FAITH IS AN ATTACK ON WHO YOU ARE, A THINKING CREATURE WHO NEEDS THE MATERIAL WORLD MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE
We may chatter yearningly for non-material things such as love but the fact remains we are still firstly creatures that are in a material universe. We embrace that first and then we set about loving. But don't let us lie that love is more important than anything. That is like arguing that water does not matter as much to a fish as having nice fins does.
Beliefs create your version of reality – it is as good as reality
to you. That is why errors matter so much. Truth and reality count
on the foundational level.
The opposite of truth is not one error but a number of them. And
there is even a bigger number of tacit, potential and unexpected
errors waiting to tag themselves on. This warns us that if something
is not clearly the truth or if people are confused that errors will
lurk there. It warns us that down the line this does harm that
effects others not just the one making the errors.
Do people have a false understanding of a real God? Religion says
nobody fully understands the divine. Science says a rock cannot be
or have a mind yet we are asked by religion to think that a reality
that has no parts and sounds suspiciously like something abstract
can. God is a mind without a body we are told. Paul the apostle said
we look as if it were through some kind of darkened glass. He is not
saying we have no knowledge of God. Only that there will be
corruptions in the detail and the relationship with God will suffer
from how you think he has done things he has not.
A pragmatic person will see that there is enough to be confused about without God belief coming into the picture. And not only that but it asks to be assigned great importance.
If God has blurs so does the evil that he supposedly works
against. And we make fog so what is already blurry will be made
worse.
Remember that if you want God belief so you can be firm on good and
firm against evil it is not going to happen. Good means diagnosing
evil correctly but this cannot be achieved. The faith is evil for
suggesting any different and is really a kind of placebo.
So far we see that religion talks as if it knows more than it does and is clearer than it is. We see how this leads to other problems. Here is a big one.
Terrible things happen and religion still tells us the problem is us thinking we see the big picture when we don't. It says God works in mysterious ways. God is not the only thing that is claimed to work in a way that looks like he is not working at all.
God supposedly can set up the universe like a computer to do its own plan. If God can have a mysterious plan he need not be directly working out such a plan at all. He can delegate that. It can be like how you walk off and the computer works for you.
He can have his direct plan and his creation can be full of plans that he leaves it to bring to fruit.
Evil husbands hit their wives and think they fit it into some kind of ultimately good plan. They work in mysterious ways.
In fact it makes no sense to say that this scheme would be fine
if God were using this directly for a good worthwhile goal but would
be wrong if he were indirectly using the husband. God could do the
plan hands-on or delegate it to the husband. Religion will recoil
from the abuse being for a greater good in the husband's hands which
shows it does not really believe the mysterious purpose at all. It
is a heap of lies and special pleading.
It is self-abuse for the wife to feel there is a plan and she is the
problem for feeling there is not. The divine and mysterious purpose
doctrine is destructive for it tries to draw people into that idea.
The God works in mysterious way is over-simplistic. Surely people and even Satan work in mysterious ways too. You have no right to say x works in mysterious ways and that is that. What you should say is a, b, c, d and so on work in mysterious ways so take your pick. Let it be y tomorrow and z the next day. My point is that if you think there are mysterious ways then don't comfort yourself by saying it is just God. You are just trying to shut down your questions and those of others with your curt, "God's ways are not ours." And the king's ways may not be ours but that does not mean he can just throw innocent people to the lions.
If Satan has got scientists to pass a new vaccine for say prostate cancer and his plan is in a century or so somebody will modify it to create brain tumours how does that impact us? We will tend to argue that this evil plan is God's except it is not evil. Worse, the Church will say that we can leave remote evil and harm out of our moral deliberations. That is why it lets you use vaccines that were developed using aborted babies from the 1970's. Why it is worse? For it tells us to use Satan's vaccine for the damage is far off.
Talking of mystery, why can’t we say that in some mysterious way some physical or material thing in the universe may refute the existence of or the love of God? When people talk about mystery in religion, they mean the mystery they want us to accept. Being selective with mystery is not on. If there is a fact and there is a mystery about it and there is thousand mysteries about it then admit there are a thousand mysteries instead of banging on about one of them. Be honest.
We like to think that the alleged purpose for evil and suffering is our wellbeing. That is quite mercenary. Every person neglects somebody for they don't like them for some reason. And it means you think somebody suffered for you whether they realised it or not and whether they wanted to or not. The divine purpose could be human health and happiness but the Bible says that God tolerates and uses evil and suffering for his own glory. The purpose of your suffering may have nothing to do with any person’s need or wellbeing at all. That truth would put most if not all off religion and God.
Firmly oppose the notion of a God who can be excused for permitting terrible things. To say some evil should happen is making an excuse. You cannot give persuasive reasons for why any extreme evil should happen so the problem is you. What kind of person are you?
