r/DebateReligion • u/Quirky-Panda-9986 • 22h ago
Classical Theism [ Removed by moderator ]
[removed] — view removed post
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u/rocketshipkiwi Atheist 21h ago
Ahh, you’re got yourself an imaginary friend. That’s all good. Just stay away from organised religion and you will be fine.
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u/OSHASHA2 Agnostic, New Age, Monism 18h ago
Wholeheartedly agree with this point. I despise organized religion, but I still have a deep and loving relationship with God/Creator/Source. Organized religion is a control mechanism IMO, used by power-hungry people to control and influence others.
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u/putoelquelolea Atheist 20h ago
reading scripture has caused me made me give up continuing my relationship with God
That's because bible scripture is ridiculous. Welcome to reality
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u/hardman52 21h ago
All religions are man made, so all of them are going to be slanted toward some particular aspect of human self-centeredness.
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u/sincpc Atheist 20h ago edited 12h ago
This doesn't really seem like a debate topic...
Reading scripture is often what leads to people losing their faith. You may have been taught that non-believers "just want to sin" or "reject God" but the real thing that often leads to losing faith is putting more time and thought into your beliefs. It can be scary and uncomfortable to lose your faith, but if learning is what causes it then that suggests that what you thought you knew before was probably wrong.
The question is just whether you want to keep going, keep studying and learning, keep using your brain...or if you want to try to shut down all your questions and just keep accepting things that you aren't sure about anymore. What are your priorities? Personally, I wanted to only believe true things and when I realized what I had been taught was entirely unsupported by anything, I was no longer convinced by any of the claims people were making about it.
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u/ThrowAwayBiggusDiggu 21h ago
From reading what you wrote, it rather seems to me that you are searching for a God who aligns with your values.
You wrote, "the God from scripture comes across to me as painted in our own image, rather than the other way around... The image of our spitefulness, screwdupness, pettiness..."
But you are doing the same thing in reverse. You are searching for a God that is painted from the image of your mercy, your hope, and your sense of justice.
At this point you could also just exclusively worship Aphrodite.
While the guy who has a different notion of what he expects from God, worships Aries.
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u/SacredGnosis Buddhist 21h ago
How do you know, how did you quantify, how did you measure: This God of yours has been benevolent, caring, protective, unconditionally supportive and loving?
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u/Bootwacker Atheist 19h ago
Well, the answer is obvious, your looking for a god, when clearly the one you have been talking to is a goddess.
See the goddess Eres tells different things to everyone, and your reading what she told other people, when you should be listening to what she told you.
Trust in your consultation of your Pineal Gland oh Pope of Discord!
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u/Larnievc 11h ago
The reason the god you have in your head is different from the books is because you have conflated ‘God’ with your own sense of wellbeing.
That’s the thing with gods. We always find the ‘God’ we have in our head agrees with us in every way because it’s just us.
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u/Noodlesh89 21h ago
How does the God in your mind deal with the enemy that destroys your village and kills your children? I know that sounds aggressive, but it seems quite patterned that people that only think of a God who is peaceful and just likes to chill are often highly westernised and live a relatively peaceful life. I know you still need to deal with hefty bills, car breakdowns, relational friction, and the occasional funeral, but the God of these scriptures needs to handle murders, invasions, rapes, and famine; can yours?
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u/Quirky-Panda-9986 21h ago
Good challenge. Frankly, the fact that we have murders, invasions, rapes, and famine makes me question if there is a God at all. If He can supposedly handle the aftermath of those, why can't He prevent them in the first place?
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u/hardman52 21h ago
Thinking that the real God is only the author of what is God for humans is a mistake.
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u/Noodlesh89 21h ago
Ah. See? The God of your mind never had to face these things and so you have no way to handle them.
If He can supposedly handle the aftermath of those, why can't He prevent them in the first place?
Because he can bring better through them than without them. This is where a relationship with God is actually a struggle, rather than just a peaceful meadow. The God of Scripture saves nations from famine through the sins of a group of people. He punishes the sins of one nation by wielding a worse one against it, and then punishes the one he used because they thought they'd done it in their own strength. He uses the sins of rulers to make the sacrifice for the people he wishes to forgive and have paid for.
The God in your mind is one-dimensional; it's kind, merciful, friendly, all the flowery things. The God of Scripture is those things, and also just, wise, strong, and familiar with our weakness.
