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If someone had news that would not only save the lives of every person on the planet but could also save many from the most horrible torture, would it not the moral duty of that person to inform everyone to the best of their ability? Assuming Christianity or Islam is the word of a god, does not this god have the same moral duty to do everything possible to inform people which religion is correct in a way that everyone could hear and that left no doubt? Should not the word of an all-powerful being be spread in an all-powerful way?
The stakes
Nothing is longer than eternity and thus nothing can be worse than eternal damnation. The torments this merciful god promises in hell in the Bible and Koran could not be more horrible. With this in mind, is this god fulfilling its moral duty to prevent such unimaginable suffering?
Spreading divine word
Just think of what a PR firm could do with an unlimited budget. It would not be long before anything they were instructed to communicate would be heard in almost every language and corner of the world. In the case of this god, there is not only an unlimited budget but unlimited powers. Even human beings with their less-than-perfect intelligence and imaginations can think of all kinds of ways to both communicate to everyone and leave evidence that no normal mind could deny.
Religion, logic and miracles
If this god wanted to use technology, every TV, radio, homepage and any other form of media could at the very least be temporarily turned into a medium to communicate his word. Better yet, this god has the power to bypass technology and could just communicate with every person on earth directly. Why not do something like this and then turn every place of worship into the one of the favored religion instantly? There are just so many miracles, from great and small, that a being with the power to create the universe could perform with ease. Anything from making the moon disappear for a day to turning everyone’s hair another color would be undeniable and save a lot of good, but skeptical, souls from the most horrible eternal fate.
However, this god does not do these things to support any religion and thus dooms many souls and sentences humanity to so much conflict and confusion. Some would say this is a test of faith, but why would the ability to blindly take the word of people who lived long ago be such an important test? Why not make logic and evidence compatible with religion? Does not this god know that many of the people he created need those things before they are going to follow any religion?
Why rely on people?
The method of this god to spread its word is to rely entirely on people that it has not given hard evidence to. One would think any god would want to spread the word himself or at the very least be seen directly aiding those spreading his word with solid evidence. There is absolutely no divine support to spread divine word. This is not a very helpful god.
If a god exists and he has divine truth for humanity, there is certainly no reason why this divine truth could not be presented with massive logic and evidence to back it up. Why would a wise and merciful god create a system that requires blind faith, creates so much confusion and sends many skeptical minds to eternal torture? If this god does not spread its word like any all-powerful being would, it does not deserve worship as such a being.
What is the worst trait a person can have? While pondering this question, few would consider skepticism something that is very bad. In fact, many people consider this a good trait. However, according to the Abrahamic faiths, this is the greatest single determiner between heaven and hell.
People are told they need to have faith in the right god and religion to get to heaven. For some, this faith comes easy. However, for more skeptical people, it does not. One can be very stupid (in fact, lower education levels correlate with greater levels of religious faith), selfish, greedy and the like and still have deep faith in a god. On the other hand, skeptical people often find it impossible to believe the claims religions make about having divine truth.
Furthermore, with faith in god, all is said to be forgiven. Thus, one can commit horrible crimes in life but have them all forgiven simply by believing in the right ideology and asking for forgiveness in the end. At the same time, a skeptical person who led a good life will be damned for all eternity with no hope for the crime of not believing religious claims.
It seems that a merciful, all knowing and all powerful being would find a way to accommodate the skeptical. Since it should know the minds of these people if it created them, why does not it give them a bit of hard evidence proving its existence and preferred ideology so that they can believe too? This would not only save skeptical people from eternal torment, but it would clear up a lot of confusion and conflict between the faithful too.
However, this god fails to manifest itself in any way to save the skeptical just like it fails to stop the most horrible crimes, even when they are committed against the very innocent. The faithful say it is because this god needs to test faith. At its core though, faith is simply the ability to believe things without hard evidence or even logic to back them up. In other words, it is a test for skepticism. Does a test to see how skeptical people are warrant so much pain and suffering?
