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
- 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.
- A specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects: the Christian religion; the Buddhist religion.
- The body of persons adhering to a particular set of beliefs and practices: a world council of religions.
- The life or state of a monk, nun, etc.: to enter religion.
- 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.
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.
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