HOW FAITH IN GOD CAN HIDE YOUR GOD-COMPLEX

If one seems to think, if not think, that one is a god or divine, they will use devotion to a God that is supposedly an independent entity to hide it. Those who don’t hide, soon learn to hide.

The doctrine of a creator who is all-good, all-loving and all-powerful is far from humble and self-effacing if you see yourself as the creator of this wonderful concept.  The idea of God and God are not the same thing.  If there is no God you are definitely the creator of the idea.  If there is a God, that does not mean that you are about him and not your idea of him.  If your idea coincides with the truth, it does not change the fact that you are trying to conjure a God into existence.

There are a lot of things that give the believer away. Believer is the not the right word. Projecting person seems better. The pride and the lies are tell-tale signs.

Things that happen to you, experience-wise, always seem to matter intensely. It is the end of the world when you have a toothache. So it would be surprising if anybody was really worshipping a God intentionally. They worship a mental construct and call that God. It is about what they want and need him to be.

Ultimately all is supposed to be about knowing your place. You are supposed to be humble and not carried away by pride.

It is not humble to be so sure of free will when you cannot test it by going back a minute in time to see if you can choose differently. It is thus outside science. It is really a religious hangover. It shows that science and religion are too different to be complementing each other. The free will question is more personal and basic than anything else, including a God, and yet there is no meeting point between science and faith on it. Yet we have all these lies from religion arguing that it poses no threat to scientists doing their research.  If religion has free will and science does not regard it as true or important then they are not related disciplines at all but opposing ones.  If you say your holy water instantly cures cancer and science ignores you that is not just ignoring.  Science is opposing.  Science is about testing and anything it says it will not test is a polite way of saying it should be assumed to be false and nonsense.

People try to argue that free will belief is justified. They argue that we need free will to have responsibility and declare others responsible for what they do. Yet dogs are not responsible in that sense and still treated as if they are. They do not put Fido to sleep because Max bit somebody. What matters is a past action happened. And that it has results. It does not matter if it came from free will or not. It is in the unchangeable past now. Paradoxically free will is supposed to be a gift where we embrace people where they are at now and move on from the past! Whether they had free will to do harm in the past or were programmed or something does not matter.

Incredibly though free will is supposed to be meant to be used for humility, there is no real humility behind it. It is not humble to be so sure of free will when you cannot even test it enough to show that it might be correct. God supposedly gives you free will as a gift and asks you to use it to grow in humility. There is no humility there. There is just a smug arrogance.

Nobody wants to be a chess piece. But if all around us is made by God that is what we are. Free will and being a chess piece are compatible as well which makes it worse. It depends on how strong your environment is. But religion says that in a sense we only sin because God has a reason for letting us do so. He has a reason for allowing it to happen. We are supposed to be wrong to sin and he is right to allow. Our will is said to be free because of God and not in spite of him. This teaching risks making us chess pieces. It risks yes. We are going to see ourselves as devices even if we are not. It is our nature. We just see how we cannot get away from what is around us and that is the trigger. But it is also simply just calling us chess pieces too. Such doctrines are extremely adverse. Terrorists learn to see their victims as things. Religious ones are especially good at that.

If there is truly a God it does not follow that anybody promotes him for his sake.  Or if they do that it is more about him than themselves.  That is individuals. What about groups or religions?  They may be most accurately described as systems of fake devotion.

 Human nature likes the feeling of control even if it has to create an illusion to get it.  We all imagine how much control we have even in the kitchen.  People do not treat God as his own master but they use, "I am inspired by God" so that they can treat their own ideas and prompts as his.  This way God is sure to agree with them and they with God.  Believers might be doing that even if their arguments for God do indeed line up to the truth.

If you manufacture your "relationship" with God then you are seeing others as chess pieces through this God who does that.  So God might be doing it and so are you as if that is not enough.

Even the theory of evolution has been turned into a self-congratulation enterprise. Evolution does not mean progress. It says only that biology has resulted in complexities. It does not discern or care if this is good or bad. Assuming a divine plan or spiritual power that is driving evolution leads to things such as ableism and even eugenics.

The Bible God is attractive to insincere feminists and patriarchal participants in society. Why? One reason is that despite using some feminine images of God, God is clear that he is to be he, him and his. And father. He compares himself to a mother hen. This is avoiding calling himself mother. It is a hen not a woman. All this data shows that God must be something that hates its feminine side. This is a horrid and destructive form of patriarchy. Incredibly the Bible has to argue for male primacy for God makes Eve from Adam’s rib. So while man and woman are in the image of God we are told, the image is one where the female comes from the male. This seems balanced by the male coming from the female. But who comes from whom should not matter to equality. God is trying to make the male some kind of default while the woman is not.  Also, Adam was put to sleep for the rib to be taken and woman has to suffer terribly to give birth.  That is not balance.

All power tends to corrupt. If you think you are chums with God then you and he have a bubble. Don’t say that the bubble is the whole church. That is nonsense. You and he are in a relationship and that is the bubble. Any other bubble you are in is irrelevant. Your God bubble makes you feel powerful as long as you agree to conform to him. Thinking you have absolute power when you do not is part of the reason why absolute power corrupts so badly. Thinking you have power through prayer or lining up to what God wants is just another form of absolute power.

Eastern religion says that what we have is borrowed by us. Christianity says it is all a gift from God. Then it gives us this God who tells us what do with his gift. He gives us bodies and lays down rules about how to treat it. But it is none of his business any more. A gift is yours and nobody can tell you what to do with it. People use God as an excuse to get into your business.

