The absurdity of Christianity

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The existence of God (or any omniscient being) could never be objectively proven under scientific conditions.

I accept a person’s faith in God’s existence—and only express my LACK of faith in this. I don’t begrudge one one’s faith.

The existence of omniscient beings cannot be 100% proven or disproven.

I’m an agnostic atheist.

Honestly the worst thing about this argument for me is that I actually had to defend an Apple product.

But if something can be believed without evidence, how do you choose which belief to believe in? Are other claims without evidence just as valid?


I'm not too worried about the OP. I figure that's his argument. Is he even still on this thread?

In a way I'm not to worried about whether or not Christianity is absurd. The only real question is, is it true? If it's absurd that doesn't invalidate the possibility of it being true because the truth is often absurd.

Some of the things done on behalf of Christianity (or any other religion or ideology, including atheism) are absurd.

Certainly looks that way to me. "Worship" is one of them. Why would an omniscient, omnipotent being want or need praise from mortals? If the deity can read our minds, we don't need to tell him how we feel about him. If he knows he's all-powerful, we don't need to reassure him of the fact.

Your turn to be wrong about something. It should have read: If he knows he’s all-powerful, he doesn’t need us to reassure him of the fact.

It’s not about what God needs, because with those attributes God needs nothing. It’s more about what human beings need.

I think you're clutching at straws with that particular nit-pick. I expect most people here know perfectly well what I mean by "we don't need to." It still makes sense to me. But I'm happy to wait and see if anybody else comments that they found my wording unclear or significantly wrong.

Why would a human being need to worship? I've never felt the faintest urge to do so, and when I did take part in it, I didn't feel any better for it.

'Tis the nature of the beast. We need it as much as we need food. We all worship something, though you may not recognise you are doing so if you interpret that word narrowly. We can worship individuals, ("celebrity" for the dumbest example of this phenomenon, or individuals that embody the other idols, or even people we like too much - worshipping your spouse is indeed bad though it is often recommended unironically), ideas (science, politics), objects and money (No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.), nature (damn hippies) and there are plenty more.

The most common idolatry, often co-morbid with the others, is worship of one's own self - self-obsession, living our lives as though we were in our own movies, trusting feelings and desires and seeking to fulfil them above all else (it's natural therefore good says the idolater), an obsession with image and status, one's position in the material world. Much modern "self improvement" is borderline idolatry and falls under the umbrella of worship of the self, particularly of the body. That's not to say that being morbidly obese and ingesting drugs on a daily basis brings someone closer to God (except in the sense of getting to meet him sooner), but the modern world takes this way too far. The obsession with looking youthful, fad diets, summer bodies, gym monkeys, plastic surgery, "my body is a temple". This world is truly sick under the weight of it all.

Much as a man who truly fears God fears nothing else, a man who worships God is spared the worship of the self and other temporal things - things that lead to spiritual destruction. That's the root of the demand to worship God.

Nice bait and switch. Bait with everything one worships something and then switch out the bait for, everyone wants or has an interest in something.

Tell that to my very religious uncle who has leukemia. He still fears dying and he still fears what will happen to his 6 year old daughter if he does.

You made another bait and switch because God fearing doesn't mean afraid of God.

Last edited by RetroGamer87 on 05 Aug 2021, 2:41 am, edited 1 time in total.

Or to put it another way, if you define any verb broadly enough you can make it appear that everybody is doing it.
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/worship
"to render religious reverence and homage, as to a deity.
to attend services of divine worship."
I don't revere myself religiously or pay homage to myself. I hardly see myself as a god. I was arguing earlier on that humans are simply a species of animal. I include myself in that category, naturally.

We can worship individuals, ("celebrity" for the dumbest example of this phenomenon, or individuals that embody the other idols, or even people we like too much - worshipping your spouse is indeed bad though it is often recommended unironically),

Not guilty. I care about my wife but I don't put her on a pedestal like worshippers put their deities on one.

ideas (science, politics), objects and money (No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.), nature (damn hippies) and there are plenty more.

I value science for the power it gives us, I value some of my possessions for their use value, I value money for the way I can convert it into food, shelter, services, and useful commodities - and sometimes I've given it away to people who need it, when I feel compassion for them or I just want to help them. I don't think Mammon exists. I like many aspects of nature but I hardly bother with it for weeks put together.

