If Christianity is man made, why does everything about it go against man’s desires? Does Christianity go against man’s desires? If so, is that evidence for Christianity? I answer this question, discussing the history of Christianity, the cognitive science of religion, Buddhism, Jainism, Islam, and more.
The whole “atheists can’t answer this question” and “atheists can’t explain this” thing is really getting old.
“Thou shall not kill” - God
“What!? But that goes against my base desires!” - A “christian”
Most people have no trouble following Christianitys rules, and if you struggle without Sky Daddy watching your every move, maybe your a bad person.
i dunno. the whole glutony thing. the orgies thing. those can be kinda fun until you’re fat and have more STD’s than are known to medical science.
the reality is religion- including Christianity- is a form of social control. the rules were established specifically to control people. men, sure. but women especially.
Christianity specifically was also an amalgamation of a lot of other popular myths and religions of the time, as well as the appropriation of various popular pagan rituals like Saturnalia (Xmas), Samhain (Halloween), and Oestara (Easter). Many of the saints fall under this too.
Social control + wrangling popular myths/legends/etc = the most perfectly profitable control mechanism for roughly 2000 years
If all stds were cured, would there still be such a stigma attached to sexual promiscuity? Religion has always suggested getting a sexual disease is gods punishment for debaucherous behaviour.
dunno. probably. It’s not like religion has a monopoly on prudishness- there will always be “not enough” weirdos and the “far too much” weirdos. (and then all the people who are too-normal, also being weirdos. Okay so I think humans are weirdos by default.)
Religion has definitely been coopted for control, but the 10 commandments, and most of Jesus teachings are not really controversial or controlling (The arent progressive in todays terms, but for their time I think they are very reasonable).
The layers of bullshit that has been built on top certainly is controlling.
The whole adultery thing isn’t controlling?
Marriage required recognition by a priest. All sex must happen inside the union if a marriage.
They were literally controlling who had kids with whom.
The whole theft thing protected the rich way more than it did the poor.
The “worship none one beside me” was also about keeping people from leaving.
Murder was about maintaining stability. Remember, murder is the unjustified killing of another. Who do you think was better at justifying it with a little bribe?
But all of that is besides the point that religion vastly predates the Ten Commandments. The only reason that they’re not “progressive” was because as a basic moral code, they’ve been around longer than Moses.
Oh, and forget the whole store of the exile from Egypt and stuff. That’s all justification for genociding their neighbors.
Moving beyond the 10 commandments which are far from the only religious law… ancient Judaism was extremely controlling. Off the top of my head:
- men had to get part of their dick removed
- women had to wear long hair, but cover it
- you could only eat certain foods, at certain times, with certain people
- micromanaging rest days to the extreme.
- the kind of fabrics your clothes were made from
There’s a lot more there. And there’s a reason for that. By making it so restrictive, and threatening eternal damnation, it ensures people do what you tell them to do, and there’s plenty of people that- as ardent believers- are terrified and will do all kinds of stupid shit to stay in god’s good graces.
I am concerned you don’t know the 10 commandments if you think they’re not controversial or controlling.
To name a few most forgotten:
Honor the sabbath day. Only worship yhwh. Don’t make any idols. Don’t take yhwv’s name in vain. And a lesser thought-crime: Don’t covet.
Sure, the rest are societally beneficial. But these that are often forgotten are about control and nothing else.
Edit: It’s hardly ever brought up that monotheism in Judaism wasn’t a thing until much later. So, again, these forgotten rules are about controlling who and even how to worship.
Fair, those three arent the best, but they are also open to interpretation. Honor the sabbath doesnt have to mean hide in a cave all day, could just be treated as take some time to rest. One god, the lords name and idols dont really impact anyone (as most.christians dont follow it anyway, and most athiests dont care either)
And while those may cause a minor impact to someones life, its nothing compared to the control being exerted via abortion bans and other modern religeous bullshit.
You mean they have no problem following those rules that are not specific to a religion and are (in some form or another) necessary for a civilized society. But the rules that define Christianity are more or less meaningless to someone not following it, and a lot of Christians are pretty loose about them as well. “No idols”? “No other gods”? “Keep the sabbath holy”? “Don’t use god’s name in vain”?
