Do you believe in God?

[Dotini]

Aaaw.

According to the Pope you should be able to express yourself and give your opinion but when it comes to religion, you can't. You shouldn't ridicule it.

Aaaw.

On the same day thousands of people including the face of government marched for free speech in Paris, France arrested 54 for hate speech.
http://news.antiwar.com/2015/01/14/france-arrests-54-announces-hate-speech-crackdown/

Certainly there is free speech. But not for everybody, all the time, everywhere. It comes with limits, responsibilities and consequences.

 

[Imari]

Aaaw.

According to the Pope you should be able to express yourself and give your opinion but when it comes to religion, you can't. You shouldn't ridicule it.

Aaaw.

I guess you're talking about this?

http://time.com/3668875/pope-francis-charlie-hebdo/


It's funny, most English kids are taught how to deal with this when they're very young.

Sticks and stones
May break my bones
But names will never hurt me.

I find it odd that of all people the Pope would assault someone for saying something rude about his mother. That doesn't seem terribly Christian to me.

The proper response is to ignore them, or tell them that they're being :censored:holes. If the Pope escalates verbal abuse of his mother to a fist fight, then he's in the wrong, IMO.

Ditto Charlie Hebdo. If you don't like what they're doing (which at times has legitimate artistic merit) then protest it, send them angry letters, start an anti-Hebdo campaign, whatever. Do not go to their offices with firearms and slaughter them. That's just 🤬.

Ten points to the Pope for attempting to defuse his statement afterwards by saying that he doesn't endorse killing in the name of religion, but it does sort of go exactly against his first point. If he didn't mean to endorse religious violence, then perhaps he shouldn't be telling people to expect violent responses from anyone who is insulted.

Perhaps he doesn't endorse violence in the name of religion, just general violence.

 

[Johnnypenso]

I find it interesting that the Pope actually left himself a backdoor if you read his statements literally:

“Every religion has its dignity. I cannot mock a religion that respects human life and the human person.”

If a religion doesn't respect human life or the human person, you can mock them.

 

[GBO Possum]

Aaaw.

According to the Pope you should be able to express yourself and give your opinion but when it comes to religion, you can't. You shouldn't ridicule it.

Aaaw.

I'm thinking that if anyone presents ridiculous stories as truth, they should expect to be ridiculed.

I mean, think about the Noah Flood story. Today, climate change scientists are concerned about a few inches of sea level change over a period of years, and the Flood story would have us accept the idea of sea level changing by over five MILES in just a few days!

• A BILLION cubic miles of water appears out of nowhere, and disappears almost as quickly leaving no worldwide trace?
• Salt water creatures survive the experience?
• Desert plants survive being drowned for months without air or light under extraordinary pressure?
• Noah collects platypuses, kangaroos and wallabies from Australia, nobody records anything unusual, and Noah takes them all back to a miraculously dried out dry continent, comes home and promptly forgets about the whole experience?
• Plus a huge list of other absurd claims

Of course this should be ridiculed.

Why not make fun of "faith"? There's a lot in the Old Testament, the Bible and the Quran which is neither harmful nor misleading, but there's a whole lot of stuff in those books which is both of these, and if we can't impose censorship, then surely we can poke fun at them.

The whole world can see the connection between Islam and blowing oneself up, so why not make a Prophet cartoon with a bomb in his turban? Islam came out of his head, so representing it as a bomb seems quite appropriate.

And if it's not, if it's offensive to Allah, then let Allah deal with it in his own way, directly, without coercing others. It appears that Allah took no action, maybe because he doesn't care, he's too weak or doesn't exist. (There I go, making fun of faith again!)

 

[GTsail]

****
I find it odd that of all people the Pope would assault someone for saying something rude about his mother. That doesn't seem terribly Christian to me.

It is worse than odd.

The Pope has endorsed violence as a response to verbal insults.👎

This is not the response that I would expect from such a senior member of the Church to take.

 

[Johnnypenso]

And if it's not, if it's offensive to Allah, then let Allah deal with it in his own way, directly, without coercing others. It appears that Allah took no action, maybe because he doesn't care, he's too weak or doesn't exist. (There I go, making fun of faith again!)

The terrorists are convinced they are carrying out the will of Allah.

