The preachers getting rich from poor Americans
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
On top of that, there is a special kind of betrayal when a spiritual leader abuses his follower's trust. Others may feel differently, but to me these scams are more sinister than QVS promising 'science-proven results' or a 'Nigerian prince' email spam.
I assume you were referring to my comment. To be frank, I always feel a little threatened by these types of stories because so many people end up using it as leverage to question the value of freedom of religion (a freedom I hold dear).
Perhaps you may have felt the same defensive instinct when a popular response to the sickening display of racism or hate is to call into question the value of freedom of speech.
Articles in the 1980s about televangelists at least mentioned the use of television. Articles about nondenominational megachurches make some effort to show that they’re different from other large churches. Articles about the Holy See can discuss the history of when the Vatican became an official country (more recently than I thought). This article amounts to “religious Americans are idiots.”
It would be like if someone on QVC conned tons of people into buying magnets because "science proves this will increase your energy levels" and then I used that as a reason to write off all of science.
Target vulnerable people, get them to pay you money, profit. So many dishonest people exploit this formula from televangelists to email spammers.
Agreed - it's a pretty weak argument compared to some of the others (terrorism, pedophilia, genocide etc.)
My personal problem is the lack of convincing arguments that religion is good.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/01/31/are-religio...
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/oct/30/religious-p...
https://www.philanthropy.com/article/Religious-Americans-Giv...
Interestingly, when we start talking about countries, not individual people, the trend reverses: atheistic countries are the happiest.
https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2018/03/20/the-2018...
Edit: I'm talking about my experience of religion in Scotland, which is a bit grim and dour, not the rather cheerful kind that they seem to have in the US :-)
>In short, what makes people happy is not religion, but material well being and the assurance of material aid. That’s supported by the study’s finding that immigrants, including Muslims from the Middle East, quickly gain the happiness of their new country, while (I suspect), still keeping their religion, though perhaps in an attenuated form.
This does not contradict my point- if you live in rural Appalachia, there's a good chance you have a pretty hardscrabble life. Religion is adaptive in this circumstance, and you can become happier by becoming religious. The author of the article you linked also goes on to quote Marx, saying that abolishing religion is curing the masses of their opium addiction, and curing them of their delusions. I would argue that irreligious people are just as delusional, but with different failure modes. Apathy, nihilism, and lack of a sense of self dominate the irreligious; moral absolutism dominates the religious.
The amount of money spent on genuine good works is rather lower.
I'm sure genuinely giving people exist in religions, and they may even be encouraged by belonging to them.
But the standard rhetorical implication is that all religious people are like this and all non-profit spending falls into this category - when the reality is very different.
It's not a tax. You can't get your passport revoked if you don't pay tithing. You won't go to jail for tax evasion, either. In fact, probably nothing will happen. You can continue to go to church every Sunday without paying tithing and most congregations would still welcome you with open arms. Ecclesiastical leaders might remind you that tithing requires faith and that you would receive more blessings if you paid your tithe, but as long as said leaders do not profit from said tithes, I don't see a problem with it as there is no conflict of interest.
is key.
Right, and you don't need a running club to motivate you to run or a school to help you learn. But for a lot of people, they sure do help if being charitable/running/learning is your goal.
Dumb people are happier than smart people -- pick your own causality.
> This replicates fairly well across many countries.
In some countries you'll likely be killed if you express your non-religiosity.
In (as far as I know) no countries would you be killed by atheists if you're non-atheist.
> This should be a fairly convincing argument all on its own.
Of what, pray tell?
> It is entirely possible to be religious without rejecting rationalism ...
This is clearly not true, even if (as you suggest) attempt to morph capital-G god into a metaphor.
> Religious people are also more charitable.
I believe this has been debunked, but in any case if the motivation is 'not spend an eternity being tortured' it suggests it's self-interest, not altruism at play.
To be fair, Russia in 1920-1930s was pretty close to that. One surely may argue that communism is also a religion, so they were simply getting rid of the competition.
