Why do people form all their opinions of God based on what other people do or say?

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Jennik wrote:

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Aim_Deep wrote:

Non sense. Russians killed like 20 million of their own in atheism name. Europeans and other killed 100 million in WW2 without god but for power and racism. Can region be used for genocide? Sure but not wholesale as its tenants mores and atmospherics are against it unlike atheistic constructs which can be anything from eugenics to political slaughter.

Make sure you can differentiate between when people do things due to the fact that they're atheists and when atheists do things. There are no end of reasons to do things. I've never seen a person do something expressly because they don't believe in any gods, though. Atheism has no rules people must follow.

You may also want to check into how much violence is actually commanded by religions. You can do a Google search for something like "violence in the Bible" or "violence in the Quran" to see those books advocating some pretty horrific acts. We're just lucky that hardly anybody actually follows their religions religiously. The biggest problem with Islam today is that, unlike Christianity, too many of its followers actually follow their religion.

Also, from Wikipedia:

"A census in May 1939, six years into the Nazi era[2] and incorporating the annexation of mostly Catholic Austria into Germany, indicates that 54% considered themselves Protestant, 40% Catholic, 3.5% self-identified as "gottgläubig" (lit. "believers in god", often described as predominately creationist and deistic),[3] and 1.5% as non-religious."

I'm not sure why you believe Nazis were "without god." They were clearly believers. "Gott mit uns" isn't something they just said for laughs.

Actions speak louder than words
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_persecution_of_the_Catholic_Church_in_Poland

You probably think ISIS is representative of Muslims when all they kill is Muslims.

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Aim_Deep wrote:

Actions speak louder than words
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_persecution_of_the_Catholic_Church_in_Poland

You probably think ISIS is representative of Muslims when all they kill is Muslims.

I'm not sure what you're doing here.

1. Please don't argue against objective facts. I will not have that conversation.

2. Please don't project ridiculous beliefs onto me. I try to make sure my beliefs are representative of reality. If you want to provide objective facts that may change my mind, go for it. If you want to say "you probably believe this incredibly stupid thing," please don't respond to me.

Edit: Actually, based on what you've said so far I just don't see this conversation with you going anywhere worthwhile. Good day.

Objective facts are the Nazis set about systematically dismantling Churches arresting leaders, closing churches, monasteries and convents. Many clergymen were murdered and put in concentration camps. ISIS does the same thing in Iraq and Syria to Imams and non-compliant Mosques. History is harder than glib "gott mit uns" brush up.

Fact is truly religious people are a impediment to power grabs and false prophets using religion for their own ends.

Ultimately my point in creating this thread was to try and understand why so many people default to hating God by not believing in Him based on what others have said about Him or said to have done in His name.

First of all, if someone says they did something "for God" and it was evil, it wasn't God's command that led them to doing whatever they did.

Secondly, in my personal experience, almost all Christians don't actually know the God they claim to based on the fact their actions usually look very similar to those of someone who loves evil and this world.

Anyone who truly knows and loves God will never sin (not that they haven't sinned in the past) and have completely repented, that is, to have ceased from sin and have started obeying God.

Too often I run into people that claim God isn't real or that hate God simply because they've seen the way hypocritical religious people act, and that's sadly all they think about when it comes to "God".

I've said this many times in my life, but it's worth repeating; If you can't see the difference between religion and God, you will never actually understand anything about either of them.

^That reads like a bunch of bullshit.

If we assume god is the singularity out of which the thousand things unfold, he is also the birthing point of evil and sin.

It would be unwise to contemplate the concept of god with a duality mindset in which certain factors dominate lesser factors, that would defeat the purpose of the exercise in it's entirety.

Your basically judging, while it's not your place to judge.

People are allowed to sin and commit evil, by virtue of it's existence is it allowed.

Peace,

-Boem-

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Boem wrote:

^That reads like a bunch of bullshit.

If we assume god is the singularity out of which the thousand things unfold, he is also the birthing point of evil and sin.

It would be unwise to contemplate the concept of god with a duality mindset in which certain factors dominate lesser factors, that would defeat the purpose of the exercise in it's entirety.

Your basically judging, while it's not your place to judge.

People are allowed to sin and commit evil, by virtue of it's existence is it allowed.

Peace,

-Boem-

God doesn't cause evil, He created both humans and angels with free will, they are the ones who choose to be evil and to create evil with their imagination.

Also, I'm not judging, I'm simply making observations based on experiences I've had.

I've found that people who believe in God are quick to ask if you also believe in God. When you answer no, they then ask you to embrace God with blind faith.

I'd ask those people to image a world without God. Put their faith in themselves and their fellow man instead.

@vibe
First you state

"god created free will"

Then you say

"free will gave birth to evil"

Ultimately your saying that without god evil would not exist, so we can state that he is the birthing place of evil.

You haven't really said anything that contradicts me, merely revealed you have a very tainted picture of "god".

If god is omnipotent, that would imply he both shines like the stars and is covered in mud at the same time without cause for concern.

Peace,

-Boem-

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Jennik wrote:

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DalaiLama wrote:

Blaming religion is as easy and fruitless as blaming atheism or any other group. It is a sign of bigotry, and is no better than racism.

That's not remotely true. Atheism carries no dogma telling you what is bad and how to kill certain people. I can't crack open "The Big Book of Atheism," flip through the pages, and find a passage telling me to kill witches or execute apostates. That's pretty damn easy to do with many popular religious books, though.

When we have people performing unspeakably cruel and terrible acts explicitly because those acts are mandated by their religion, blaming the religion is entirely reasonable. Calling those who place blame on the religion bigots and saying that blaming religion for the harm it causes is no better than racism is utterly absurd.

Atheism lacks a formal dogma, but it tends towards certain informal ones. Atheists tend to have faith in things they cannot prove and even pray on occasion*, and are often in deep denial about it.

* I define "prayer" as "talking out loud to an entity which doesn't appear to be present, or vividly imagining doing so." For example, if you're in your car, completely alone, trying to drive fast, and you utter "fuck fuck fuck fuck," you're praying. "To whom?" is a question atheists rarely ask themselves.

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Aim_Deep wrote:

Stop thinking and feel. Remember you were made perfect and people piled the hate on you and the purpose of religion is to present the notion that you are loved even though you are "evil" so that you will forgive yourself and stop your self hate.

I see nothing wrong with faith as the person who is optimistic will have a better success rate at what they attempt than a person who is a defeatist. Faith is precursor for nearly everything we do if you think about it. A marriage, a business start up, anything.

We are not born perfect, we're born blank. To call that perfection is just as silly as an artist buying a canvas, taking it directly to the gallery, and displaying it as finished work without even a single brushstroke.