Furthermore, it is a lot easier to argue skepticism is a force for good rather than evil. A look at human history and the world today will show countless people who have made horrible mistakes because they followed bad people, leaders and ideologies when a little skepticism would have made them stop.
If an all-knowing god needs to test us, it would seem that test should be for other things other than something that centers on how much skepticism someone has. This supposed divine test seems like something a leader wanting obedience would devise instead of one of a loving and all-knowing god.
It is easy for people to claim they know things they do not. This is why claims are investigated and exposed as inaccurate every day. However, when people make very fantastic claims about divine truth, they do not give any hard evidence at all. Not only do these claims usually go unchallenged, but those who do raise questions often face criticism, harassment and worse. Is this right?
All the Abrahamic religions claim to have books based partially or entirely on the word of a god. Therefore, people following those religions know at least partially what is on the mind of their god. This is in fact a pretty fantastic and arrogant claim. Does evidence exist to allow people to make such claims about their books and therefore about their knowledge of the universe?
When asked to provide evidence to back up their claims, those claiming divine truth often point to prophesy. None of these prophesies ever give definite specifics though. Predictions like cities will be destroyed and nations conquered are pretty easy to make–especially when so much time is given for them to come true. This has been compared to shooting an arrow at a wall and painting a target around it.
Others point to supposed scientific knowledge discovered in their books. However, these come from interpretations of passages made well after they were discovered by science. If a god wanted to reveal scientific discoveries in a book, why did not he include something like germ theory in a way that could have been understood by the people of the time? Think of the lives and misery that would have saved!
Some also try to use personal revelation as hard evidence they know what a god is thinking. However, these revelations are highly subjective and are contradicted by those following other religions and even those following the same one at times.
The simple fact is nobody has ever produced hard evidence to support their claims their religion is what a god wants, and that they thus at least partially know what is on the mind of a being with the power to create the universe. If someone ever does, it certainly will make headlines!
While this alone is not proof all the religions are wrong, it certainly raises some serious questions. If a god wants us to follow a particular religion, why would not this god take a second of his infinite time to leave undeniable evidence as to what religion it is? Just think of all the confusion, hatred and atrocities that would prevent in this life, let alone the horrible eternal burning it would save in any afterlife (assuming Christianity or Islam is correct).
Why does not this god, in his mercy and infinite power and resources, do this? All it would take is a voice calling down from the heavens speaking directly to everyone at once and saying what the favored religion is. For good measure, some undeniable miracles could be thrown in. For example, if Christianity is the favored religion, why not just magically turn every religious building instantly into a church?
The tragedy of this is that many people give their lives and take those of others in their arrogant certainty they know what some god wants. Many even want all life on earth to end over it! While a simple belief in a god or gods can be kept personal, claiming to know what a god commands is dangerous.
For this reason, it is not only good but necessary to question the beliefs of those who claim they have a book with god as the author. Raising questions and demanding evidence is a good thing. If there are people out there who really do know what a god wants, they should welcome questions and be able to answer them with ease.
Religions tell us that there is a god and that god wants us to worship it in a certain way. Furthermore, the consequences of not doing so will ruin one’s chances for all eternity. With this in mind, is not it rational to expect overwhelming evidence to support both the existence of this god and which religion this god favors? It is time to examine this question.
If this god gave irrefutable proof of its existence and asked a certain type of obedience directly, it is pretty safe to say the vast majority of humanity would quickly follow it either out of respect or fear. Knowing that many human beings have a natural tendency to doubt and want evidence before believing in something, a merciful god demanding belief in him and a certain religious ideology would surely be eager to offer hard evidence to doubters. That would certainly save countless skeptical people from the pains of hell and the faithful from fighting in his name. So, where is this overwhelming evidence?
