"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."
-- Dr. Steven Weinberg
These words haunt me.
The entirety of all lives lost in the name of religion haunt me. Parents killing children, nations killing nations, one sect killing another sect - all in the name of their religion. It is all, in it's totality, insanity. Your religion is no excuse, your God is no excuse, your perceived superiority is no excuse.
It is all myth. There is no satan; and God would not ask these things of you. If you choose to do evil things, it is simply your choice to do so, not the choice of God.
I am to the point of equating religion with alcohol - people are drunk with their beliefs. There was a time when alcohol intoxication was a marginal excuse for the evils of man. Now it simply isn't so, and it should be the same with religion. If you kill or hurt anyone, in any way, in the name of your religion or your God, it shall be no excuse for your evil deed. You have done the evil deed at your own sad discretion.
To paraphrase the quote above:
There are good people and evil people in the world. Religion does not make you good if you do evil - you are simply evil.
One Deist Φ
7 comments:
Interesting. I have a tangential question.
What's your norm for deciding good and evil given that those terms are relative? Take killing a person, on the whole it's neither good nor evil; it's sad, but one couldn't say that killing in self-defense is necessarily evil.
So how does One Deist decide?
Good question.
I personally feel killing should be avoided at all costs, but in this particular post I am talking about killing in the name of religion or God or satan. I'm referring to military conflicts based on these things, and especially the killings of children, spouses and families. I am passionate about this and have written about it before.
Imagine the mother who killed her five children because God told her to do it. She, in reality, has no one to blame but herself and her own demented mind. Without religion what crutch does she have? Innocent children who have the misfortune to have parents who believe they can cure them by laying on hands and praying. Those parents, in my opinion, should get the most severe prison terms available - they slowly and painfully murder their own children because of belief in a myth. And it goes without saying, the millions who have perished in military conflicts and "holy" crusades based on various religions worldwide.
To answer your direct question about killing in self-defense: I will not arbitrarily kill you. If you try to kill me, I will defend myself with all necessary force but without trying to kill you. If you happen to die in that process, you have no one to blame but yourself. My act of self-defence is not evil, but your act of murder or attempted murder is evil.
One Deist Φ
I don't blame God, I blame prophets for telling us things about him that is not true
I were a Muslim for a long time a good religion ,but after a long while I saw I'm loosing this world because I'm doing good things & not doing bad things and the god those prophets said has my back is lacking existing I was damned depressed bored ,....
but thanks my self I've raised again but this time it's myself and this bad world no more stupid ideas about religious and god
hmmm to the original writer... Christianity is not about killing people for not believing, or judging.. Our beliefs come from Jesus Christ messages left through his disciples and Old testament scripture, now wether you believe He was the son of God or not, it does not matter to my point. Christ the man simply restated universal truths of morality and justice.
"Creation cries out in the absence of truth. Vanity indeed takes its toll. In this decrepit state, life's dismissed into the conformity of chaos. Oh Mankind! Weep for the degradation of purity. For life with out truth is a hopeless grave reeking of putrid death."
Truth represents the moral fabric of this world. With out this strand of fabric holding our world together life becomes vane, pointless and seeps into utter chaos. People on the other hand just don't seem to care about the loss of common decency and righteousness; they miss-understand what these attributes do for our society. "In reality, moral rules are directions for running the human machine. Every moral rule is there to prevent a breakdown, or strain, or friction, in the running of that machine" (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity).
With the loss of such strands the portrait weaved by the collective nature of humanity slowly fades away from what it could be; beautiful, and becomes instead an image of death, pain and sadness. "Creation cries out in the absence of truth!" Listen to its plea before it is too late. This is not new information, as I've said before in other post, these are universal truths being restated. Christ wants us to weave these key strands of morality back into our society, so that in the end the portrait of humanity resemble the face of Jesus Christ himself, not the hell that we have created. See this is what Christianity calls for not the shallow thing most people understand it for.. Do not lump all Christians in the same boat, there are some of us who care for this world and its pain, and who are dying to make it a better place... my question to all of you is this, what is it that you are living for?? do you have your own personal beliefs?? perhaps you believe in nothing?? are you a mindless drone with no purpose?? What are you willing to die for??? hmm??
