I’m not going to say I don’t find humor in this at all, and I’m not going to say that any religion or religious people are “right” or try to tell anyone to join a religion etc- but I did want to say this:
A lot of the time I see things with a similar concept as this or you hear people say them, usually pointing out how foolish or wrong or messed up religion is. If we take a step back back though, the argument doesn’t really hold up.
From a Christian type religious perspective dying isn’t the worst thing that can happen to you, and in actuality may be the best thing that can happen to a person. Being alive could be likened to being at an average job- but 24/7,365. It has its good moments and it’s bad, there are people who love being there and people who don’t. If most people could change reality at will they would, and if most people could magically change things about their job they would. The closest non mythical non religious analogy might be to say dying is like retiring but…
… in full health and with hundreds of billions of dollars and no more problems ever again. If you retire early you miss out on a lot of experiences good and bad. You’ll have people you’ll never see again who you might want to. You don’t get to experience a full career or see how far you could have gotten- but you have billions of dollars and all the time in the world to enjoy it.
Often the “paradise” idea of death leads people to smartly quip: “then why is killing yourself bad? Why don’t religious people just die to go to paradise?” Well- no analogy is perfect and I don’t know how death works or what may end up of us if anything- but why don’t people just retire and stop working and go enjoy retirement? Perhaps they haven’t earned a retirement and leaving work would not end up in a happy retirement. Perhaps they are invested or attached- many people stay at jobs past retirement because they enjoy some aspect of it or are just attached to their routine and having something familiar..
.. vs. something they have no personal experience with. So we can see that if we actually take the time to consider the perspectives of other people, things that seem stupid or silly can make sense even if we personally don’t agree with them. When we factor in various other faiths and religions like those that believe in reincarnation and other things, we get a different but perhaps similar picture where peoples lives are cyclical and concepts like karmas can dictate what happens to us in a present life and what will happen in the next- a karmic debt needing paid from past lives and a karmic dividend to shape the next life. It’s oversimplifying but in essence we can say reincarnation often states that you lose this game of life in a “tragic” “unfair” way to pay for past misdeeds or as an assurance your next go would be better-
Or potentially better since your choices will partly determine each life and not just past deeds.
Of course the trump card of Abrahamic monotheism is pretty straight forward- an all powerful being who’s thought processes and morality and methods are completely beyond human understanding and cannot be resisted or denied their will has made a decision and since that being is inherently good- or to be more specific the fundamental abrahamic belief is that “good” is not a moral determination by humans but whatever is the will of their god becomes good by default- that whatever happened was ultimately necessary and in service to some greater good. That sounds harsh but when one considers such a theoretical being would be working beyond quantum levels of intricacy across all existence and an eternal stretch that transcends time- humans would have no hope of understanding.
Picture a bunch of dogs who can talk to each other as we do but with canine levels of perception and intelligence. Picture them speaking of the world and people in it.
You feed and pet and care for this dog, are you a hero or a villain? We think we are so good to our dogs but… what about the dog who posts memes about “would a good master have taken Sarah’s babies from her as soon as they were off the tit?” “Would a good master deny you treats and not allow you the same food as them?” “Would a good master leave you alone all day or go to have fun for weeks on vacation and abandon you because you are inconvenient?” “Would a good master have sterilized you?” “Would a good master have taken your good, elderly friend and had them put down?”