 

[Imari]

I find it interesting that the Pope actually left himself a backdoor if you read his statements literally:



If a religion doesn't respect human life or the human person, you can mock them.

Meh, his own religion has a fairly chequered history of respect for human life and the human person.

If you took him literally, it would mean that it's fine to mock just about every religion ever, which is contradictory to the rest of his statement (and a largely pointless thing to say).

The whole thing is a profoundly mixed message. But the difference is that half of it is the usual condemnations that every religious leader and politician has made in some form or another over the last few days. And the other half boils down to "Well, if you mock people maybe you should expect violent reprisals".

Oddly, I haven't heard of any other leaders adding that second part in. Probably there are some, and no doubt there's some extremist Muslim leaders saying "see, that's what you get". But from the Pope, it seems like he's not taking the principles of his own religion terribly seriously if he's advocating a punch in the face for mother-insulters, and by extension greater physical violence for those who insult things more important than mothers.

 

[Dotini]

I think a religion of neo-paganism - or animism - makes a lot of sense. It's a practical and useful way of community, but avoids the moralism and stuffy piety of Christianity.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/02/iceland-temple-norse-gods-1000-years
Icelanders will soon be able to publicly worship at a shrine to Thor, Odin and Frigg with construction starting this month on the island’s first major temple to the Norse gods since the Viking age.

Worship of the gods in Scandinavia gave way to Christianity around 1,000 years ago but a modern version of Norse paganism has been gaining popularity in Iceland.

“I don’t believe anyone believes in a one-eyed man who is riding about on a horse with eight feet,” said Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson, high priest of Ásatrúarfélagið, an association that promotes faith in the Norse gods.

“We see the stories as poetic metaphors and a manifestation of the forces of nature and human psychology.”

Membership in Ásatrúarfélagið has tripled in Iceland in the last decade to 2,400 members last year, out of a total population of 330,000, data from Statistics Iceland showed.

The temple will be circular and will be dug 4 metres (13ft) down into a hill overlooking the Icelandic capital Reykjavik, with a dome on top to let in the sunlight.

“The sun changes with the seasons so we are in a way having the sun paint the space for us,” Hilmarsson said.
The temple will host ceremonies such as weddings and funerals. The group will also confer names to children and initiate teenagers, similar to other religious communities.

Iceland’s neo-pagans still celebrate the ancient sacrificial ritual of Blot with music, reading, eating and drinking, but nowadays leave out the slaughter of animals.

 

[GBO Possum]

“We see the stories as poetic metaphors and a manifestation of the forces of nature and human psychology.”

Sounds more like Literature than Religion. Which is a good thing, IMHO.

 

[DQuaN]

This is doing the rounds on social media at the moment.

I cannot agree more or like this enough...

 

[Dotini]

This is doing the rounds on social media at the moment.

I cannot agree more or like this enough...

I like it! God is a joker, an inhuman, alien trickster! IMO, If God exists, he is more concerned with inorganic stars and galaxies than organic matter and humans. We are on our own.

 

[mistersafeway]

I like it! God is a joker, an inhuman, alien trickster! IMO, If God exists, he is more concerned with inorganic stars and galaxies than organic matter and humans. We are on our own.

Assuming God exists, I always think he gets off on suffering, makes so much more sense than allowing this mobile matter nonsense to continue unabated. That, or he's impotent in this matter.

 

[Dotini]

Assuming God exists, I always think he gets off on suffering, makes so much more sense than allowing this mobile matter nonsense to continue unabated. That, or he's impotent in this matter.

"Indifferent" is the correct term, IMO.

 

[mistersafeway]

"Indifferent" is the correct term, IMO.

Maybe, maybe, although I'd still consider it sadistic behaviour to ignore the pleas of the young and innocent suffering great pain when he has the power to at least passively help.

Where are all the religious at? I keep expecting someone to say "God punishes us because there aren't enough believers!"... which makes him a sociopath at the very least. But he loves us really!

 

[Dotini]

Maybe, maybe, although I'd still consider it sadistic behaviour to ignore the pleas of the young and innocent suffering great pain when he has the power to at least passively help.

Where are all the religious at? I keep expecting someone to say "God punishes us because there aren't enough believers!"... which makes him a sociopath at the very least. But he loves us really!

