Is Religion Bad? (PART 2)

The second failure of the anti-religion group is its failure to understand religion.  To shed some light on this, I grabbed the definition from dictionary.com.  Here it is:

re·li·gion 

noun

1. A set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.
2. A specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects: the Christian religion; the Buddhist religion.
3. The body of persons adhering to a particular set of beliefs and practices: a world council of religions.
4. The life or state of a monk, nun, etc.: to enter religion.
5. The practice of religious beliefs; ritual observance of faith.

With that understanding in place, take a look at these groups.  Notice that they all tend to be a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe.  Atheism rejects the superhuman agency, but does contain its own moral code.

Notice, the subjective view takes some things from the religion group and then rejects other while adding its own.  Obviously, there can be numerous things added to the lists here and many additional subjective views offered which all contain different lists.  I think that is pretty clear.

The “Outsiders” Test

Why does this matter?  It matters because people think they can ESCAPE religion by believing what they want to believe.  However, all they have done is created a new box of beliefs “concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe…containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.” You haven't abandoned religion!  All you succeeded in doing was creating a new religion!

John Loftus, an atheist, terrible debater and woefully stupid man, described what he called the outsider test.  Essentially he suggests that if you look at Christianity from the outside, you would abandon it embrace atheism.  This pathetic view ignores the fact that one is always an INSIDER to some view! There is no way to outsider test OBJECTIVELY because it will always be done in terms of an INSIDER to another belief system.  A person is always an INSIDER – ALWAYS!

Unfortunately, nobody can ever be truly objective because they always have some sort of subjective interpretation involved in the processing (it doesn't mean that if we understand our biases that we can't try to set them aside – but this is very difficult due to the impact of our worldview).  The idea of being an “outsider” and therefore seeing an objective view of is pure fantasy.  With my own experiences through Christianity, when I do the “outsiders” test on atheism (after all I am an outsider to it), it appears to be ludicrously stupid, naïve, ego-centric, hedonism.  So which “outsider” perspective is right?

For those agnostics who think they live on the outside of religion, they don't.  They have just chosen a softer and more cowardly religion.  It tries to find a box where relative understanding somehow equates to leaving every religion alone because God is bigger than that.  But by choosing this path, they have inversely shrunk God to the tiniest and most impotent being available.  Agnostics live in a religious box, where they think God lets “good” people go to heaven and doesn’t send people to Hell that don’t believe in him.  However, God doesn’t appear to have a standard for what is good, because the agnostic can’t decide what a good person is.  God also doesn’t appear to be good, because now he lets people that don’t care about Him go to heaven as well.  It’s only those that agnostic deems evil that would suffer some sort of punishment.  What does all of this equate to? A RELIGION! You are yet another insider with another biased opinion, offering your relative god based on your subjective understanding.

The Relevance of Religion

What about those that play the ecumenical card and act soft hearted and say, “Religion just isn’t needed.” If religion is not needed, then YOUR RELIGION is not needed either.  Your understanding of the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe are IRRELEVANT!  So the ecumenical (cowardly) agnostic believes that HIS OWN VIEW IS WORTHLESS by rejecting all religion as wrong.  If he believes himself to be right (that all religion is wrong) then in fact he cannot truly believe ALL religion to be wrong, because he believes HIS religion to be right!  Therefore he is NOT ecumenical at all is completely exclusive, arrogant, and judgmental!  The agnostic is therefore a liar and a fraud.  His belief cannot exist within the self-defeating nature of its stupidity or it exists at the cost of the agnostic being exposed as a self-absorbed, arrogant, liar.

Picking certain aspects of religion that you like while rejecting others is simply creating your own religion that defines a moral subset based on your subjective views of morality.  However, your own religion is powerless and holds no merit because it is ONLY based on your SUBJECTIVE views – making your entire belief system relative in nature.  Truth is objective in that something either is or is not true.  If Christianity is TRUE then all other religions are FALSE.  It is the nature of truth.   To be picking parts that you like of each and trying to apply them to yourself and saying others should do the same – is to say, that YOU have found the TRUTH and others are wrong.  However, if you don’t think others should do the same and accept that others could come to different conclusions, then you are saying that you in fact believe that WHICH IS FALSE.  For if others could have differing views than you and be right - then a square is not a square indeed. 