As a human you are acutely aware that wether it is grooming or medicine or crate training or putting down a pet you do things that your animal pals might not enjoy or from their perspective might not understand- sometimes because it is necessary to the working order of life and sometimes because it is best for them even if they don’t understand. Your dog may get mad at you because you took the street trash or chocolate from its mouth or feel cheated by you- from its perspective it likely seems you wanted it and so you stole it for yourself. It can’t necessarily understand the way you think and if it has human type consciousness- it might think something like: “who are you to decide what I do with my body, with my life?” Your dog probably didn’t get a choice to be your dog and most dogs we keep in ways and take steps to prevent their escape even if they wanted to be free of us. We might say it’s for their own protection or that if they got free they’d regret it and be scared and…
.. confused when they couldnt find us. Wether that is true or not, the fact remains that we believe ourselves to be the smarter being and at the very least are generally the ones with the most control in the relationship. The gap between human cognition and that of an actual Omnipotent being is far greater than man and a dog. The same way that we wonder at and research suggests that whatever concept animals have about death is likely not as developed as our own, a humans meager perception of death for such a god would be even more removed than watching bacteria try to understand death or how the world works. It’s a hard concept for many because we often consider ourselves quite intelligent or perhaps as the most intelligent beings- but a theoretical god would make the smartest human like an amoeba relative in intelligence.
To that point, it is often considered “smart” to pick at religion in these ways. To be clear, I think challenging religion and asking questions are not bad things. We each have to find a truth that suits us, and blind religious following and dogma are not inherently and seldom objectively good for people or the world. That said, since by the time we get to a discussion like why a god would kill babies we have passed or decided to agree to discuss hypothetically as though a god existed, we can easily explain most of the common “smart” challenges to religion away as seen above. Simple deduction, inference, logic, common sense can be applied with principles rooted in science to support that a god would be beyond understanding and all sorts of things. If one seeks to not just challenge but also mock religion, I suggest one be intelligent about it and not ask the same questions or poke at the same threads that have been or can be easily defended a million times over.
Or perhaps it’s best not to mock. I mean- one can make jokes about religion or religious figures etc. without mocking the religion or it’s followers etc. while those sorts of jokes may still offend some, ultimately they are in good spirits and not mean or otherwise diminishing.
I know of many intelligent people who do not believe in god(s) or religion(s) but can’t think of any particularly intelligent people who are snarky about it. I suppose more accurately I can say that those people whom I know who are snarky about it tend to think they are far more intelligent than objective or external opinions and facts would support.
And that’s sort of the case in point. Often the “bashing” of religion gives people a communal anchor to hang elements of group identity- one of the supposed fallacies of religion ironically enough.
There is often a common thread- to see the “truth” so plainly where billions of others are “fools”….
… why, that automatically puts a person in the top percentile as far as being a “smart human” doesn’t it? It is a world view that certainly supports self superiority. If god(s) the greatest being… to deny that god is to elevate oneself above even a god no? To exert our own will against the most powerful being theoretically to exist- real deal bad ass credentials right there. That doesn’t describe every single person who doesn’t hold some faith- as I said above- I know many who don’t fit this bill and don’t have such faith. What I am saying is that by and large the casual popularism around rejection of religion or god(s) has these sort of components of a countercultural movement based in self identity more than an actual logical or theological stance. For every person who has explored and considered and deeply pondered to conclude on the nature of these matters is at least one who simply decided they wanted to piss someone off or feel cool or not deal with it etc. so went with it.
One way you can somewhat tell which you are dealing with is in what they say. Religious people can be a funny bunch. I’m not the arbitrator of faith but I sure have seen and met so many “devout” folks who don’t seem to practice the values they are supposedly meant to live by. No one is perfect of course, so almost any such code will be broken from time to time- but what is truly shocking to me is how many religious people do not even know or understand the words and history and meaning of their religion. Entire congregations swear to be by the letter to a book but then can’t tell you what the book says or can’t understand what it means or incorporate oral traditions of what they were told things meant even when it contradicts their book. This is a common criticism brought upon religion or the religious. That said…
The number of people challenging these books and beliefs who know essentially nothing about them or only what they heard second and third party is astounding. It’s hard to call another person ignorant when we have little or no knowledge on a subject.
Often times people who want to challenge or mock religion will grab on to a well known and trodden passage to point to the stupidity of the enterprise. They might Google a single snippet and take that passage on its own and point and laugh or cry outrage. “This book says these words!!” It does. The words have context just the same that you can take a single letter or rearrange the letters in the book and technically wrote anything you want using the letters found in any book. By placing the letters as I have here each has context to say what I am saying and each word and sentence and paragraph has context. In ancient text the context doesn’t always exist exclusively in the writing itself either and must be gained from external sources.