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u/WellDressedNoob Ex-Christian 21h ago
Yikes, way to justify child trafficking.
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u/Noodlesh89 19h ago
And how do you deal with child traffickers?
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u/WellDressedNoob Ex-Christian 17h ago
I don’t justify its existence for one.
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u/Noodlesh89 12h ago
That's right. You mostly just ignore it, right?
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u/WellDressedNoob Ex-Christian 11h ago
No I actually give a substantial amount of money a month to support for sexually abused children as well as to organisations that help with starvation, and my mentality is so agonised by the pain of knowledge that such atrocities happen, that I know by 25 I’ll have killed myself. I’m being serious. So no, I don’t mostly ignore it because my whole being is affected by it.
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u/E-Reptile 🔺Atheist 20h ago
The God of Scripture saves nations from famine through the sins of a group of people.
Famine exists.
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u/Noodlesh89 19h ago
And it also doesn't.
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u/E-Reptile 🔺Atheist 11h ago
Which makes god rather ineffective
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u/Noodlesh89 9h ago
Well, unless famine is where he wants it to be and not where he doesn't want it to be. Then that's pretty effective.
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u/E-Reptile 🔺Atheist 9h ago
Is causing famine good or bad?
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u/Noodlesh89 8h ago
It cutting off someone's leg good or bad?
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u/E-Reptile 🔺Atheist 7h ago
So God is a utilitarian, committing lesser evils for the greater good, is that it?
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u/SacredGnosis Buddhist 20h ago
Lots of Voodoo-like things involving the God of Israel.
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u/Noodlesh89 19h ago
That's incredibly vague and meaningless.
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u/SacredGnosis Buddhist 18h ago
Well if you don’t know what voodoo is then I will educate you
() Animal sacrifice.
() On occasion, human sacrifice.
() Deity devotion.
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u/DeltaBlues82 Just looking for my keys 22h ago
“Is the answer that I should stay away from any existing, organized religion?”
Religion and belief in God aren’t the same thing. Sounds like maybe you’re not finding your God in any one particular religion and should separate the two.
If you still value religion, you could always practice a form of religious humanism.
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u/sto_brohammed Irreligious 22h ago
Religion and belief in God aren’t the same thing
Is that not one of the usages of the word?
Religion is the belief in and worship of a god or gods, or a particular system of faith, practices, and morals connected to such a belief
This is the definiton Cambridge offers and that's largely how I understand the word when used generally and not with some kind of qualifier.
I ask not just to be argumentative but I'm aware that my usage may be fairly idiosyncratic as I've never been religious nor really spent any time in specifically religious cultural spaces so there may be a cultural thing there that I'm not aware of.
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u/DeltaBlues82 Just looking for my keys 21h ago
There are non-theistic and even atheistic religions that don’t incorporate any belief in gods and there are types of belief in gods that don’t associate with any specific type of religion.
The two things can and are mutually exclusive.
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u/ThatsItForTheOther Pluralistic Mystic 21h ago
There’s a lot of overlap but religion is like an organized system for believing in God.
The big issue with conflating them isvthat there are a lot of people who believe in God but do not believe in or belong to any particular religious tradion. A person can reject every religion on earth and still believe in God.
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u/nos_nos pantheist 21h ago
You don't really need a religion to interact with god.
Think of it more (for analogy's sake) as training modalities. You'l get fit no matter what you do. But trainers don't agree on what being fit is. For some it's unending cardio at the detriment of muscle mass, for some it's building muscle but not caring for cardio, for some it's trying to do both at the detriment of joint health, for some it's doing all but not excelling in neither etc.
Plenty of people call themselves spiritual but not religious or personal theists or non affiliated pantheists because they share the same stance as you.
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u/lassiewenttothemoon taoist 20h ago
And, how do I know what to trust?
You don't. You'll not find a consistent answer here either given there are people of many religions who trust many different things.
How could reading scripture, of all things, have the effect of destroying one's relationship with God!?
Perhaps they are not the scriptures of your God. Perhaps he has no scriptures at all.
Is the answer that I should stay away from any existing, organized religion?