The most common idolatry, often co-morbid with the others, is worship of one's own self - self-obsession, living our lives as though we were in our own movies, trusting feelings and desires and seeking to fulfil them above all else (it's natural therefore good says the idolater),

Some people appear sick of self-love or narcissism, and take it too far, but beyond a healthy degree of self-esteem and the occasional bit of arrogance I'm not what you might call self-obsessed. I both like and dislike myself. I'm my own worst critic. I trust feelings to a degree but I'm well aware they can get me into trouble if I don't also use wisdom. I see nothing wrong with desire, especially the desire to ease my own physical and emotional suffering, which I do with some success, though it'll never be perfect. Yes it is natural, and when it works then I like it. I also like things and experiences that give me pleasure. Some of those things involve helping people, others help me. I'm a better person when I'm happy. I also know that the direct pursuit of happiness is only partly effective, and that it tend to come more as an unexpected by-product. I seek material satisfaction and emotional well-being because that's what all animals are programmed to do, but animals don't worship their own behaviour, and neither do I. It merely is what it is.

an obsession with image and status, one's position in the material world.

I'd work pretty hard to avoid being a permanent underdog, looked down upon by the people I'm with. But so far I've not needed to work hard at that. I seem able to command respect where I need to, without undue effort. I have little in the way of grandiose aspirations, and I've been criticised by a few for selling myself too cheap and not having enough drive and ambition, but I never took it to heart. I'm well aware that some of the happiest times of my life were when I had very little wealth, but I was bonded with quite a few friends, we shared a lot, we treated each other pretty much as equals. It's still much like that now, just that there aren't so many friends that I'm with.

Much modern "self improvement" is borderline idolatry and falls under the umbrella of worship of the self, particularly of the body. That's not to say that being morbidly obese and ingesting drugs on a daily basis brings someone closer to God (except in the sense of getting to meet him sooner), but the modern world takes this way too far. The obsession with looking youthful, fad diets, summer bodies, gym monkeys, plastic surgery, "my body is a temple". This world is truly sick under the weight of it all.

I haven't noticed a correlation between atheism and any of those things, nor do I bother with them myself to any degree. I did once have a lot of fun with psilocybin mushrooms when they were legal, but it never did me any harm, and although I can't be sure of this, I was left with a feeling that it had helped me emotionally. I was interested to see that medical research is finding evidence that psilocybin can be more effective than psych meds for treating some mental illnesses. Of course like alcohol and any other recreational drug, in the hands of the wrong person it can become harmful, often because they fail to keep it under control. It's sad that so many people become addicted to some of these things, but wherever there is mental torment there tends to be a lot of people who try to self-medicate and lose control of the process. Alcoholism is probably one of the worst examples, and it's not a modern problem. Victorian employers for example frequently made their employees' lives so painful that they turned to drink as a pain killer.

You won't catch me worshipping my "body beautiful." Some days I don't even bother to look in the mirror. How many half-mile stints am I allowed to do on my exercise bike before I'm going to get accused of being a "gym monkey?" Currently on a good day I clock up a mile and a half. I'm 68 years old, I've got no illusions of becoming a world-class athlete.

These "atheist sicknesses" you bring up aren't so bad at the right dose. It's not a black-and-white choice between sublimating oneself to a religion or sublimating oneself to worshipping anything else. There's a whole spectrum of attitudes towards these things between having a healthy dabble and dangerous excess. I quite agree that a lot of the mainstream go for what looks to me like superficial fluff and unhealthy practices, but when I try to find individuals who fit the mould of the latter like a glove, it's not that easy.

Much as a man who truly fears God fears nothing else, a man who worships God is spared the worship of the self and other temporal things - things that lead to spiritual destruction. That's the root of the demand to worship God.

Atheism is no bar to living a wholesome life. What always struck me about the religious worship I've seen is that it's saturated with compliments to the deity, completely sycophantic and uncritical. Just because I don't do that to a deity doesn't mean I have to do it to myself. I don't have to do it to anybody or anything, and if anybody tried to do it to me I'd hate it, and I'd want to tell them to stop crawling.

Aha! We caught you! If you value something that means you are worshipping it! /sarcasm

Apologies for putting you both on the defensive. I was only explaining and elaborating on AngelRho's statement - the demand to worship is not about appeasing God's imagined insecurities.

They are human maladies, rather than specifically atheist ones. True believing Christians do fall into these traps every day. To truly fear and worship God is an ideal, one that is rarely reached, except perhaps in key moments.



Even atheists agree there is a God-shaped hole in the human psyche - usually understood as an evolutionary adaption - though often viewed as something akin to an appendix that can be excised carefully. I do not believe it is an accident that now that Christianity has been marginalised in the West, unfortunate replacements like the above have come to prominence.