But that definition is possibly the only fully consistent and coherent one I've seen that covers everything commonly regarded as a religion; it just covers quite a bit extra, too.
That seems counter intuitive, and everything I'm seeing on an initial search says the opposite. Example: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-19659985.
The aggregate conclusion I'm seeing is that smarts corresponds with a small bump in happiness.
This is a half-truth, those same countries you'll be killed for expressing non-belief or belief in a different accepted religion. This is extremism and shouldn't be linked to what the vast majority of the rest of world practices.
I'm not sure what the vast majority practice, though Pew [1] has done some good research on beliefs amongst the second most popular religion. Attitudes towards the execution of apostates is especially interesting reading.
In any case, if you live in almost any of the countries listed in that section you'll definitely be happier (and probably healthier / less likely to die) if you're religious than if you're not.
https://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-relig...
Religious populations that murder irreligious people are bad, and not worth defending. That is likely a type of suffering caused by religion.
My argument is that participating in religious activity makes an individual person happier, on average, when looking at the data. That should be convincing, given the data I presented.
> It is entirely possible to be religious without rejecting rationalism ...
>This is clearly not true, even if (as you suggest) attempt to morph capital-G god into a metaphor.
I would have a tough time convincing you that it's true, especially considering that you don't appear to be trying to argue in good faith. But consider the Unitarians. They are mostly focused on personal virtue ethics through religiosity that rejects fundamentalism. I can say that looking at athiest strongholds, such as r/atheism, does not look like a more rational congregation than you might see at your local Unitarian church. The Unitarians are trying to better themselves; r/atheism is mostly focused on tearing down their oppressors.
The claim that religious people are more charitable has not been debunked in this thread, and I would be surprised to see that the evidence points that way in the literature. I've researched it a good bit. "But it's because they give to church" does not fully explain the difference.
>but in any case if the motivation is 'not spend an eternity being tortured' it suggests it's self-interest, not altruism at play.
Altruism is not incompatible with self-interest. Additionally, most Christians are not fundamentalists. You can conceptualize Hell as the suffering that you are dealt as a result of your own failures. By giving to charity, you avoid one of these failures, and in doing so also make the world a measurably better place. (Meanwhile the statistically uncharitable atheists still think of themselves as superior, for some reason...)
We have to differentiate between unintelligent and uneducated. For the latter, there are several studies showing that lack of education can mean lack of imagination of alternative. For example in The Idea of Justice Amartya Sen described the phenomenon of rural uneducated Indian women reporting less content with their own health after they received basic health education: Suddenly they were aware that there actually was an alternative to many of their miseries.
I don't accept the claim that religious activity makes everyone involved (at least on the believers' side) happier. In almost all cases there's no control to compare to - you have to compare different people, rather than the same person(s) with & without religion, and then you're back to the causality question.
The question of charity I've responded to in a sibling thread.
Apples and oranges. You're comparing secular states with religious ones.
>In (as far as I know) no countries would you be killed by atheists if you're non-atheist.
The communist block says hi. China salutes you as well.
I know I am picking on one small part of your argument, but I really hate this line of thinking. So what? Who cares why someone is charitable? I assume most people not doing it in "self-interest" feel good when they do it - does that invalidate the charity? Nobody does anything in a vacuum.
I imagine some atheists may be frustrated to be told that they're not as nice (charitable) because of their rationality.
In any case, to your question 'who cares why someone is charitable?' I'd suggest that it's important if your definition of charity is something along the lines of a voluntary offer of assistance.
If you're coerced into providing assistance -- either by promises of eternal happiness, or threats of eternal suffering -- then it's not so much charity as taxation, or perhaps a promise of remuneration.
Who has woe? Who has sorrow?
Who has strife? Who has complaining?
Who has wounds without cause?
Who has redness of eyes?
Those who tarry long over wine;
those who go to try mixed wine.
Do not look at wine when it is red,
when it sparkles in the cup
and goes down smoothly.
In the end it bites like a serpent
and stings like an adder.
Your eyes will see strange things,
and your heart utter perverse things.