God seems mainly occupied in making stars and galaxies, with green rocky planets incredibly low, almost accidental, on his cosmic list. God would seem to love matter and energy - and maybe life too, if you can conceive of life among the stars. I can, but only inorganic. We are mud.

 

[mistersafeway]

God seems mainly occupied in making stars and galaxies, with green rocky planets incredibly low, almost accidental, on his cosmic list. God would seem to love matter and energy - and maybe life too, if you can conceive of life among the stars. I can, but only inorganic. We are mud.

I think there's definitely one thing in common with our interpretations of a potential god: it's not worth worshipping. We have the Abrahamic God who's deceitful and narcissistic, my interpretation who's sadistic or at least a bit of an arsehole with a cruel sense of humour, your interpretation who doesn't give a 🤬 about us, and various other "gods" which have been created by self serving people and/or aren't worshipped now and/or aren't that powerful anyway. Looking at that, why do people bother with religion?

 

[Dotini]

I think there's definitely one thing in common with our interpretations of a potential god: it's not worth worshipping. We have the Abrahamic God who's deceitful and narcissistic, my interpretation who's sadistic or at least a bit of an arsehole with a cruel sense of humour, your interpretation who doesn't give a 🤬 about us, and various other "gods" which have been created by self serving people and/or aren't worshipped now and/or aren't that powerful anyway. Looking at that, why do people bother with religion?

In the beginning, people may have needed religion in order to organize and survive in tribes. Apparently, some still do.

 

[Imari]

Looking at that, why do people bother with religion?

Apart from the obvious periods of history where you either partook of the common religion of your society or were executed, I think humans have a general want to understand things. This doesn't mean that they need to actually understand, they just need to feel like they do. Religion goes a long way to providing that, especially for a lot of the tougher questions in life.

It's much more pleasant for a random peasant to believe in the Sky Daddy and believe that his life will ultimately be meaningful and good, than it is for random peasant to believe that this one life is all he gets and he's spending it as the slave of the lord of the manor. People will do all sorts of weird mental tricks to make their existence more bearable (see: Stockholm Syndrome).

Even without getting into the does he/doesn't he of God's existence, it seems obvious that people find that belief in a deity makes their lives somehow more pleasant.

Some people like to pay women to kick them in the testicles. Each to their own. If it makes them happy, good luck to them.

 

[mistersafeway]

Apart from the obvious periods of history where you either partook of the common religion of your society or were executed, I think humans have a general want to understand things. This doesn't mean that they need to actually understand, they just need to feel like they do. Religion goes a long way to providing that, especially for a lot of the tougher questions in life.

It's much more pleasant for a random peasant to believe in the Sky Daddy and believe that his life will ultimately be meaningful and good, than it is for random peasant to believe that this one life is all he gets and he's spending it as the slave of the lord of the manor. People will do all sorts of weird mental tricks to make their existence more bearable (see: Stockholm Syndrome).

Sounds like the Dunning-Kruger effect and Imposter syndrome explain a lot of modern religious beliefs nicely, then. 'I'm definitely a genius, so I must know really important stuff. Okay, I'll latch onto the first explanation I ever heard.'/'I'm not strong enough to have made it through [hardship] without help, it must've been [god].'

Even without getting into the does he/doesn't he of God's existence, it seems obvious that people find that belief in a deity makes their lives somehow more pleasant.

Which is sort of my point, maybe belief in a god (which I still find more scary than comforting), but why do they need an organised religion? Lies, hatred, exploitation... probably just to fit in, I guess.

Some people like to pay women to kick them in the testicles. Each to their own. If it makes them happy, good luck to them.

Why pay? It can't be that hard to find a woman who'll do it for free.

 

[LeMansAid]

This is doing the rounds on social media at the moment.

I cannot agree more or like this enough...

"Him, Her, or It". So we're not talking about an overly pre-designated version of which God that would be.

I like it! God is a joker, an inhuman, alien trickster! IMO, If God exists, he is more concerned with inorganic stars and galaxies than organic matter and humans. We are on our own.

Do we even know a version of joking that is not human? That's the trouble with despising a hypothetically real God (as Fry is), we are so utterly human-centric that we can't properly think beyong our realms. We might try, but then we still mangle and mash human ingredients in, without even realising. Worse still, we corrupt our attempts to think unrestrictedly with individual human experience and bias.

