and one of them called the cops on the other one because she got called a bad name. That ended my very short experiment with religion, bunch of fucking hypocrites pretending they’re better than other people while doing exactly what they tell others not to… at least the sex I was having was legal.
It sounds like the sum total of your experiments with religion were experiments with Christianity. That isn’t a very sound methodology for experimentation.
I’ve looked into many other religions since then, but I was able to satiate my curiosities through purely academic means. In other words I didn’t find it necessary to drink the flavor aid in order to scratch an itch.
Are you trying to sound legitimate by using scientific terminology to attack someone’s opinions on religion?
Yes, I’m a scientist, and my scientific views have lead me to adopt religion. I’m always interested in correctly applying the scientific method to find the truth
Well my interpretation of the Bible tells me that you’re wrong in doing so. Seems disingenuous.
The Bible was written by humans, it’s not an authoritative text.
Which religion do you follow that wasn’t conceived of, had a holy text written by, and teachings propagated by humans?
Over the known course of human history there have been at least 18,000 different gods, goddesses, various animals, or objects that have been worshipped by mankind. What they all share in common is they’re all fictious constructs created by ignorant humans in an attempt to explain natural phenomenon that were beyond their ability to make sense of through logical scientific means.
That being said I will concede that I still believe in the possibility of a higher power as I think it is just as ignorant to claim nothing exists as it is to claim something does without any verifiable evidence. However if such an entity does exist it is so far beyond our ability of comprehension that any claims to know its motivations or what it expects of us are ludicrous fiction at best, or intended as tools of manipulation at worst.
The truth of the matter is we will never know one way or another for certain. So why live life based on outdated beliefs/morals from ages past?
I operate on the principle that if a God exists, and they are a just God, then I’ll be judged by my actions, how I lived my life, and whether I was a good person who has done right by others, and not based on whether or not I professed my faith in and worshipped their existence. If a God exists that would punish me for all eternity for not believing in, or worshipping them, then they’re not a just god and would be unworthy of said worship.
I use simple science to evidence the existence of the gods. Richard Dawkins is actually responsible for the scientific breakthrough that proved theism.
See, Dawkins came up with this model of the “meme” and the field of memetics. The core concept is that ideas spread through the human population like germs. They reproduce, mutate, and some ideas are fitter than others. In other words, they’re subject to evolutionary pressures. They behave just like living organisms. They grow and change in order to secure their own survival and dominance in the ecosystem.
So if ideas are alive, and some ideas are the gods, then the gods are alive as ideas. They act to secure their own existence. Take the cultural genocide enacted by Christians on the rest of the world during colonisation. This is easily explained by an idea that wants to be the only god anyone believes in, and which can act to this end. Because the strains of the meme which propagate the most are blind and hateful loyalty. The Christian god really is alive and he really does control Christians. He’s an idea, and he wants to be in everyone’s head.
Every god worshipped by some religion, no matter how small, is real. They are made real by worship.
Your comment makes no sense
Sense is made by the observer. Let me illustrate with an example. Suppose I were trying to determine whether pills can really cure illnesses. So I ask my friends where I can get some pills to do this experiment, and they refer me to their ecstasy guy. I try experimenting with ecstasy to find if it can cure the common cold, covid-19, and cancer. After rigorous trials, I correctly determine that ecstasy cannot cure any of those illnesses. And then I read the incorrect conclusion that pills don’t cure illnesses. My mistake was over generalising. It was a bad methodology.
Likewise, many people experiment with only one religion and determine religion is bad. Just like in the example I experimented with only one pill and determined pills aren’t useful. It’s the same mistake.