You will be like one who lies down in the midst of the sea,
like one who lies on the top of a mast.
“They struck me,” you will say, “but I was not hurt;
they beat me, but I did not feel it.
When shall I awake?
I must have another drink.”I do believe that dear old Mr C might have been trying to teach us a lesson about the reality of religious beliefs.
[NB I grew up in a small quite religious community where things like cycling, playing football, hanging out clothes to dry (and probably humour) were effectively banned on Sundays].
In a similar way, a great deal of the Old Testament is presenting history, not condoning those beastly actions (and, indeed, often directly and straightforwardly condemning them). Context is vital.
"Universal human rights" feels like a more modern wording for "God-given lifestyle". They are beneficial, but also as irrational as any religion before them, and rely on supernatural origin to make them them non-negotiable.
I would argue that the more religious the less one is inclined to broader reading and philosophy because the practice is usually constrained to one's own religious ideologies.
Going into the realm of personal experience, I made the choice to go to church as a child, and reading the bible expanded my horizons to lots of other religious texts and eventually philosophy and literature. My closest friends in this hobby and discipline started the same way as well.
I am not positing that it opens everyone to philosophy and new ideas (as it is deeply steeped in tradition), but that it opens those who may already be interested and gives them an "in".
This is definitely not typical of religion unless by "philosophy" you mean their faith's religious text.
Anecdotally in my case (Orthodox Christian) it was a dive into classical philosophy that opened me to religion.
Looking at my own country many people simply feel that they have no need for religion. Instead of going to church on Sunday why not watch Netflix in bed?
This is quite wrong - the main beneficial function of religion is to provide an institutional framework for enhancing social capital and the overall "sense of community", which is a critical antidote (far more so than "welfare" or even private charity) against social exclusion and marginalization for the most vulnerable in society. The only states which try to take over this function altogether are totalitarian states - in fact, even in many authoritarian or otherwise dysfunctional and unfree states, religion - at least at a "grassroots" level - tends to function in practice as a haven for civil society. The only institutions that even compete would be labor unions (in some places), and for obvious reasons these are far less universal in their overall outlook.
I think my country has proven that if there is less necessity to turn to religious institutions a society can start the path to secularization.
Also, just to point out something you take for granted:
You use the word "good" in your argument.
What is your standard of "good"ness?
Is it an objective, universal, absolute standard of good and evil?
Or is it whatever the loudest voice in the room demands it to be?
Note that there are Christian and Buddhist philosophy etc which is useful. However, that is philosophy and not religion. You can believe in the golden rule without being christian. You can agree with the teachings of Jesus without believing that he is the son of God. You can read the Bible without thinking that it is anything more than ancient pop-culture. Also, you can believe that some things are "good" without believing in a god.
So as far as we know Religion is no better than snake oil. The main purpose of snake oil is to redistribute resources from naive people to conmen. Snake oil might have some positive placebo benefits, and maybe snake oil inspired some people to pursue medicine and help people for real, but snake oil is still just snake oil.
Sure, but how would that be an objective, universal, absolute standard of good and evil? You claim philosophy, and yet this is an age-old philosophical problem. For example, see Hume's guillotine, i.e. Hume's is-ought distinction.
"teaching people to be nice to each other lies in everyone's interests, a God serves no purpose here."
Is truth determined by fact and reason, or merely by the purpose it serves?
I don't think the article casts religion as a whole as bad at any point.
I think the commenter here was right to get out in front of the ire and proselytizing.
This was a huge, one might say parasitic, drain on a town made up of farmers, railway workers, assorted stores, failing restaurants, etc.
As attendance fell, the churches started demanding more and more money from their congregations to make up the shortfall. My former church, a Catholic Church, is one of the worst. There are still 7 churches operating in that town.
Society is changing. Small towns are getting smaller as kids move away. Also, church attendance is down as people go to Starbucks instead. It will balance out over time.
The largest building the town was the middle school. The next 3 by size were churches.
Eg via a documentary: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/american-gospel-b...