Stephen Fry is fantastic, and I'd hate for him to stop going about his business the way he does. But the response in the video is not smart or perceptive in any context other than within a very small bubble. It still amounts to the tired old "If God exists then why...... ?", and the fervency and eagerness that some show in whipping out that ol' chestnut along with their bubble-bound vitriol borders on having a religious-like dedication to it.

 

[Dotini]

Do we even know a version of joking that is not human?

I think some crows, ravens, parrots, coyotes and foxes like to trick humans and play jokes upon us. That's why there is the trickster figure in tribal mythologies. I believe several religions have trickster gods. I can elaborate if you wish.

 

[Omnis]

This is doing the rounds on social media at the moment.

I cannot agree more or like this enough...

https://steadfastreflections.wordpress.com/2015/01/31/an-alternative-fry-up/

... First, given what Stephen Fry believes about life, the universe, and everything, why does he even have a problem? If all that is, is the result of blind chance, an impersonal materialistic universe that just ‘happened’, then what’s the problem of suffering children? What is suffering? Why care? The weak die, the strong survive, the species carries on – the categories of ‘wrong’, or ‘injustice’, or ‘evil’ have no place. ...

The whole thing should be read.

 

[LeMansAid]

I think some crows, ravens, parrots, coyotes and foxes like to trick humans and play jokes upon us. That's why there is the trickster figure in tribal mythologies. I believe several religions have trickster gods. I can elaborate if you wish.

Would you characterise any of them as "inhuman", as opposed to simply being something a human would do, but in it's case not done by a human?

 

[Dotini]

Would you characterise any of them as "inhuman", as opposed to simply being something a human would do, but in it's case not done by a human?

Thank you for your question. I've just returned home from my fencing class, it's the end of the day, and I'm dog-tired. I will be pleased to respond on the morrow.

 

[mistersafeway]

The whole thing should be read.

Tried three times and all three times a new bit of drivel forced me to stop.

The Christian God is, quite simply, not like us. He is not a bigger version of me.

No, he's a bigger version of the people of the time (Old Testament) who became a bit less sadistic because of more moderate authors (New Testament).

He is other. He is perfect, in ways that we cannot even begin to understand.

Ah, then I guess the Old Testament, which quite clearly paints a picture of a petty madman, with a penchant for killing people merely for not believing (sounds pretty human to me), doesn't count.

Earlier

I mean, the songbook of the Bible (the Psalms), words God gave to his people to sing praise

Er...

He is his own goodness, justice,

I go to Hell, no matter what I do, just because I don't believe in him? Sounds just.

wisdom,

Not enough wisdom to see the flaw in claiming to be incapable of lies, but also either telling humans that things that clearly didn't happen happened, or changing reality so they hadn't happened.

and power.

And he accused Stephen Fry of stating something unfounded. One tiny grain of proof is all I ask, and nobody ever provides any. Is it too much to expect that a supreme being be remotely tangible? Of course it is, nobody would describe a being like that as god because you (in general) can't claim to know what it thinks without the risk of it contradicting you.

So yeah, I didn't really find it compelling. It's not even as if Stephen Fry was trying to discredit anything anyway, he stated a personal view. A better way to discredit the Bible would be to ask why God cared enough to smite endlessly when (possibly unreliable) personal testimony was the only way to spread the news, but when we can record everything as a moving image with devices that are commonly carried he no longer bothers, in spite of a massive upsurge in "sin". Is he camera shy?

 

[Imari]

Any model which excludes the Christian God of love and perfection necessarily excludes the complaint that there is even such a thing as suffering, or injustice.

Nope.

Christians are not the only people permitted to recognise suffering or injustice. They're not even the only religion that does so.

Fry, as usual, says what should be said but in a fairly trolly way. The correct thing for anyone to say to God would be "So, can you explain what was going on with the whole Earth thing? Because there's a lot that went on that seems at odds with what you told us about how you want the planet to be."

Then you can decide whether or not God is the asshole that he appears to be.

 

[Famine]

First, given what Stephen Fry believes about life, the universe, and everything, why does he even have a problem? If all that is, is the result of blind chance, an impersonal materialistic universe that just ‘happened’, then what’s the problem of suffering children? What is suffering? Why care? The weak die, the strong survive, the species carries on – the categories of ‘wrong’, or ‘injustice’, or ‘evil’ have no place. ...