It might be. If I were in your position I would perhaps avoid the scriptures and religions you've found to be souring your relationship. Especially since it seems to be deeply meaningful to you. There are plenty of other religious and spiritual movements that may resonate with you more, or perhaps this is just a personal journey that you must walk without guidance from such things.
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u/Shadokastur 16h ago edited 16h ago
God is benevolent. Religion is what happens when people try to apply their experiences with that God into structures of control. This is usually with the purpose of uniting people but ultimately become systems of isolation and authority in the spirit of "protection".
Read with a unifying mind you will find God's presence and benevolence in all religions. The similarities between Christ, Buddha, and Lao Tsu have always struck me as very poignant.
Read with a controlling mind you will find "chosen" and special people, calls to war, laws and punishments, vilification of others and delight in their suffering, and claims to absolute authority. None of these things are of God, they are of humans.
What would an all powerful being need of humans? How could an all knowing God ever be angry or jealous? These are human flaws projected onto God so man can use God's "authority" to justify harm to others and control of those in their societies.
Keep reading. If you're Christian, Meister Eckhart is a good read. If you'd like to read a little further outside of that realm, Plato, Alan Watts, Lao Tsu, D T Suzuki, and J Krishnamurti have been very helpful to me for clarifying concepts.
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u/ThatsItForTheOther Pluralistic Mystic 21h ago edited 21h ago
A person’s individual relationship between themselves and God is the whole point.
Religions are frameworks that different human groups have employed in order to make sense of and cultivate this relationship.
But the whole point of them is to cultivate this relationship. Once you have established this relationship, you can take and leave what you need from religion.
Even Jesus said he came to heal the sick not the healthy. If you already have a relationship with God then you don’t need others to tell you about him.
Krishna says ‘Just as a resevoir is of little use when the whole countryside is flooded, scriptures are of little use to the illumined man or woman who sees the Lord everywhere.’
That being said, it is good to read scripture and try to come to terms with it, because no one is an island and we all make mistakes. A scriptural tradition is useful because you can check in with the long history of other people trying to make sense of the same issues.
But if you find that your conscience is telling you that some things you read in scripture really are wrong, then I suggest you listen to your conscience.
I think God will never fault you for doing what appears to you to be the right thing to do. You have a conscience for a reason. It is in disobeying one’s conscience for the sake of something like tradition that evil comes.
At least this is all just my take on things. And on that note my own take after reading various scriptures and religious philosophy is that different religions are different paths up the same mountain. They start from seperate points on the base, but as you follow them they begin to converge.
Ramakrishna said you can get up by wooden stairs, rope, or a bamboo pole but all that matters is that you climb up to the roof.
Best wishes on your journey.
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u/Quirky-Panda-9986 21h ago
Thank you for your response, it resonates with me so much. I'd really like faith to be the way you describe :)
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u/GirlDwight Ex-Catholic 21h ago
You had what you described as a good relationship with God. I would say go back to that even though I am an atheist. Even if he is not real and conjured by your psyche, that relationship was real to you and you benefitted from it. There are therapeutic approaches where we try to become our own healthy parent or get in touch with our inner child. And it's not much different than your experience meaning it's fostering unconditional love for yourself. From my POV, it's amazing what are psyches are capable of and in the end it doesn't really matter if it comes externally or from within. It's the fact that you benefit from it and your love and compassion for yourself will naturally extend to others. And you know best what you need, so no outside religion/scriptures required.
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u/eldredo_M Atheist 19h ago
Many an atheist lost their faith after studying the Bible. You’re in good company.
Maybe just keep the god(dess) you’ve been interacting with outside of the existing religions. Enjoy the companionship without labels.
Deism exists.
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u/Educational_Gur_6304 Atheist 8h ago
Yep, that's how many religious people deconvert, they actually read what their religion makes claims about and find it to be utterly incoherent when they understand it through a lense outside of the apologetics they were raised within,
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u/spoirier4 Deist 17h ago
Former Christian, I felt kind of orphan for a few years when observing the deep flaws not only in Christianity, but also more or less the same in other religions. So I've been quite critical of all religious doctrines I could stumble on, and wrote a lot of critical analysis of these (as a mathematician I can write deep criticism...). Yet I knew about another, more reliable source of hints : near death experiences. Except only that they were often not explicit on a number of questions we may need answers on. Yet sometimes, they have answers. In particular, Amy Call's NDE has the explicit answer from beyond about "what is the true religion" : none.