A sermon clip with more than a million views: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTc_FoELt8s
A rap which drew a lot of attention when published: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pl4WevY-GPU
An explainer article: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/what-you-should-k...
A church journal issue dedicated to the subject: https://www.9marks.org/journal/prosperity-gospel/
An article by the nephew of one of these con artists, explaining why he left the racket: https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2017/october/benny-hinn...
And the list goes on and on. There are many ongoing efforts to combat this kind of false teaching.
Jesus' own teaching and that of his first followers were quite clear on the point that greed is sinful and dangerous, and that love and generosity to the needy, not wealth and success, should characterize Christians.
[Luk 12:15, 33-34 ESV] 15 And he said to them, "Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions." ... 33 Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. 34 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
[1Ti 6:9-10 ESV] But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.
[Eph 4:28 ESV] 28 Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.
[Phl 2:3-4 ESV] 3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. 4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.
[Jas 1:27 ESV] 27 Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.
[1Jo 3:16-18 ESV] 16 By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. 17 But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? 18 Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.
Prosperity teaching sells a parody of Christianity. It preys on those whose faith and knowledge of scripture is too shallow to tell the difference.
What are nonbelievers dogmatic and disillusioned about, exactly?
Says who? Do you mean priests accused abusing people wont be taken to court/jail because they are priests? Because that happens all the time (just like with any other profession doing that).
Whether the Church advertises it or not, or tries to keep it from publicity, is something most entities would do. Companies don't advertise their members bad behavior either.
The second and third links make the argument that churches increase the health of the people who participate in it.
Neither says that churches are 'net positives' for a community. A church can easily make it's members healthier, while also hurting the larger community as a whole by occupying very valuable real estate while contributing nothing back to it's non-members.
Well, all kinds of big companies exploit child labor in sweatshops, which also kinds as abuse in my book, and nobody closes them down.
What they do or not do is not up to the church, is up to them. The catholic church didn't tell them to abuse someone. Did a local catholic church help people wanted by the law or convicts escape the law (and also extradition)?
Now, if the church took someone accused as a child abuser (that somehow the law neglected to convict) and moved them in another country in a church position they still work with children, then sure, we can condemn the church authorities.
In the eyes of the church, even flawed people that did abuse can be accepted and transferred to positions where they cannot do such harm (e.g. in a monastery). The church was created to welcome flawed people and to help them, not to ostracize and condemn them. It's role is not even to hand them to the law, if the law doesn't ask for them (which is also why something confessed during catholic confession, even a murder, is not supposed to be revealed).
(I'm not Catholic btw, just reasoning based on their principles).
This is exactly what happened many times.
Also, much of the abuse by the Catholic Church happens in third world countries. What few studies I've seen of child abuse rates in general in those countries paint an extreme grim picture compared to other countries. I say this with full knowledge that in the US we have rates of 1 in 5 for similar forms of abuse.
Germany and Ireland are not exactly third world countries to my knowledge.
But, I feel religion has given me enormous benefits in life - it's helped me focus less on myself, it's given me a profound sense of identity and purpose in life. I don't feel that it has hindered my career or love of learning/science/engineering at all. I think it could help a lot of people who struggle with lack of sense of purpose/identity/community, etc. So I don't like it when all religion is condemned because of bad actors in some religions.
To use an imperfect analogy, I don't like it when people use logic like this: "All projects on GitHub are bad. Look at all these poorly written packages: X, Y, Z. Look at all these bigoted project maintainers. Did you know X project was a front for human trafficking? There is no reason for me to explore and contribute to projects on GitHub when there are so many compelling reasons to the contrary."
In my family, I now see people coming up against real hardship, and because their purpose in life is so deeply rooted in religion, they don't know how to cope with things emotionally (instead, trying to defer the emotional toll of those things, believing that their god will handle it)... and they make strange decisions, things go horribly, they are left struggling to comprehend. They live as if they are on a rollercoaster of hope, anticipation, crisis, disappointment, recovery, hope.