It’s a circular debate and it is very rare that any argument will convert a persons faith or make them gain or lose it on the spot outside extreme exigent circumstances.
The funds Al question isn’t one of wether this or that makes sense but of wether one believes there is an all powerful being out there making stuff. If one believes there is an all powerful being making stuff then any logic after that is largely moot because “all powerful” defies logic and defies human comprehension. Pointing at logical fallacies and the like when discussing an all powerful being is like trying to prove a computer programmer doesn’t exist because the game design choices don’t make sense to us. It’s a bit daffy but it becomes even more perilous when we haven’t played the game at all and know nothing about the technical details of the game or even anything beyond a basic plot or gameplay loop concept.
A lot of the time I see things with a similar concept as this or you hear people say them, usually pointing out how foolish or wrong or messed up religion is. If we take a step back back though, the argument doesn’t really hold up.
From a Christian type religious perspective dying isn’t the worst thing that can happen to you, and in actuality may be the best thing that can happen to a person. Being alive could be likened to being at an average job- but 24/7,365. It has its good moments and it’s bad, there are people who love being there and people who don’t. If most people could change reality at will they would, and if most people could magically change things about their job they would. The closest non mythical non religious analogy might be to say dying is like retiring but…
Often the “paradise” idea of death leads people to smartly quip: “then why is killing yourself bad? Why don’t religious people just die to go to paradise?” Well- no analogy is perfect and I don’t know how death works or what may end up of us if anything- but why don’t people just retire and stop working and go enjoy retirement? Perhaps they haven’t earned a retirement and leaving work would not end up in a happy retirement. Perhaps they are invested or attached- many people stay at jobs past retirement because they enjoy some aspect of it or are just attached to their routine and having something familiar..
Or potentially better since your choices will partly determine each life and not just past deeds.
You feed and pet and care for this dog, are you a hero or a villain? We think we are so good to our dogs but… what about the dog who posts memes about “would a good master have taken Sarah’s babies from her as soon as they were off the tit?” “Would a good master deny you treats and not allow you the same food as them?” “Would a good master leave you alone all day or go to have fun for weeks on vacation and abandon you because you are inconvenient?” “Would a good master have sterilized you?” “Would a good master have taken your good, elderly friend and had them put down?”
I know of many intelligent people who do not believe in god(s) or religion(s) but can’t think of any particularly intelligent people who are snarky about it. I suppose more accurately I can say that those people whom I know who are snarky about it tend to think they are far more intelligent than objective or external opinions and facts would support.
And that’s sort of the case in point. Often the “bashing” of religion gives people a communal anchor to hang elements of group identity- one of the supposed fallacies of religion ironically enough.
There is often a common thread- to see the “truth” so plainly where billions of others are “fools”….
Often times people who want to challenge or mock religion will grab on to a well known and trodden passage to point to the stupidity of the enterprise. They might Google a single snippet and take that passage on its own and point and laugh or cry outrage. “This book says these words!!” It does. The words have context just the same that you can take a single letter or rearrange the letters in the book and technically wrote anything you want using the letters found in any book. By placing the letters as I have here each has context to say what I am saying and each word and sentence and paragraph has context. In ancient text the context doesn’t always exist exclusively in the writing itself either and must be gained from external sources.
The funds Al question isn’t one of wether this or that makes sense but of wether one believes there is an all powerful being out there making stuff. If one believes there is an all powerful being making stuff then any logic after that is largely moot because “all powerful” defies logic and defies human comprehension. Pointing at logical fallacies and the like when discussing an all powerful being is like trying to prove a computer programmer doesn’t exist because the game design choices don’t make sense to us. It’s a bit daffy but it becomes even more perilous when we haven’t played the game at all and know nothing about the technical details of the game or even anything beyond a basic plot or gameplay loop concept.