The “trick” about religions is that they are part necessary rules and customs that keep society going, and then they mix in their own, and that conglomerate keeps people bound to a religion and religions around even in “enlightened” times when people should be aware that those rules are not anything divine.
Sex besides and before marriage and same sex partners are not avoidable desires like killing
It’s funny how every time they say atheist can’t answer certain question it’s actually easy to answer.
That’s 'cause none of them socialize outside their little church group and never get the chance to test out their ideas
The whole “atheists can’t answer this question” and “atheists can’t explain this” thing is really getting old.
Especially when it’s just an assumption and they don’t actually ask any atheists.
@FlyingSquid @ekZepp
& especially when several prominent atheists instantly answer & explain ‘this’.
Agree on the “getting old”. It is not my job to justify my belief. If you want to change mine, then you need a good set of arguments.
Can I justify my beliefs? Sufficiently for myself, which is all I care to do.
Easy. Cuz it doesn’t. You’re promising everlasting happiness if u do what you’re told. That’s exactly in line with mans desires of being rewarded and feeling good about them selves.
Christianity is ONLY the belief that Jesus was a Messiah. That’s it.
The primary desire, from the people who invented religion, is to control other people.
So, in that regard, it very much is fulfilling mans desires.
Ok, well then what about your average adherents? Yup, them too. They very much want to be able to control what other people do, and since organized religion enables that, of course they’re down with it.
The problem with the question is the asker doesn’t comprehend what the basis of religion and “mans desires” actually is.
For every apologist that goes:
If Christianity is a man made religion then why does it go against man’s desires?
There is another that says:
God wrote his morality into our hearts, and since some biblical commandments align with our morality, that means the Bible is true
Make up your minds, folks.
That’s why the belief of the devil is so convenient for a lot of Christians.
Everything deemed good relative to their current social barometer is obviously from God, and everything they think is bad is from Satan.
And if you point out that the concept of Satan effectively arose from a lazy editor rewriting a polytheistic tale under monotheistic reform and that a deity of light having an adversary makes no sense as light’s anti-particle is just itself, you get the quintessentially Christian “well I don’t know about that” or “I’ll have to ask my pastor about that.”
To which the best you can do is offer up Upton Sinclair’s famous quote to fall on deaf ears: “Do not expect a man to understand a thing that his paycheck depends on him not understanding.”
@ekZepp
I have a desire not to be burned for eternity in a lake of fire created by the being who is demanding I love it unconditionally, without credible evidence of it’s existence, to avoid this torture. All because he loves me & wants to forgive me for the sin of being descended from a woman who wasn’t tricked into not eating a magic apple by God.Fortunately, this is over ruled by my desire to live my life without being sucked into believing illogical bullshit.
As a naturalist, the thing I’m particularly annoyed about is it took me fifty years to figure out how to not be an asshole. That leaves me less than half my life to work towards a net positive. (And I’m still producing a fuckton of material waste, just by living.)
Then there’s also the thing about facing pollution as a great filter, and if somehow the species survives that one, a dozen or so other great filters stand between us and sustainable colonies on other worlds. If we die off, the universe won’t even blink.
It’s nice to be able to imagine we’re God’s favorite, that our species is special, and even that God has personal interest in me. (This is not consistent with the entire Abrahamic narrative, though it is a major Evangelical selling point, and is believed by millions of Evangelical parishioners.)
We’re not God’s favorite. Even the earth, The aggregate of our joy and suffering is an infinitesimal speck, tiny and lost in an unfeeling universe. No one watches. No one cares. No one will care when the last human perished from famine or the elements.
And crawling on the planet’s face
Some insects called the human race
Lost in time, lost in space
And meaning.So when it comes to grokking bad news, I’m pretty sure naturalism has Christianity beat.
Well, yes an no. We watch, we care, we exist a most importantly, we know to exist. That alone make us quite fking special. We may actually be one the rarest state of matter in the whole universe, “thinking matter”. That’s quite something in my book.