In my own experience, having your self worth and sense of identity attached to religion is a fragile existence, especially if you are logically inclined.
I admit, this can be a problem. But it doesn't have to be that way. You can be logically inclined and attach at least part of your identity to religion. Having part my identity attached to religion gives me a sense of purpose. I know that life isn't meaningless and that God expects me to do certain things if I want to maximum happiness for myself and the people I love.
On the other side of the coin, I have a lot of atheist friends who struggle with nihilism which has often led to other equally strange decisions, despite them being "logically inclined" (like dabbling in drugs) to try to cope with their sense of purposelessness. I had one friend (brilliant programmer) who basically fried his brain using LSD trying to find purpose in life. He is a completely different person than he was before, and not in a good way. Some friends have even had prolonged periods of depression because of it.
At least with science, you can point to actual inventions and innovations that have a measurable and noticeable impact. Religion can and does have a beneficial impact especially in poor regions, but it does so independently of whether its teachings have any particular truth to them.
If the world were reset somehow, you'd end up with a completely different set of religious beliefs that would nonetheless have a similar role as a social bonding agent, whereas you would have a decent chance of the same research being done again if the scientific method does end up being developed in the world.
This statement is made from the assumption that God doesn't exist and that all religions are equally false. From my perspective, I would argue that if you reset the world, yes, purely man-made religions would disappear and be replaced by different (man-made) ones, but ultimately God's true religion would always re-emerge.
For example, in my completely biased opinion, religions like Scientology and Buddism would disappear on world reset to possibly be replaced with some roughly equivalent man-made belief systems under different names (or not). But Christianity (insert the "true" religion here) would persist on world reset (perhaps even under the same name), and the entire Abrahamic-family of religions would re-emerge under different names. They might not be known as "Judaism" or "Islam" or "Protestantism" but basically God would call Abraham-esque prophets to establish his religion, the religion would go off the rails, false prophets would emerge, people would try to restore the church to it's previous state, God would re-establish with new prophets, etc., and you would be left with hundreds of similar prophet-based religions all in the same family of religions, all worshiping the same God, all acknowledging a common set of scripture (which would have the same core religious beliefs as the pre-reset world did), all acknowledging a common set of (ancient) prophets, but with varying dogmatic differences due to aforementioned corruptions.
Are you asking my opinion? My opinion is that the only way to tell is to ask God directly, study it out in your mind, and follow your gut. If God exists, he should be the only one that can tell a person what His true religion is and will confirm his true religion in a way that you recognize.
I believe it is also possible to have reproducible spiritual experiences/impressions confirming your choice.
At any rate, I believe it worked for me and I believe anyone would come to the same conclusion given enough earnest searching.
Of course you believe anyone would come to the same conclusion. And the fervent Hindu/Buddhist/Scientologist/Sikh/Zoroastrian who went through the same process believes the same thing about their religion.
I imagine you’ll say that such people didn’t do it right... because they didn’t reach the conclusion you did?
You are just assuming here. Like I said before, I think you would be extremely hard pressed to find a Scientologist who was converted by praying to the Eighth Dynamic, studying it out, and then receiving an answer that they recognized, confirmed Scientology is true. As long as we are throwing out assumptions, I would assume nearly 100% of Scientologists are converted by: birth (tradition of parents), peer pressure/fellowship (esp. in celebrity circles), or confidence tricks ("auditing").
> I imagine you’ll say that such people didn’t do it right... because they didn’t reach the conclusion you did?
Well that's the thing about religion. People can say anything they want. They might even tell a little lie and say "yes" if you asked them if they received an answer from God that their religion is true, hoping it will convince you to join. There's no way of knowing if they are telling the truth or not. More generally, there is no empirical evidence someone else can present to prove their religion is correct. The only evidence to be had is anecdotal, and thus religion is a very personal and individual journey. You have to actually go through the process yourself if you want your own anecdotal evidence that God exists, etc.
Do you think that if you were born in a region where Christianity is non-existent, you'd somehow come to it on your own?
If I were earnestly searching for religious truth, I think God would lead me to it eventually, yes. It might take many years.