Mindfulness comes from such religion.  Mindfulness needs to be about silence. Let the unconscious speak. But do it not just for the silence and the blank mind. Let the awareness of those who need help from you today come. Then act on it. That is a far more mature approach than praying.

On that note, we hear today of the power of now. This is about moving attachment from the past and the future to the present and living in the present moment. It leads to dangerous reckless rage when somebody spoils your now. If all that matters is my spiritual peace now then how I harm my future does not matter. How I harm the future of others is also of no consequence. Jesus by advocating that we take no thought for the morrow was talking to people who needed to protect themselves from the Roman occupiers. Nobody was safe.

Too many advocate Christian forgiveness without caring if there is anyone above really looking after the person and protecting them as they try to do the right thing. Or is it the right thing if there is no God? It would depend. Without an overall divine plan mercy can be dangerous. It opens a door and it is only luck if nothing absolutely devastating happens.  The advocates are really calling for a placebo. We like others to do the forgiving to help society run better while we are not very keen on it ourselves. They want you to move on for them not for you. They want you to leave the past in the past.

Christian teaching is that God will not force his love and kindness on you. That does not fit how they say he can force tough love. The Bible says he chastises the person he loves. Is unconditional love that you do not want, forced on you? Yes for love that just sits there and won’t act is not love. A person who wallows in their love for you and does nothing is navel-gazing. It is basking in virtue. But the whole point of love is that you are poised to get into productive action.  What is narcissistic about advocating this God of love without bounds? The real reason is that you don’t want him interfering. You want to think he admires you and lets you do what you want with his approval.  When people crave unconditional love, they really mean unconditional divine approval.  But they do not crave it for people doing things they do not like.  The bank robber shoots and wants God's approval but he wants God's disapproval for the rival bank robber who does the same thing.

Narcissism is just overblowing the value of the good you do. You see your good as showing how amazing you are and how others deserve hate and indifference for you are so great. It is overblowing the bad too. You think your good deed is so valuable and ultimately of cosmic worth. If you don't do the deed but do harm instead that means you are wonderful inside and did not live up to how divine and superior you are. So you overinflate how bad your bad was. Hell teaches everlasting torment for sin starting at death and is thus an outgrowth of such nonsense. It is narcissistic in the worst possible way. Even if Hell is real, it does not follow that Jesus taught it for good reasons. He might have been trying to play on our narcissistic side. It is narcissistic in the craftiest way. Good narcissists give themselves away but they don't make it too obvious. The narcissist looks in the mirror and sees a virtual god. The Christian teaches that God loves you so much that he would cease if able to be God and to exist if it could help you. So you are virtually divine when even God worships you in that way.

Richard Dawkins made the point that it is arrogant to surmise that the creator of all has nothing better to do than to regard your good deed or your sin as important.  Religion says God holds creation together and it utterly depends on his loving sustaining power.  Dawkins talks as if he needs his power for more important things and the believer wants the attention at the expense of people who need it more.  He accuses faith of narcissism.  So if God loves all he has made, it follows that what is unimportant to us matters to him and he cares for all the same.  Jesus said God clothes the flowers better than King Solomon was.

He is right to suggest that believers should be suspected of wanting help from God at the expense of others.  Even religion would admit that is a serious problem.

But that is people.  Is the principle itself that God should regard me and my good deed and my sin as of such great importance that I cannot imagine it?

Well, Dawkins needs to be told this.

#Religion argues that each thing matters to God even if it seems trivial.  He is in love with each person.

#This teaching does permit you to regard your sore toe to be as serious as somebody's terminal cancer. 

#If you were humble you would have to defiantly assert that others should get the help who need it more than you. 

So you have to be ungrateful to God!

Dawkins is partly right but needed to expand on it a bit.  His suggestion that God has only so much power to go around so it should go to the most needy is inaccurate.  Yet if we love others, we would tell God that though we know he has the power, he should act as if there is a cap on it and it should be devoted to people in the worst situations.

One typical example of narcissism in religion is Desmond Tutu. He said he would go to hell rather than go to a homophobic heaven. He said he would not worship a God who is homophobic. Sorry Desmond nobody believes you. If LGBT hate is a sin then hell will be as homophobic as heaven if not worse. We can’t believe people applaud your stupid hypocrisy. Of course you are not going to suffer forever just because you don’t like God’s view of LGBT. And what do you mean by homophobia? Something tells me you are not thinking of the extreme version where people are beaten on the streets. Most homophobia is just refusing to marry same sex couples or see them as fully equal though no obvious harm is done to them. Desmond, you have every intention of enjoying Heaven even if God is unfair to LGBT. Where else are you going to go?  It didn't stop you having dinner with homophobic popes and prelates.

Religious freedom is limited when the religion is abusing. Does religious freedom then give a right or duty to speak over and for a man who cannot speak for himself? And especially one who is out of the way for he died horribly? Jesus signed nothing to let others speak for him. There is no evidence. Jesus is used by the Church. This is tragic considering how the Church is so antisemitist and its record on Jewish rights has been genocidal.

Views of God are never about one who is just about supporting you whatever you do but one who has to have an opinion on you and your life. As man decides what God is like, what he is about, it is clear who is trying to manipulate here.

It is easy to take the leap of faith and only think you have landed on faith. If there is no being to guide and nurture faith, then it is going to mean danger. Why does the person of a Christian background not take a leap and land on Islam? Because the leap is more about trying to fit in, in a religious community than anything else.

So don’t be so sure that when you respect somebody’s faith in God that it is actual faith you respect!!!

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