How to talk about God without offending believers？

Post Reply New Topic

Sometimes I wish I cared about humanity less because then maybe I'd be less upset when atrocities happen. I believe that most people are decent.

When I was a believer, I was supposed to believe that most people are bad, but I could never buy into it no matter how much I tried. I wonder if some of this stuff is innate.

It freaks me out when people are totally okay with the concept of Hell.

I'm getting off-topic.

Absolutely, I prefer a staunchly secular society over an officially atheist society.

At the end of the day enough people have spiritual needs, as well as enjoy the ritual aspects that it's not really beneficial for the state to be antagonistic towards individuals or groups over religious views.

I'd argue the principal of not giving favour to any religion or any sect of any religion and to only accepting demonstrable evidence gives courts a bit of an inherently materialist bias, at least in practice.

From what Ive read about different "Underworlds" in different ancient religions like Hades in Greece, Yomi in Japan, and Kur in Mesopotamia. I realized the ancients had the right idea in believing there really is no salvation after death and that we merely go to the Underworld to fade away from memory.

They didn't really see the Underworld as this horrifically cruel place for torturing souls like the Christians invented to terrify peoole into converting, but they just kind of accepted that death was simply death a fact of life and it was a gloomy existence waiting for all of us no matter how good or evil we were in life.

In a way that's kind of close to atheism beliefs about death except they believed in their gods as well as monsters and ghosts.

One of the purposes of the Underworld Deities like Hades, Izanami, and Ereshkigal was to keep the spirits of the dead from invading the world of the living and causing trouble.

The Ancient "pagans" (the real ones) may have had a belief in gods too but they were still so much more wise and advanced in their ways of thinking than even people in our modern society.

For example they did not view the world in absolutes like we do. They accepted that reality was not black and white and many human societies had better respect for the balance of nature like the Japanese and the Celts

Of course life was probably a lot shorter and more brutal for the average person in those days. But they had the gods to blame that on.

I agree with you. I will always prefer a society that allows for religious freedom over any sort of theocracy or an enforced atheism society.

I believe in religious freedom, but I feel like the US enables religious groups to get away with WAY too much. Churches want religious freedom, but some of them are perfectly okay with oppressing their own people or even with seeking to trample the rights of others.

I agree with this too. I live in the notorious Bible Belt which is all but a theocracy. I often feel like I have to keep what I believe in to myself in this region.

How, exactly, does this diagram supposedly prove any such thing?

It seems to be said that the position of the fossil will move and stay at the appropriate depth by its shape, so it is inappropriate to sort The age of different organisms shown by fossils by depth.

The short answer is that you don't as often times there isn't anything you can say that doesn't agree with them that won't offend. The more reasonable ones have thicker skin so that as long as you're not saying deliberately inflammatory things you'll likely be fine.

The bigger issue I had when I was younger was people trying to convert me. That is obnoxious.

They say there was a war in heaven between God and Satan. How do they know Satan didn't win, kill or imprison God and then pose as God ever since?

If Satan has the full power to control his appearance then there is no kind of test that can prove any manifestation of God is who he claims to be.

I believe God and "Satan" are really just two sides of the same coin. Or rather Satan is more like a servant to God.

Does it ever occur to anyone that the Abrahamic "God" is neither all good or all evil but more like nature itself? Nurturing and cruel at the same time?

For all the bad he's done that everyone here loves to use as a favorable excuse to ridicule his worshippers, he's also said to have done good for the humans he favors.

In that regard he's no different than any other deity found around the world. And personally I don't believe humans should preach about the evil deeds of the gods without realizing that either a) they don't exist or b) if they do exist then we are merely insects to them.

Certainly it's occurred to people. I've heard it said he's the creator of all things bad and all things good.

Of course I personally don't see him as "the creator" because there were deities and religions much older than Judeo-Christiainity.

Also according to archeological evidence he was created out of combining the Storm god El with a Canaanite War God and at one point in time he was worshipped alongside Baal and the Mother Goddess known as Asherah.

But then somehow in the course of history he became "The God" who created everything (at least to his followers) and most of the other deities around the world were destroyed.

That seems more true of the Jewish and Muslim understandings of god, but Christians specifically claim their god is all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good and all-present.

And the existence of evil makes it clear that their god can't possibly possess all four traits.

It's a goofy claim to make and it invites dismissal or parody because of how blatantly false it is.

That got me wondering what specifically offends me about religionism.

I guess some of it is that I don't like to see the spreading of assertions that aren't evidence-based (i.e. faith). And I don't like to see undue reverence towards spiritual authority figures.

I also don't like the attempts by some religionists to impose their rigid ideas of right and wrong (i.e. complying with what they imagine their deity wants rather than looking into the actual good and harm of the actions in question) on others, and trying to interfere with the law to that end.

What really annoys me is when some of them say that unbelievers are simply refusing to accept their supposed "obvious truth" - this obnoxious idea that there's no such thing as a sincere unbeliever. Some of them say that atheists "hate God," though it's clearly impossible for a sincere atheist to hate God, simply because you can't hate something if your considered opinion is that it doesn't exist.

I also strongly dislike the charlatans who sell "miracles" that they claim will heal people of illness and give them economic prosperity.

But I'm glad to see that a lot of religionists just keep their ideas to themselves unless they're asked about them, and respect other people's right to come to their own conclusions.

I too am bothered by people who believe in fables, and I too am not sure why. Why would I care, unless they are actively imposing their beliefs on me or others? (And in fact in the US the Christian right is imposing its beliefs, and that is scary and terrible for many.) But I think it does just bother me more fundamentally that people believe something that to me is just obviously not true. Perhaps I'm contradicting what I said in my previous post, but I did say it was tiresome.