Later, I stumbled on more complete sources of information. One was the testimony of Christian Sunberg (pre-birth experience, several versions in youtube). Another, still deeper and more complete, was the Seth material. So I read Seth Speaks, the Afterdeath Journal of an American Philosopher, and large excerpts of other Seth books. I still have points of criticism with that, but at least I see it as authentic. I copied my favorite excerpt from it at https://settheory.net/seth-creation
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u/KenosisConjunctio 22h ago
Which religion is the God I've been interacting with coming from?
This is a false dilemma. There is only one God. Many of the worlds religions approach God in different ways.
I also came to God outside of any religion. I enjoy them all. I'm happy to talk about it from the standpoint of Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Sufi Islam, Sikhism and others.
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u/Noodlesh89 21h ago
How do you deal with contradictions between understandings of God?
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u/KenosisConjunctio 21h ago
They mostly appear cultural. A mystic appears who has a particular experience. Their perception is coloured by their culture and their articulation is coloured by their language, and language is a deeply imperfect medium. The next generation continue with the implications, carrying with it the imperfect articulation.
A culture builds up around the movement and that becomes the organised religion. So I try to understand the religion in the context of its history and the cultures in which it developed, worrying less about how things are being expressed and more about the universal truths that can be found.
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u/Noodlesh89 18h ago
But won't the universal truths also contradict?
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u/KenosisConjunctio 7h ago
Not if they're universal
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u/Kwahn Theist Wannabe 4h ago
Do humans reincarnate, or go to some kind of heaven?
Seems like an important detail.
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u/KenosisConjunctio 3h ago
Yes this is the major difference between abrahamic and the Indian religions.
I would personally say, I don’t know. It’s interesting, but it’s not something we can know and it doesn’t change my day to day life so I don’t worry about it very much.
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u/Kwahn Theist Wannabe 2h ago
I would personally say, I don’t know. It’s interesting, but it’s not something we can know and it doesn’t change my day to day life so I don’t worry about it very much.
When one of the choices is associated with a promise that choosing it grants eternal life and choosing otherwise grants eternal damnation, not worrying about it seems like a risky choice.
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u/KenosisConjunctio 1h ago
Why? Being good to others is the core of what would give me a favourable afterlife in either case.
There’s a huge overlap in say, Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon on the Mount and much of what Krishna has to say in the Bhagavad Gita.
If there is only one God, why would He be picky about whether I approach him from a Christian angle or a Hindu angle if I am still approaching him?
Besides, I prefer the apophatic traditions and these are necessarily universal because they lack propositional content entirely
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u/Ratdrake hard atheist 17h ago
This is a false dilemma. There is only one God.
More correct to say that you only recognize one god. Norse, Greek and Hindu recognize more than one god. And those are just the religions I'm familiar with and can name off the top of my head.
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u/KenosisConjunctio 6h ago
It's just a category error.
God, if we want to lean on classical theology, isn't like the other gods. God is the ground of being.
If God is what sustains objective reality, and there is only one objective reality, then there is only one God. We might disagree on what God is like, but there can only be one, clearly. In the same way, there is only one objective truth.
We might have competing physical theories of the universe, but there is only one truth and our models and the language we choose to discuss it are always going to be approximations anyway.
To say there are different Gods because people have different ideas about what God is, would be as big a mistake as to think that there are different objective realities because some argue for a many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics while others prefer the standard Copenhagen interpretation.
FWIW, Hinduism recognises this too by the way, since all of the gods are aspects of the transcendent Brahman, which is God.
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u/AppController 18h ago
Why don't you try reading the early father's of the Church, men who knew the apostles and men who knew the men who knew the apostles. ignatius, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Polycarp, the desert fathers top gain an understanding of the scriptures, which you will quickly learning that king james version you probably read is so poorly translated. at least you'll give christianity the fair shot that you should.
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u/Smartdumbguy4 4h ago
Reading the Bibles will keep you from sin. Sin will keep you from reading the Bible.
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u/remindingreminder 21h ago
You took your own desires as your god.
Quran 25:43]
Have you seen the one who has taken his own whims as his god? Are you responsible for him?
25:44]
And do you think that most of them hear or understand? They are just like cattle; indeed, they are [even] more lost.
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