Someone Jacked My Thoughts

…actually, someone more coherently organized the thoughts, feelings and conclusions I’ve had myself lately, in a more understandable dialogue. Check out his well-worded post here.

Kullervo said:

As I’ve said before, I do not deny the existence of God, but there are some things that I do deny. Many of them actually assume that God exists, so what I mean then is that “if there is a God, I deny that he is like x.”

Agreed. He continues:

I deny the existence of hell. That an even marginally good god would damn people to eternal punishment and torture for finite sins committed in virtual ignorance is absolutely preposterous. That some people do believe this makes my mind boggle.

I deny the infallibility of the Bible (or any other religious text), of human religious leaders, of religions, and of philosophies. The claim of infallibility is unbelievably arrogant, and reality usually shows the truth.

I deny the existence of Fossil-Hiding God. What I mean by that is that I deny that God would create a world that looked like he didn’t create it as some kind of test of faith. I deny that God would say x, and then purposely hide all evidence of x and in fact plant all kinds of counter evidence against x. “Test us,” my eye.

See? Kullervo’s freakin on a roll. Really, though- “a fossil-hiding god”- that doesn’t make any sense at all, does it? DOES IT! It doesn’t, you and I know it and any apologetics just procrastinate the inevitable. Any religious pseudo-science that attempts to embrace science as they twist it to fit their theology is really just tailgating main science. What I mean by that is that they love to accept science- just a couple or so decades after it’s been overwhelmingly proven to the masses (such as believing that evolution occurs between species instead of evolution occurring only inside of a certain species; the literal 6000 year old earth to “well a day could be pretty much anything, couldn’t it?”, Noah’s arc becoming a great “alegory” but impossible otherwise; losing Cumorah’s Hill and other Book of Mormon landmarks; Losing a Lost Tribe- DNA and the Lamanites; and the slow but eventual equality in gender/race).

So stop tailgating and embrace the times and understanding that we find ourselves in now. Don’t wait until twenty years later when the apologists finally come up with a way to twist science to weakly fit their theology- open your eyes now. You’ll see we know a whole lot about the world we live in.

I deny the existence of any one “chosen people.” I deny an ethnocentric God.

I deny that morality is based on God’s decree. I deny that the only line between moral and immoral is the whim of deity. I deny a moral system that is ultimately based on “because I said so.” That’s elementary school morality. God is certainly better than that, if he indeed exists. And we have the potential to be better than that, and I hardly believe that God simply wants us to behave according to the lowest common denominator. At the very least, it would make God an arbitrary and capricious God, and that takes me to two sub-denials:

I deny arbitrary commandments, i.e., things that are not inherently, intuitively immoral. This is of course a subset of the above denial, because the only thing that makes homosexuality immoral, for example, is “God said so.” Or tea and coffee in Mormonism. Being harmful to people doesn’t naturally equal immoral (otherwise getting in a car would be immoral), and the only thing that would make the Word of Wisdom a moral issue would be the fact that God said do. And I deny that God ever said such a thing.

I had an (intellectual) problem with this as a TBM. Never rang true to me. Add to that that Joseph, Brigham and everyone else drank in their times; Joseph had wine in his cell before he died; Brigham had a bar in his house; and that the WOW only talks about “hot drinks” and “tabaccy for cattle wounds” doesn’t sound like an inspired law of health at all to me. How about “thou must partake of as many calories as thou shalt burn that day; any more and you will gain weight, have back/knee problems and risk of heart disease” or “a healthy diet low in saturated fat, and exercise will make a man walk and not be weary, run and not faint”. Re-reading the WOW now, knowing what we know now in 2007 makes that “revelation from God” amazingly ridiculous. Plain and simple.

There are more nit-picky things I deny, but those are specific religious doctrines that I reject, as opposed to these kinds of overarching universal denials.

I think I’ll quickly add to the list that I don’t believe in a god who’s so hung up on being worshipped and glorified- just sounds like an eleven-year-old’s mentality playing with toys or something but not an extremely intelligent being. What would someone so intelligent get out of that, anyways? Wouldn’t it just be better to just lay down the laws and not worry if people are kissing your feet or not? What gives?

Speaking of “laying down the law”, what kind of vehicle would a supremely intelligent being probably use to relay to us the most important message to mankind? An ancient book to which we do not even have an original copy? Or of which we have thousands of different “original versions” and hundreds of modern translations ? Couldn’t he have chosen a better method (such as the question posed in the video at the bottom).

What else needs be said? I agree with Kullervo’s thinking. That’s rationalism, to me, and I can’t fathom how a god would hold me or anyone else to the test of irrationality (also known as “faith”). It just DOESN’T MAKE SENSE. Done. Over. Fin. The only argument left is the arguments coming from ignorance, wishful thinking, or delusion, and these arguments have more holes in them than your grandma’s Sunday pantyhose.

I find this video to be pertinent to the discussion:

~ by Anubys on April 27, 2007.