More likely, though, I would live and die without discovering Christianity because I'm too busy just trying to survive, (like if I were born in poverty in some remote location in China).
I’m not just assuming, here. For example, there’s the fact that nobody anywhere at any time in history is known to have independently discovered any religion. If it’s really possible to discover the truth through the process you describe, you’d think someone would have done it at some point and come up with the One True Religion despite never having been exposed to it.
Not at all. I'm saying don't take my word for it. Try it out for yourself and come to your own conclusion.
> For example, there’s the fact that nobody anywhere at any time in history is known to have independently discovered any religion.
I don't see how you can assert this as a fact. What counts as "discovering a religion"? There are so many huge holes in history across all the continents over thousands of years.
> If it’s really possible to discover the truth through the process you describe, you’d think someone would have done it at some point and come up with the One True Religion despite never having been exposed to it.
I think this has happened - many times. God's true church isn't omnipresent throughout history. It's there sometimes, and missing other times. It gets established, and then goes off the rails due to corruption. I actually believe Judaism used to be God's true religion a long time ago, but has since gone off the rails and is no longer God's true religion.
When talking about the rediscovery of religion, I included the word “known.” This fact can be asserted quite easily.
It’s possible that it happened and was lost to history. But really, every time? It must be exceedingly rare. And they must have all failed to survive in the long term, which is odd if it really is the One True Religion.
You say you think this has happened. Doesn’t it strike you as suspicious that every time it happened it was in a place that was exposed to the corrupted version? Why wasn’t the pure church reborn in China or India? Why didn’t the Conquistadors encounter a thriving parallel church in the Americas?
Everything is consistent with it all being made up, and not at all what you’d expect to see if it could actually be discovered with the right sort of personal search.
I don't. I can only speak for myself.
> When talking about the rediscovery of religion, I included the word “known.” This fact can be asserted quite easily.
Really. How do you know Mohammed didn't restore God's true church? Or Joseph Smith? In those cases they claimed to be prophets who God revealed new scripture to. Or do they "not count" because their religions were similar to existing ones?
> You say you think this has happened. Doesn’t it strike you as suspicious that every time it happened it was in a place that was exposed to the corrupted version? Why wasn’t the pure church reborn in China or India? Why didn’t the Conquistadors encounter a thriving parallel church in the Americas?
Like I said, the church goes off the rails a lot. Even in the Bible, the church is constantly falling apart because the people are wicked. The pure church may have been reborn in China/India/Americas but went completely off the rails and thousands of years later it is unrecognizable. How do you know ancient indigenous diety legends aren't referring to the same God/Jesus that we refer to?
> Why didn’t the Conquistadors encounter a thriving parallel church in the Americas?
There very well may have been evidence of an ancient American judeo-christian church, but the conquistadors burned so many historical records in the 1500s because they were "of the devil" we have very little to go on.
> Everything is consistent with it all being made up
Well yeah, how can mortal life be an unbiased, faith-based experience if one could simply prove the existence of God empirically?
Consider a group of monkeys that act differently when they have evidence that they are being observed.
I believe one purpose of life is to prove to God and ourselves what kind of person we are. We will act differently if we know we are being observed vs. if there is uncertainty.
The idea that there isn't supposed to be any evidence because faith is the whole point is such an obvious con. If a used car salesman tried to use a line like that, you'd walk out of the dealership. But change salesman to preacher and dealership to church and suddenly we're supposed to think it makes any kind of sense. "You have to believe me but I can't prove it to you because proof would defeat the purpose" is not something you hear from a deity, it's something you hear from someone reaching for your wallet!
Monkey1: "I think we are being observed by humans"
Monkey2: "Do you have any evidence?"
Monkey1: "No, they are concealing the fact that they are observing us"
Monkey2: "What an obvious con!"
Reality: Humans were indeed observing the monkeys but were actively concealing their presence so the monkeys don't act differently, thus preserving their natural agency.
Reality: God is observing humans but actively conceals his presence so the humans don't act differently, thus preserving their natural agency.
