"We have found god. Guess who his chosen people is? Us!! And guess what? "He" is a male chauvinist like us. He's against homosexuality like us. He's into blood sacrifices like us. He's vengeful and judgmental like us. And we will use this god as a scourge on decency..."

To swallow the barbarism of this thousands of years later as sensible and legitimate and valid and believable seems kind of dubious. No?

God is a moron; like His believers!

Well I get you but many of them are smart but refuse to be on this one subject. It is exempted from intelligence, analysis, critical thinking, and even reality. So a 150 IQ can easily be a believer.

"I believe in magic stories from thousands of years ago, and that's my final answer! In fact, it is a testament of my morality how final that answer is."

This is the brain on religion. It's understandable, because the hooks of the thing are way deeper than rationality, way down in the primal belonging and emotion realms.

Whatever the religious figure one claims a relationship with, it is actually a relationship with an archetype of human life and consciousness. In this sense, it can be constructive and "real," it's just that the "being" on the other side of it is actually a projection. This system can be used for good, but in keeping with human nature is often used for appalling immorality.

The ignorant bigotry of the religion, which, I'm sorry, is not informed by an omniscient god but by human prejudices, is a black mark against morality, decency, humanism, love. "Yeah but 2000 years ago it was the way they thought, and they say they got it from god ... who am I then to assess it? It's my job to believe it."

With every thought, reply and step practically, the true believer is reinforcing, never actually considering, their position. The idea that maybe magic stories of murderous loving gods are NOT actually the source of morality, that bigotry towards other people is NOT justified, is off-limits to them. As in: "We aren't agents; we are sheep."

We have these magic stories from thousands of years ago, and if you don't believe them you are going to hell. It's called religion.

Myopia is difficult, at times, to escape.

The first challenge for Christians and the like is to find a way out of the context of "God" and see the polytheism for what it really is.

The second is to come to a comprehension of the massive differentiation of cosmology and trajectories of presumed essentialities, their affect on moral contentions, etc.

With such evaluations, it quickly becomes apparent that a great deal of stupidity and ignorance are afoot, and religion is way more complex than are dreamt about in your localized cult, Horatio.

For doctrinal religions, the focus on belief acts as a type of mind control.

Agreed it is very difficult to escape the "I really need to believe this" mindset. There really isn't much of an issue with any conflict with reality because the mind is just set on auto believe and total dismissal of inconvenient realities. I just quoted a psychiatrist tonight, who said: "It is amazing how the desire to believe crushes realistic thinking."

When trapped in this "must believe" mindset, the killing of every child, baby and fetus on earth (the Great Flood), is loving and righteous. It starts with the deep subconscious thought: "No matter what, I have to believe this and defend it."

For god was so loving that he murdered every child, infant and fetus on earth (in his great flood) ... over the infractions of other people. Isn't that special? Isn't that beautiful? Let's worship that.

Behold: it is a perfect love which kills indiscriminately like this, and a perfect indoctrination that holds to such a belief.

"There is nothing as confining as the prison we don't know we are in." -- William Shakespeare

Raised with religion, steeped in it, indoctrinated in it, sensing wordlessly that it is anathema to not believe it ... it is a prison that will forgo any decency and commit any atrocity to defend the dogma of belief over reality.

Here we have ancient superstitious people operating below a rational evidence based standard, saying, "Just believe it. Our epistemology is to simply believe, and you should agree with the metaphysics we arrive at." And a gaggle of modern people doing exactly that, employing the "I believe it" standard, and calling this the moral, form the groups of all the true believer religions, sects, cults, denominations.

Not the god of names, not the god of legends, not the god of don'ts, not the god of "I murdered your children because I'm righteous," not the god of "I'll send you to hell" ... All of that is just religion, religion designing, personification, superstition, projection of needs. None of that. Just the Great Mystery.

Write less pretentiously. God wants to be your friend and He craves your love

If you treat the least of society with care and love and you forgive people readily, good things happen. What argument do you have against these pricniples? Belief isnt some amazing thing. Even the demons believe

Why celebrate and serve the spirit of mystery, which keeps humanity deprived of the wisdom it needs? The worshippers of mystery are those on the sideline who refuse to lower themselves and get their hands dirty.

God murdered all the children, babies and fetuses on earth. Surely these are some of the least and most defenseless of society. Explain how that works in this care and love paradigm. Oh, now you have to run away. Same old same old.

It isn't mystery which deprives us of wisdom ... it is fake dogmatic, ignorant answers of barbarians being clung to.

I accept those principles. I am an atheist. One does not need an omniscient, omnipotent deity threatening us with eternal punishment to behave in an ethical manner. Or at least most don’t; I would question the ethics of anyone who does actually behave ethically only because of fear of divine punishment and who would not do so without such a threat.

We are on the Titanic. The status quo is terminal. It’s not just about behaving ethically while we slowly approach the iceberg.

Each human individual must take their share of responsibility for this existential metacrisis. How do you do this?

The relationship between the human individual and the soul is a father-child relationship, which has expectations and responsibilities attached to it. By acknowledging the soul in this way, over time the story of the soul reveals itself.

The human individual who does not acknowledge his soul is like an absent father who doesn’t acknowledge his child. An absent father is unable to fulfill the promises written on the child’s heart.

An absent God is unable to fulfill humanity’s promise. The father realizes that in order to redeem himself to his soul, God the father must be redeemed and succeed. The two stories become intertwined.

The human individual — who became a father to his soul — then becomes a son of God. In the end, as Christ demonstrates, the son redeems the father, and in doing so, the promises written on the soul are fulfilled by the human individual. This is the story of the Son of Man.

Well, you are getting warmer. As in the entire religion is created with a paternal design, this compensating for the missing father theme so endemic to humanity. Voila: "We have a perfect father in heaven." Pure projection ... coming from the same place all the other gods come from. Never mind the mother, we are going with the father here since, you know, we have this patriarchal, chauvinist, misogynist society and all. Isn't that special? And it's a little easier to attribute all this wrath and killing to a male than a female, so yeah, it's a dude.

It’s a great mystery. Yet you are an authority on what’s true and not. Your mind is playing tricks on you.

Jeezus Christ. YOU are the authority on everything straight from the mind of God Almighty. I use simple information from real world knowledge and concede the mysterious and unknown, you use faith and blind zealotry/belief in a magic doctrine, believed and put forth into the world in times when illness was caused by demons. Now your message is the demon haunting of reality.

"The more you argue with a true believer, the more entrenched they become." -- psychologist Sam Vaknin.

True that, for sure. The point is not to change their belief, but to demonstrate the absurdity and dishonesty of how it is defended and apologized for.

You think truth is a popularity contest, so you operate in bad faith smear tactics. As a result, you will continue to be stuck.

When I address people on this forum, I am speaking to them. When you address me, you are not speaking to me. You’re speaking to an imagined audience with the purpose of, not getting to the truth, but adding them to your anti-Christian campaign.