THE STUBBORN FEARFUL ARROGANCE THAT IS CHRISTIAN FAITH

Religious persistence in the face of persecution and even legitimate criticism is very marked.  It is a very dangerous trait for if you are wrong then end the persecution you are getting by admitting it.  Religion gets more intransigent when persecuted.  And as usual, it is clergy and corrupt politicians who egg it on.  This is about holding on to power.  Faith makes you feel part of something with power.

Fearing something is not to say that the thing should be feared. Fear is a state. It is not necessarily right. Fear is based on belief. Belief makes you act as if what you believe is true.  Fearful belief will lead you into trouble.  Fear has arrogance as one of its ingredients for it is fearing what you don't know as if you do know.

Believers say that God has left us his clear written word and unless all things are made by an honest God we can trust nothing.  Accordingly, it is said that knowledge which is defined not as 100% certainty but strongest possible belief is impossible without there being a God. The translation of the saying is, “Knowledge is impossible unless I know God is inspiring me”. That exposes the arrogance of the claim. It is about you not God. You are claiming omniscience in knowing that God talks to you. That is dishonest for why stop with that? Why not say God wants you to bomb the shopping mall during rush hour for it will stop a terrorist poisoning people, especially children, there and leading to even worse loss of life. It is proof that you do not believe in our own omniscience at all. Only a trustworthy person can judge God as trustworthy so in it all it is about your own self-congratulating flattery.

Believers may counter, "It is not arrogance to say that God loves me and is fair to me. It would be arrogance if I were too specific and claiming that I will definitely get 100% in my theoretical physics exam next year for God will make sure of it." But notice what they are doing. They are avoiding anything that can be falsified or that can get them caught out. It is more arrogant to think, "I am right for nobody has a hope of showing me wrong" than to argue, "I am sure God will get me the job that a million are applying for". At least with the latter you admit the proof will come even if it is not your way it comes.

God tells you the world is round. You may check this not because you mistrust him but because you know it has to be true when he says this. The trouble is that you are using what God gave you, the faculties, to check him out. That is like trusting somebody because they write their own references!

Love does not have a completely good side.  It is about protecting the loved one and by implication you are resolving to destroy whoever or whatever threatens to hurt that person.  It is about discriminating against yourself by agreeing to be hurt so somebody else might not be hurt.   It does not matter if God cannot be hurt. Even though God cannot be hurt loving God means you treat him as if he can be and hurt badly.  The more you are to love God the more resolved you are to be to destroy whatever hurts him.  And this problem will be terrible as you are to love him totally and be about him and make others all about how you relate to him.  Loving God creates the fear of what others will do to God.  The more you are trying to or succeeding in loving God the more intense the fear will get.  The religious say that God has put fear in us for a reason so that we might recognise and desire and battle evil. Fear and love are incompatible.  Those who love do not love as much as they say.  Some flip-flop between what they see as love and outright fear.  The bad side of love could be why religions of love lead to violence and are weak in handling violent situations and virtually make cruelty seem okay.  Loving God and thinking you get his love are not good either.

If God's worthiness of your love and his reality can be reasonably shown then there are problems as we have seen.  But imagine how much worse they will be if you don't care enough if God and his love are true or not.  The more your God is a psychological projection or an invention the worse it is and its outright evil to be religious in such a circumstance!

Belief in prayer is made infallible. There is more infallibility in putting your proposition outside of examination than simply saying, “This is true because I say so.” It becomes, “This is true because I say there is no way to refute it.” Prayer is an idol. Even if there is a God, God cannot accept it. Prayer paradoxically is anti-God and is an idol. It disrespects truth for you try to avoid refutation so prayer is a lie and thus seems to think that God and everybody else is stupid and cannot see it.
 

Religion tries to walk with us from birth to death and saturate our lives. With all that influence and the habits it forms, it is easy for the believer to feel she knows the religion is true. She will feel as if she knows it true. The believer forgets that she does not really know if what it says is true. That is a bad thing for she is kept from being herself and is subject to the religious leaders. Her service no matter how half-hearted happens because she is being manipulated. And feeling and experiencing your religion as if it is fact is dangerous arrogance. If you think of x as a fact then those who believe in non-x have to be accused of stupidity or dishonesty. They are being implicitly accused of it at least. It leads to fear when a challenge to your faith arises. No wonder believers have often tried to quench free inquiry.
 
Jesus claimed to be the way, truth and the life (John 14:6) - that is he gives us the life of God and we experience God living inside us. It follows then that he came to be truth and life for us. It follows then that once you believe in him and experience his life-giving power you have no excuse for departing from the faith or any part of it.
 
Some say Jesus' claim is made to the baptised Christians and that he is the way and the truth and the life for them. They claim this because they wish to argue that people, such as Jews, can be saved without Jesus. But the text in context says nothing about baptised Christians. It was spoken to those who were not Christians yet.
 
The New Testament claims to be the truth and that those who believe have the truth (2 Timothy 6:3,4). So it is forbidden for the Christian to say, “I believe I have the truth”. The Christian must say, “I have the truth.” There is no doubt that Christianity advocates stubborn arrogance. Truth is naturally intolerant of error so if you have the truth then tolerating those who differ or their views would be wrong. The arrogance is evil but becomes gross evil and puts evil off the scale when the faith involves doctrines such as that God sends those who die divorced from him to Hell forever and that contraception is a grave sin and so on.
 
Jesus claimed to be the Truth and Catholicism and Christianity claim to be the one true faith. They say Jesus commanded we must worship God in truth, that is by having his truth. So you are not allowed to treat say, your Catholic religion as probably true or possibly true. You treat it as the truth and as if everything was proven even when it is not. In other words, you obey the papal ban on birth-control no matter how evil or absurd this ban seems to you. This is a very arrogant, stubborn, pig-headed, irresponsible, dangerous and fanatical example that the Roman Catholic religion is setting.