> "You have to believe me but I can't prove it to you because proof would defeat the purpose"
I never said that. You can either have anecdotal evidence in this life or irrefutable proof in the next. Said evidence will never come from another human; it will always come from God. If you seek proof, seek God and he will answer you in a way you recognize.
I agree with you that religions fall on a spectrum from evil to obvious con to beneficial to essential. There is only one true church of God, which means on average (given thousands of religions), a random church has a good chance of being on the lower end of the spectrum.
But that's why you need to seek God in private, without the influence of other people and let him first convince you of his existence, and then guide you to his church. If you do so earnestly and come to the conclusion God doesn't exist; well, you've done all a reasonable person can be expected to do.
"I'll sell you this prime Florida real estate for a bargain price."
"Can I see it?"
"No. But it's definitely real!"
The difference is that scenarios like mine happen all the time, whereas yours is really uncommon.
God actively conceals his presence so the humans don't act differently? Sounds like I shouldn't believe in God, then. If the all-powerful creator of the universe wants me to think he doesn't exist, why should I think otherwise?
You tell me that I need to seek God for myself without the influence of other people. Do you not see how that's inherently contradictory? How can there be a true church of God if we're all supposed to get there on our own? The whole idea of a church is that people get together and commune in their shared beliefs.
If there is such a thing as a default religion that emerges some point after intelligence evolves next time around, I'd expect it to have a similar journey but in no way a similar destination. Start with something of a gaia / earth-centred spirits, and maybe on to polytheistic paganism. I doubt there would be another Thor, Isis or Eostre. One true religion is likely to come only after society has developed enough to encourage personalities that can proselytise, no? I'd be astonished if what then emerged was even remotely comparable to anything that went before though.
Well, it may just be my ignorance, but I thought Buddists didn't believe in God. I thought it was more a bunch of good philosophies that a man named Buddha came up with. Even the religion itself is named after a man (named Buddha).
Personally I can't see much difference between that and the Christian heaven and hell, or even Valhalla and Freja's field in Asgard, with Midgard and Hel (sic) - albeit with far less battle to get there. Heck, even The Apocalypse compared to Ragnarok. Just as there are commonalities in the Abrahamic there are commonalities in the Indian religions like karma and reincarnation, and surprising commonalities across the lot. They all seem to speak of the same basic needs - perhaps a sign of an innate inclination for religion - and very similar concepts, like of going somewhere after. Maybe there's a basic truth underlying every one of them, but I incline to them all being man made.
Which is why I would tend to think restarting the level would give a very similar journey through common ideas but entirely different destinations. Interesting to imagine, but I'm not likely to find out. :)
> Even the religion itself is named after a man
Christianity is named after a man called Jesus Christ. Islam used to be called Muhammadism, after Muhammad, though I am not sure if that was a Western name or actually used by believers.
A few months the after they started teaching, their daughters, upon turning 18, accused their parents of sexual abuse.
The church tried to keep it quiet and said “we cannot judge. God will judge weather it is truth or falsehood.” And they allowed the elderly couple to continue teaching children.
I don’t know what happened after that since I decided to stop going to church after that.
Bullshit like this happens more often than people think.
The Southern Baptist Convention is finally looking to dedicate some of their resources to investigations and action on the sexual abuse that's been happening in their (very loosely affiliated churches), but it will be tough sledding.
https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/religion/2019/02/18/so...
I would argue that this does not. I don't know anyone who goes to church who would have allowed this to go on without alerting the authorities. Assuming your recollection is true, this was just a group of bad people being bad under the false pretense of being a "Church".
Look, bad people are everywhere. And just because someone calls himself a Christian doesn't mean he is.
True, but it also doesn't mean they're not being exploited.
I choose to believe my employer cares about me, but it doesn't mean they do, and it's likely they might know I think that and use it to their advantage.
I hold nothing against personal faith, but I find it unsettling the balance of wealth across organised religions - seeing the gold opulence centralised at the (likely) expense of largely the poor across a lot of faiths is horrifying.
