Excuse my French, but this God is a real asshole, and I think it's best that people ignored these threats.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31885625.
If this god isn't an asshole then he sure is needy in getting a ton of people to have a "relationship" with him/be aligned to his "will" in order for them to be happy.
1. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ecclesiastes%20...
[0] http://baptiststudiesonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/s...
[1] https://dianabutlerbass.substack.com/p/shall-the-fundamental...
The Bible wasn't written in English.
> The Hebrew word translated into ‘awe’ in the Bible is yirah (יראה, pronounced yir-ah). It often directly translates into fear, like “fear of the Lord,” but it can also mean respect, reverence, and worship.
https://firmisrael.org/learn/hebrew-meaning-of-yirah-what-co...
>John Mallon writes that the "fear" in "fear of the Lord" is often misinterpreted as "servile fear" (the fear of getting in trouble) when it should be understood as "filial fear" (the fear of offending someone whom one loves).
Actually, yes. We all do.
That species gains its power from attention, and that one got its competitors killed and won with Abrahamic religions enjoying uninterrupted popularity worldwide, and to some, Christians by definition, its chimera spawn (type-2 state) has cast a perception of love to replace the history of fear, incongruent with its entire recorded history until that point. No other supernatural being aside from God or its current angels did anything with their supernatural abilities to harm humans in that book. They were just vilified for not being God or an angel. Nothing else killed babies if lamb’s blood wasn't smeared on the door.
It goes extremely long periods of time of inaction (to our knowledge), it does not act in the benefit of human kind and would be better off ignored, or making it an national security effort to guard against it.
I always wonder, if these people are smart enough to sift through all the insanities and come up with a safe path that makes sense, couldn't they just stare at the world for a few years and come up with their own sane path that only contains stuff that make sense for them...
One argument is that a system that survives that long can't be full blown toxic (would destroy itself in the process), but it's still not guaranteed to be better than any other system that also aren't full blown toxic (include one you make up by yourself), until you dig really deep into it.
To take an example from another field, full-blown royal/aristocracies government went on for centuries in France, and the country was quite successful from several metrics. But looking back we wouldn't argue it was a pretty nice system that could still be chosen today, just because it wasn't outright toxic.
As to your point on designing your own system, I think it's just hard to design something as complex as a religious system well. Instead of reinventing the wheel, people just choose the best among the time-tested methods. For me Buddhism seems to best fit the bill. If you want examples of people designing their own Religions, look at Crowley's Thelema, or for more philosophy-focused look at Theosophy.
Everyone has a philosophical or theological code, but most people just use what they are given. Even people who don't explicitly have a system still implicitly use a value system to guide their decisions.
Buddhism was spread by missionaries throughout history. At times, much in the same way as Christianity. Undoubtedly the missionaries from both Buddhist and Christian societies thought they were spreading enlightenment and to some extent they stuck because other people agreed.
You are correct about the Buddhist missionaries, but the critical point for me is Buddhist missionaries generally did not bring weapons, whereas most Christian and Muslim areas today are so because of invasions.
A better method to compare is to look at the actual scripture. All Abrahamix faiths have some equivalent of "worship no gods before me" and various levels of actions towards this (ranging from killing non beleivers to not eating with them). The Dharmic relgions do not have this requirement, so are less likely to be used as justification to subjugate another people.
In that sense, a religion's continuity is basically that group's continuity. Individuals within that group can switch to another religion, same way people move countries, but I'm not sure there are any case of a group switching wholesale to another religion by it's own decision. A king changing faith could be the closest to that, but I think it's usually a political move to join a bigger group, more than just independently switching for the sake of it.
> designing your own system
In general I don't think a "system" needs to be complicated, all ecompassing, nor needs to be fully from scratch. I'd compare it to cooking, you could look at a steak and carrot recipe and decide to try arrangements, and end up with mushrooms instead of the steak. You're still not building a new school of cooking, just doing your stuff on your own, eventually mixing and matching recipes you've seen elsewhere, without having to tag yourself with any specific cooking style.
"The vast majority of U.S. adults (85.6%) say they were raised as Christians. But more than a fifth of them (19.2% of all adults) no longer identify with Christianity." [0]
I think a ~ 20% change within a single generation is pretty significant. And most of these people will use the 'recipe' method you describe because it is easier than learning an entirely new system. There are many historical examples of this. E.g. Taoism + Buddhism -> Chan Buddhism -> Zen Buddhism.
[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2015/05/12/chapter-2-re...
It is possible that it was added by an later editor to make Ecclesiastes suitable for inclusion in the canon.
Agriculture only works if a lot of people do a lot of work which has mostly future payoffs, if they stick around in one place, form stable relationships, and so on. Individual selfish desires must be suppressed to some degree for the greater good of the society.
And given that we don't know for sure whether or not there is a one true God, why exactly are you so angry about Ecclesiastes?
I don't think 'God' is an 'entity' per se, I interpret 'God' as the reality one lives in. "God is an asshole", and "Life is a bitch" then become equivalent statements. Whether or not 'ignoring the threats' posed by 'God' according to this interpretation is wise is left as an exercise for the reader.
1. https://research.lifeway.com/2020/09/08/americans-hold-compl...
If you were unaware, belief that Christ died for our sins and was resurrected is taught as the prerequisite to salvation and entering Heaven upon death. Given this fact, I would expect 100% of Christians to believe this.
As an additional note, modern Christianity (except maybe Catholicism) brush a lot of the old testament under the rug, of which includes Ecclesiastes I believe? Some churches teach Matthew 5:17 as support for doing so. Catholicism seems to have a more nuanced take: https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/did-jesus-r...
Who cares?
From His/Its/Her perspective, if I had Billions of life forms I was responsible for on each of millions(?) of inhabitable planets throughout just this Universe - I'd be crabby as $hit too. All of them needing constant resources, continually consuming energy to be used on everything from pissing it away, to working for money, or in the rare lot - improving the future of ones species. All while they're bitter and unhappy.
And since I was infinite - I had to do that forever for some odd reason... I'd be bitter.
First of all, if God is indeed omnipotent and omniscient then why would anything that humans can dream up surprise or annoy God? Surely it is the height of hubris to think that humans could surprise an omniscient deity.
Secondly, if you are indeed infinite then even taking care of billions of lifeforms on millions of planets would be an infinitely small part of your attention and thus not worth being annoyed about.
Thirdly even if would be so annoying to God to take care of all the species (not that God seems all that proactive these days) then He can just destroy the universe and be done with it?
All in all, I don't think there is a lot of reason for God to be bitter or upset about anything that humanity does. After all, it was Him that put these urges into humans in the first place, so it seems kinda petty to then be upset about anything they choose to do.
It also led me down "scarey paths". Such as.... the most logical existences are "0, or plurality". One is therefore less likely than 0 or 2+. Thus, shouldn't no God's or many Gods be more likely than 1?