The proof for the existence of god and religion
Proof of the existence of god generally takes the form of:
1. Revelations to selected prophets that lived in the past and who were alone at the time. Since recording devices unfortunately did not exist then, there is no hard evidence any of their claims are true.
2. Natural phenomena and miracles. However, this evidence, if it can be called that, is rapidly shrinking. While people once credited gods for every natural force out there, god gets credit for less and less and science can explain more and more. Also, even if some things could be proven to be miracles, it would not be proof they came from any god people worship.
3. Personal revelations. People can sincerely believe they hear all kinds of voices that are not real though. Also, many of these personal revelations are contradictory about gods, religions and the like. Besides, if that was the preferred method of offering proof, everyone should have them.
The proofs for any particular religion being what a god wants are basically the same as above. Claims of prophets that lived long ago, supposed miracles and other natural phenomena that can increasingly be explained by forces that do not require a god and personal feelings from brains and senses that are not always reliable.
A skeptic can easily dismiss all of these. So, where is the hard evidence? Why would not a god just give overwhelming evidence of its existence and what religion, if any, it wanted us to follow? For example, a god calls down from heaven so everyone can hear and says something to the effect: “I am real and I want you all to follow religion A. As further proof, everyone will turn purple and be able to fly by flapping their arms for one day.”
Something like that would be so easy for a god to do and save so much misery both on earth and in any afterlife. Why would a merciful god not take a few minutes of its infinite time to leave some hard evidence? This is supposedly a being with unlimited power and resources. Yet, nobody can offer any hard evidence which would stand up in court that this god even exists let alone that is favors a certain religion.
Finally, why should people be relied on to spread the word of something so important? If this god must rely on people for some reason, why not give them irrefutable evidence to back up what they are saying?
Again, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Furnishing extraordinary evidence should be extraordinarily easy for a divine being. It is inexplicable that a merciful god, that wants humanity to worship it in a certain way or be damned for eternity, does not supply it.
The Abrahamic religions place the earth and the people on it as the apex of creation. In these religions, the creation of the earth is at least as important as the rest of the universe, and the people on it are a major concern of god. How significant is our planet in the grand scheme of things and how logical is it to assume it gets a lot of attention from a being with the power to create the universe?
The earth and the universe
First, looking at the size of the universe, it seems rather odd to attach so much importance on the earth and its creation. A light year is nearly 6 trillion miles (9.5 trillion kilometers), and the Milky Way, is 100,000 light years across! These distances are so far beyond what any human mind can possibly begin to comprehend.
But it does not end there. As utterly massive as the Milky Way is, it is only one of an estimated 100 to 200 billion galaxies each more massive than people can imagine and separated by space far beyond human comprehension. As a final mind twister, there is now evidence to suggest that the universe human beings inhabit might just be one of countless universes in a multiverse.
In a universes or possible multiverse too big to imagine, our entire galaxy is insignificant. Within that galaxy, our entire solar and its sun are only one of many. In that solar system, there is a planet too tiny to be of any significance (except for the life forms on it). Yet, a being that supposedly created it all concerns himself with what religions those people on that planet follow, who they have sex with, how they worship him and the like? A rather curious idea indeed!!
Size does matter
If there is some logical explanation here to how something so tiny could be so important to a god that works on such a grand scale, logic would tell us that there would be an explanation in the books this god created. However, not only do Bible, Koran and the Torah like fail to address this question, they do not even contain anything referring to how massive the universe really is. Quite to the contrary, they all refer to the heavens as secondary (creating the earth took more time!) and never give any hint of their true grandeur. The faithful can try to argue that size does not matter, but with sizes as stupendous as this, that is not a very strong or logical argument.
Of course, this is the same god that refuses to give any irrefutable evidence that he exists, let alone take a second to indicate clear up the bloody confusion over exactly what the preferred religion is to stop atrocities in his name. Once again, should anyone be surprised that these books show every indication of being written from the perspective of ancient people and not a god?
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