There is no exception here.  A person is always an insider to a certain view.  The question is whether or not that view is true.  A partially true belief is in reality a false belief.  Just as a square is a square, truth is truth – you can’t have three sides and it still be a square.  If all religions are wrong, your religion is wrong.  If your religion is right, then all other religions are wrong (technically speaking they would have to CONFLICT with your view in some way – which we assume they do otherwise why not be in that religion?).  So rather than think religion is judgmental because it rejects other views, stop being so naïve and understand that if something is TRUE it must necessarily EXCLUDE certain other possibilities.  EVERY RELIGION by nature must be exclusive of other views – it's not judgmental, it’s the nature of truth.  Even your own pathetic, subjective, religion that you established IS EXCLUSIVE toward other religions and points of view if you believe it to be true.  Christianity doesn't condemn because it's judgmental – it condemns because it is TRUE.

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On another note, if you get a chance please offer prayers for the family trying to adopt (posted on the right) and pray for the little girl.  If you feel up to it, you can always help donate as well.

Is Religion Bad? (PART 1)

Due to an influx of people talking about how religion is the bane of Christ and that loving God doesn’t require a religion; I felt it was time to address this thinking.  I guess before I lay out the errors of this thought process I should at least summarize the thought process.

Essentially people come to this conclusion from two paths. 

1.  In one path, people determine that Christ was against religion based on his opposition to the Pharisees and Jews in general.  People assume that Jesus was trying to expose religion as restrictive and he therefore was attempting to set people free from the rules of religion.
2. The second path comes more so from the ecumenical people that believe a pseudo agnostic view that there is a God (perhaps even the Christian God), but that he is ambiguous and cannot be known through any single religion.  Obviously the two paths approach God from a different way, but they both draw that conclusion that religion is bad and God doesn't require religion (or even want it)! 

Unfortunately, this lofty thought process of the ambiguous God embraced through a personal relationship free of religion is utterly stupid.  The first and greatest weakness is that the inevitable conclusion from such a view is a god who fits OUR personal view.  So rather than an objective greatness, we have a subjective impotence.  Why? Because WITHOUT clear definition of who God is and what His character and nature are like then each person is the arbiter of who God is.  This is because something that is true is OBJECTIVE.  If you believe a square is round, then you are WRONG!  Your belief is wrong, because a square is objective.  It isn’t whatever you imagine it to be.  GOD IS OBJECTIVE!  If God exists then God is by necessity, OBJECTIVE!  Why is DNA evidence so effective or fingerprinting a tool that is still used today? Because they identify a person on an objective level.  Creating an idea of who you think God is and what He is like is creating a SUBJECTIVE god.  By disregarding the teachings of a religion, you are essentially saying God isn't who they say He is but who YOU say He is – and that is a purely subjective.

FOR THOSE WHO ATTEMPT TO BE AGNOSTIC

Now the natural question would be, “But people know people differently.  One man might think one a villain while the other think him a hero.  Isn't that subjective?”  Now granted, most people actually wouldn't think that and instead would run away insulting you for being a “head-thinker.”  However, let's assume somebody actually did take half a second to think and asked that question, what is the answer? Well, it comes two fold I guess.  Perception isn't reality, but only a subjective interpretation of what is there.  Grass is orange when perceived through my eyes, because I am colorblind.  So HOW we perceive a person does not mean that is WHO the person really is.  There must be a standard with which to measure a person, but that standard CANNOT be subjective and relativistic because then it cannot be a standard with which to measure EVERYBODY.  If the measurement cannot be applied to all, then it CANNOT be OBJECTIVELY applied to one!  Assuming no religion has got it right, means that we most likely don't have it right as well.  Therefore, the standard with which the agnostic assumes to measure with is subjective if they believe ONLY themselves to have it right (by saying that others are wrong), because if the standard was objective then that would mean the agnostic was almost certainly wrong in his belief as well and therefore there TRULY must be a religion that got it right.  Agnostics are cowards in thinking because they don't accept the subjective nature of their view and yet the only truth they want to accept is that all religions got it wrong.  The truth of agnosticism is that it is not ecumenical at all, but an arrogant ignorance that places their understanding that ALL GOT IT WRONG as the only the truth yet somehow reject the implications of the self-defeating nature of the creed they proclaim.