It might be more of a societal good for a local church to extract money from their congregation than for it to be spent on, say, padding Amazon's pockets, but it doesn't mean it's not taking advantage of said peoples.
Each to their own, but the notion that tithes might be linked to eternal glory or damnation for the giver can hardly make them entirely freely given.
It's been a few years, but about 30-35% of the budget was for direct charitable works. They partner with another church to run a soup kitchen, help to house displaced families, and do other stuff like provide flowers to hospice, youth sports, subsidized vacation camps, subsidy for poorer parishes, etc. Another 30-35% was for the parish itself... salaries for the priest, capital spending on the property. The remainder is scholarship money for the school.
YMMV, and there are certainly good and bad places, but IMO, that parish is a net benefit to the community around it. Some of the examples here of rural communities the are over-churched is a symptom of the effects of decline. The rural town I grew up in is 10% smaller than it was 25 years ago, and it is increasingly a bedroom community for a bigger city. Folks who live there try to keep community institutions like churches going, but obviously there comes a point where that isn't sustainable.
> A couple of years later, the Federal Communications Commission reportedly came close to introducing a "truth-in-advertising" clause for religious solicitations. This would have meant that any claims of boosting finances or curing disease would have to be verifiable, and Ole took various trips to Washington to lobby for it.
The thing that's easily forgotten is that any sufficiently-advanced con is indistinguishable from religion.
How? Do they only fall for this, because they are bad people who deserve punishment?
> I cant help but think that religious freedom is one of the bigger errors of our modern society.
So, you think people should be told what religion to follow?
I can't speak for other religions.
This seems ripe for a tech based solution like an independent chruch rating group like the charity ratings people to encourage transparency about how these ministries use their funds and how well their doctrines line up with basic christian beliefs like tge nicene creed. These TV minitries usually fail on both counts.
The trinity group in the article seems to be doing great work but they seem to fail in being overly reliant on legislatures
I hate the fact that all these mega-church millionaire preachers claim to be followers of Christ in any way, shape or form.
What people really need to acknowledge is that humans are naturally spiritual animals. I like to theorize that we evolved spirituality as a mechanism to cope with being lonely intelligent beings. Imagine being a feral yet intelligent, self aware, social being with few others like yourself wandering the land, surviving as wild animals. We knew nothing of how anything worked. What made the lightning and thunder, what fire is, what volcanoes are, disease, predators, earthquakes, drought, floods, etc, and the most scary of all, death. Then throw in more layers of emotional complexity thanks to that big complex brain. What a lonely and terrifying existence. Who do you talk to in a time of great need? Who do you cry out to? For a near infinite number of reasons, we can't always express our feelings to others so we created internal people to listen to us. Those people are gods.
So remember, religion fulfills the humans natural need for spirituality. Religious leaders are nothing more than personifications of our inner gods we can both speak and relate to. So think of religion as a form of spiritual food. And I can see the benefits of religion in the social sense where a common inner voice brings people together based on common spiritual grounds. It also introduces another very important concept which helps reinforce diciplice and even learning: ritual. This was incredibly important in the early days of human evolution, it's probably one of the first forms of casual social bonding we developed. Of course there are those who seek power over others. And what better way to socially hack groups of people via exploiting highly vulnerable built in behaviour? This is where religion and spirituality diverge, when it's used for control. Religion has been corrupted.
I grew up catholic but don't like religion because I don't find its dogma spiritually nourishing. However I do pray, not to a god but to the ether or friends and family who have passed. My church is whatever brings me inner peace, though stereotypically I'm naming nature, the wilderness away from society. I'm not sure on an afterlife, and I've half come to peace with accepting that there may be nothing beyond this life. So I mix in ritual, spirituality, philosophy and disciplines into a sort of mini religion for myself. Life is a complex maze and having something to listen to your woes is incredibly comforting, and that's what god(s) really are, comfort. Admittedly I'm still hungry. But that's part of the spiritual journey: finding good spiritual comfort food.