The whole thing should be read.

Not if that excerpt is an example of the tone.

His point isn't that he cares, but that either God doesn't care or he does and is an infinitely powerful sociopath...

 

[Omnis]

Tried three times and all three times a new bit of drivel forced me to stop.

So yeah, I didn't really find it compelling.

Except you didn't even read it. It's so obvious that you didn't, based on your reply.

 

[mistersafeway]

Except you didn't even read it. It's so obvious that you didn't, based on your reply.

I read everything up to the paragraph I quoted, including the stuff about his children being extremely ill, and I agreed with him that that didn't necessarily mean God is cruel, but the Old Testament does. Anybody who references the Old Testament then claims that God is good, just and wise is really not somebody I see as worth taking seriously. The Old Testament describes, as God, a powerful being (self proclaimed as all powerful) who recognises the existence of other gods, but says don't believe in them or I'll kill you. That sounds more like a fascist dictator to me than a being with actual power, a being that has the power of fear and its existing followers, nothing more.

 

[Scaff]

The whole thing should be read.

I've read the whole thing a number of times now and quite frankly I think its a poor analysis of the video in question that makes a number of assumptions and inferences that are inaccurate and do not address the key points raised.

The main areas I have an issue with (not all of them by any means are):

"First, given what Stephen Fry believes about life, the universe, and everything, why does he even have a problem? If all that is, is the result of blind chance, an impersonal materialistic universe that just ‘happened’, then what’s the problem of suffering children? What is suffering? Why care? The weak die, the strong survive, the species carries on – the categories of ‘wrong’, or ‘injustice’, or ‘evil’ have no place."
This falls into the assumption that atheists are quite happy to accept suffering as a part of the everyday and just 'happens and what's the problem. Now not only is it an inaccurate assumption to make on the part of any atheist, it also ignores the fact that Fry is a Humanist and strongly supports and works towards ending suffering.



"Please, please, please note what I am NOT saying – I am NOT suggesting that people who do not believe in God are not good, or loving. I take it as an empirical fact that many who don’t believe do, to an embarrassing degree, far excel the church in charity, generosity, and love. What I am saying is that without God, there is no way of accounting for why we even care."
So aside from the first and last sentence contradicting each other, this assumes that for a moral code or empathy to exist one needs God. Quite simply that is a claim not supported by a massive body of evidence.



"As a child needs to be lifted onto her father’s lap in order to slap him in the face, Stephen Fry needs God in order to say anything at all about the misery of life."
The old 'you have to believe in God to hate him argument' which kind of forgets that Fry is providing an answer to a hypothetical question.



"In the video, Fry claims that his atheism not only promotes unbelief in general, but also seeks to question what kind of God God might be, given the state of things. "
And yet again forgetting that this is an answer to a hypothetical question.



"Christianity takes suffering very seriously. Without entering into all of the debates about free will and God’s sovereign control, the Bible is clear that suffering is not God’s moral fault, but ours."
So it’s the victims fault that they are suffering! I'm sorry but any attempt to justify original sin is simply bronze age tosh used as a control mechanism.



"We are not entitled to know God’s reasons for what he does, and allows. We may weep, and ache, with the question ‘why?’ We cannot, however, demand God’s justification according to our own standards, and consider him guilty until proven innocent. "
Why are we not entitled? Why must it be a mystery that we are not allowed to question? All I read here is 'shut up, stop asking questions and when you die a good God-fearing boy/girl I will take you to the happy place'. Well I'm sorry but I think the questions should be asked, that ignorance is not a virtue, that we do need to look further than the cross and we don't have all the answers we need.

I read everything up to the paragraph I quoted, including the stuff about his children being extremely ill, and I agreed with him that that didn't necessarily mean God is cruel, but the Old Testament does. Anybody who references the Old Testament then claims that God is good, just and wise is really not somebody I see as worth taking seriously. The Old Testament describes, as God, a powerful being (self proclaimed as all powerful) who recognises the existence of other gods, but says don't believe in them or I'll kill you. That sounds more like a fascist dictator to me than a being with actual power, a being that has the power of fear and its existing followers, nothing more.

As does Revelations, the final book of the NT is arguably more violent, cruel and bloody that all of the OT combined.