The second part would be that if God is changing then God cannot be trusted because He could change and could become weaker, less powerful, less loving, evil, and the world would suffer the consequences of those changes; therefore, God must be IMMUTABLE and therefore if something was true of Him ever it is TRUE OF HIM STILL.  Meaning, if God was ever good, God is still good.  Unlike a person who can change and making our perception the person might change.  God MUST BE immutable and therefore He does not change, only our perception of Him.  So our subjective perception cannot be the measure of God’s objective person-hood.

Let's examine the concept a little more.  For instance, imagine God had no hand in creating the universe and it was pure, unadulterated chance.  Now as time goes on God changes and begins creating ex nihilo.  Well now things would just start popping into existence within the existing universe and science would be baffled.  What if God was evil?  Would people be crying out why do good things happen to some people?  With a simple role reversal it is easy to see our perceptions fail us and that if God is anything He is immutable.  A changing god, whether or not we give him the attributes of the Christian God, would (given an infinite amount of time) become the Christian God.  If it is possible for Him to become the Christian God, then He would ALWAYS remain the Christian God, because the Christian God is IMMUTABLE!  Therefore, if God IS changing, then given an infinite amount of time God WILL BECOME UNCHANGING!

FOR THOSE AGAINST RELIGION

This is important because it reinforces that which we learn from RELIGION.  Religion teaches us about who God is.  Based on WHO HE IS, we find WHO WE ARE, objectively!  Our objective position is based on the objective God.  Defining our worth, position, status, righteousness, based on OUR own understanding or perception is simply relativistic.  If however, we define our worth, position, status, and righteousness on an OBJECTIVE reality then we find our TRUE and OBJECTIVE answer to who we are.  Christianity as a RELIGION is important because it seeks to find the objective standard with which to measure.  Unfortunately, most people are appalled by the results of such measuring and appeal to the relative measuring of their subjective perceptions.  When a person says, “I don't know why God would condemn a good person to Hell.” they are simply reflecting THEIR OWN PERCEPTION of what is good and also what a good god would act like.  Now the Christian church comes in and measures that same person with an OBJECTIVE standard and people cry out that the church is judgmental.   Why? Because when the measure is our own, we can shape it how we see fit and change how we see ourselves.  When we measure objectively, there is no lying and there is no shifting.  We land where we land and we cannot argue it. 

The doctrines that develop through religion (the perceived “rules” of religion) are the protection against irrelevance.  It is by necessity that doctrines exist.  If a person rejects certain doctrines from a religion, they reject the authority of that religion.  Religion without authority is impotent and therefore falls into relativism.  Doctrines serve as barriers or fences to prevent relativism from taking over.  Every religion needs doctrines in order to survive. Rejecting the “rules” of religion is nothing more than embracing your own relativistic rules that make you the arbiter of truth.  Those who are Catholic and reject the church’s teaching on women priests, abortion, divorce, or homosexuality reject Catholicism entirely.  Because if you don’t accept those doctrines you don't accept the authority of those doctrines.  Without that authority, you practice relativism.  Those protestants who reject the Bible's teaching about homosexuality are in fact REJECTING the Bible as a whole!  If it doesn't have authority on that issue, then YOU become the ultimate authority and therefore the Bible is SECONDARY TO YOUR OWN UNDERSTANDING!  This is why doctrines are important.  This is why religion demands these “rules.”  Because the consequence for rejecting them is a self-ordained, relative to you, subjective understanding of the universe, God, and humanity, that bends to the whim of each individual.

It is a false belief to think the doctrines hinder religion and therefore religion hinders our relationship with God.  Doctrines are there to define that which is OBJECTIVE and to lead us away from our subjective understanding, short sighted perceptions, and relativistic understanding of God.  Religion is the tool to lead us to the OBJECTIVE REALITY, GOD.