When it comes to religion and deities, I'm a fundamentalist. But not like you think. I reject arguments that do not explain ALL religions and deities throughout human history. At first they seemed to be all different, but I found the common denominator for all of them. The human neocortex. We started believing in gods when we evolved the ability to do that. I assume non-humans (other animals) don't have deities, at least not like ours.

Throughout human history, which gods have we believed in? The answer: All of them. If no human has ever believed in a god, then it never existed.

Apparently humans need religion, otherwise we wouldn't have evolved the capacity to have one. Every time an isolated group of humans crops up they will have developed their own form of language, religion, deity, money, government, music, society, and cooking recipes.

I need to explain all religions before I can explain one of them.

No worries. What you said was certainly clearer, to me at least. I wish you'd said when the views you expressed weren't your own. I'm still not sure which of those views you endorse and which you don't. But I don't concern myself unduly with who said it, it's the ideas and assertions expressed that I react to.

They are human maladies, rather than specifically atheist ones. True believing Christians do fall into these traps every day.

I don't doubt it. And atheists too have been known to avoid traps and to fall into them.

To truly fear and worship God is an ideal, one that is rarely reached, except perhaps in key moments.

As an atheist, there's not a lot I can do with that.

Even atheists agree there is a God-shaped hole in the human psyche - usually understood as an evolutionary adaption - though often viewed as something akin to an appendix that can be excised carefully. I do not believe it is an accident that now that Christianity has been marginalised in the West, unfortunate replacements like the above have come to prominence.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by a god-shaped hole. I've never noticed anything of the sort in my mind, though of course until your meaning is presented more clearly, it's hard to say. I wouldn't glibly declare that all religions are entirely devoid of health benefits, but I'm not convinced that abandoning them is necessarily an unhealthy move for a person. It depends what the individual chooses to do when they don't harness themselves to the influence of those who claim spiritual authority. Some people - not all - are so immature that they flounder when there's nobody to control them. It also depends on the brand of religion concerned, and on who would have been your human representative of this supposed divine will.

In my view, God doesn't call anyone to actually believe in him in order to reap temporal benefits. But you are required to love God. If you go down the list of things that describe love and obedience to God, you'll find many atheists do a better job than many Christians.

Take the 10 Commandments, as an example:
1. No other gods--atheists don't believe in any god(s), so CHECK
2. No misusing God's name--if you publicly profess you don't believe in any god(s), why would you ever invoke God's name in the first place? CHECK
3. Keep the Sabbath--do you have one day of rest per week? CHECK

Everything else on the list has to do with human relations:
4. Bring honor to your family--even if your dad was an abusive @$$hole and you turn out to be a decent human being, you've brought honor to your father whether you meant to or not. When you have good parents, you honor them by obeying them as you get older and becoming successful through their guidance. And, of course, supporting them in their old age is just a nice thing to do. If you are that kind of person, you'll live a long life and have children and others who want to take care of you the same way. You don't need to be a believer for that.
5. Do not murder--reciprocity. You murder someone, their survivors have the natural right to retribution, often provided in various forms by the state.
6. No adultery--you are married, so take care of your own wife and children. It is objectively immoral to sleep with someone you don't love. Plus--unwanted pregnancy leading to financial obligations at the expense of your own family, and risk of potentially incurable disease. That just makes sense (note that adultery is specified rather than fornication. This has always been interesting to me).
7. No stealing--in other words, do not destroy the value of things through greed. Work to earn and deserve the things that matter most to you.
8. No false testimony--in other words, don't deny anyone justice. Reciprocity--you would not want to be unjustly punished or penalized. Once you lie about someone, you forfeit your own right to proper due process yourself.
9. and 10. Do not covet--in other words, do not despise the achievements of others, but rather celebrate them. Work hard to earn and deserve the things that matter most (see 7).

This is how one worships God--by loving himself as an individual enough to enjoy the benefits of living honestly and wisely. Those who obey God's commandments will be rewarded. There is no faith required to do so.

[Note: This also makes a good response to "Why do good things happen to evil people?"]

It is important to understand that there is a difference between worshiping God while on earth and salvation. Worshiping God is insufficient for salvation since all the things that work together to lengthen your days do not bear a relationship with your soul. Every knee will bow and every tongue confess, and I think that the atheist tendency to glorify God without even realizing it is one way in which we can see God's plan ultimately unfolding. Do you need to worship God? Yes, you do. It's what's keeping you alive.