There is actually a scripture in the bible that goes along with your second quote about being evil. its found in the book of James, now this has nothing to do with the religion of Christianity this is simply a truth Jesus stated to the people he was talking to.. Here is the quote " James 1:13- When tempted, no one should say, "God is tempting me." For God cannot be temptedby evil, nor does he tempt anyone: but each one is tempted when , by his own evil desires, he is dragged away and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death"
This is simply stating people are evil because they are simply evil... people who blame God or satan for their mistakes do not understand Christianity at all and in their ignorance put a damper on the good that can come from this particular belief.. now I do not believe in Christianity but for people who do not believe in God I use this term, I believe God does exist and that the truths of morality are instilled in all of us.. The fact that you find fault in religion is an understatement. I don't believe in religion either, its a flawed human concoction. And personally I hate it. I do read the Bible and study daily for its grasp on reality though, and have gone to school for the study of these documents... I believe them to the fullest, you may not but I believe we can agree on the fact that the moral teaching found in the bible's New testament mind you effects us all!!! Showing church down peoples throats is not what I'm talking about.. Jesus Christ ministry was not for that but instead Jesus’ ministry was for the benefit of the world not its destruction. “Care for the weak or seemingly insignificant members of the community which can be found in Matthew (18:6-14) this reflects Jesus’ own attentive compassion for the crowds of sick and ‘lost sheep’ of Israel where he was at. Jesus was asking us to love each other, care for each other, become a true community, coexisting in peace. Now Jesus did not fight for this, he did not kill for this, he did not steal for this, he did not hurt for this... no he simply said what needed to be said and was killed for it... There have been many people who have stood up in history against the evils of this world and most of them are killed for their beliefs.. But my main problem is that people twist what Jesus was calling for into to something sick and perverted.. From all that I have said I hope you can take a better understanding of where I am coming from.. I'm not dissing you for not believing in God, but simply informing you of what Christianity is based on so that others who read this will also understand that people out there who kill their children because God told them to have everything messed up. And in the case of what I just said these same people have never really dug into what they believe for if they would have they would have seen the error of their mistakes...
Hello hhhh, and thank you for your feedback on this blog post. There are several points to make in response to your feedback.
First and foremost is that as a Deist I absolutely believe in God. Even a cursory review of Deistic principles would have provided this information to you. We believe in God and living a morally sound life, but we reject revelation and revealed religion. That is to say that Jesus' wisdom might be accepted, but his divinity is not. As well, we might also accept some teachings of Buddha, Confucius, Zoroaster, etc. but any allusion toward divinity is discounted outright.
Ironically you reference truth. Most Christians would view your opinions as untrue, and the ideas you represent would be considered far from the truth as taught in most churches. That is not to say that I don't understand your point of view ... believe me when I say that I do understand. It is just not mainstream theology and thus not true to most within Christianity. And the truth to a Deist is not represented in the Bible nor the holy texts of any other revealed religion. These texts are riddled with superstitions, fables, atrocities and antiquated lore. Many of the tales within these "holy books" go completely against the laws of Nature, and utterly oppose common sense. If you had been born in Tehran your truths would be profoundly different. Truth, you see, is no more then a reflection of the era and culture to which it belongs.
You said, "Christianity is not about killing people for not believing, or judging." But to make such a statement shows either blind naïveté or outright ignorance of history. The loss of human life, purely based on religious zealotry, is immeasurable. And so goes our world even today. I don't intend my reply to you to be an ad homonym, but I must say that several of your statements are conflicting and rambling. For example, you said, "I do not believe in Christianity" and "I don’t believe in religion either, its a flawed human concoction." But then you say, "I do read the Bible and study daily ... I believe them [biblical holy texts] to the fullest." There is really very little in the way of response that I might make to such contradictory statements as these. But on another point you made, "Christ the man simply restated universal truths of morality and justice." As a Deist I say this ... that I might enjoy and share these ideals of ethics and morality, but I do not need religion to do so.
There is an amazing amount of wisdom to be gained within and without holy texts, and this extends vastly beyond biblical messianic study. Deism allows humanity to believe in God and the latitude to absorb this wealth of knowledge, without the ludicrous fear of damnation nor the false hope of paradise.
One Deist Φ
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