They think it’s absolutely silly to believe in Zeus or Ganesha or Odin or whomever, because, duh, obviously that stuff is silly and made up. It makes far more sense that God, who is All Powerful And All Knowing, sent Himself to live on earth as a man so that he could get an idea of what it’s like to be human, because being All Powerful And All Knowing isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, clearly. And, having lived as a man, He returned to Heaven to reunite with Himself, and so, having gained a new perspective (how does an infinite being DO that?? why would it need to??) now He won’t be so smite-happy and won’t fly into a rage and send another flood to drown us all like the awful, ungrateful rats we are.
And we should all celebrate that through ritualized ceremonial cannibalism.
I have read the Bible cover to cover, much of it more than once.
It boggles my mind that a lot of these people call themselves Christians and yet believe a man like Billy Graham, who died with a net worth in the tens of millions of dollars, would be beloved of Christ, who famously (not so famously, clearly) posited that a camel would sooner pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man through the gates of heaven.
Do not store up treasures for yourself in this life, or, truly, you will have received your reward in full.
Of course, I grew up surrounded by the worst sorts of hypocrites. And I remember being a kid in the 80s, at the height of the AIDS crisis, and then being a gay teenager later, and remembering Ronald Reagan’s press secretary having himself one good chuckle after another at the plight of all those fairies getting exactly what they had coming to them.
Even as a child, I’d take a look around me at all the “godly” folks and think to myself, “These are not people I want to spend eternity with …”
Yup. Regardless of what they say out of the side of their mouths, they believe in the existence of a being that eternally tortures† people who don’t believe in it, and they choose to worship that non-existent being. They could make up any kind of imaginary being they wanted, and they chose one that would maximize my suffering. Tells me all I need to know about what’s in their heart of hearts.
†Well, technically it outsources it to someone who refused to worship it, thereby keeping its own hands clean.
It’d be more accurate to say god made a human form for himself so he could sacrifice himself to himself in order to make a loophole in some arbitrary rules that he’s in charge of anyway. It’s less about gaining human perspective than it is the blood god needed some blood god blood in order to forgive people of sins he intentionally made them incapable of not doing.
I’m offended that you’ve neglected to account for the form MY god takes. Unfortunately it’s a form I can’t describe without committing blasphemy but it rhymes with “schmalapeno schmopper”.
Judaism and Christianity - most variations of it, anyway - are also explicit that God has no worldly form, and in Judaism at least God is explicitly genderless as well. (I was brought up Jewish, and can speak to the former directly; I’ll defer to Christians on the latter.)
Nevertheless, I consider “Invisible Bearded Sky Man” to be an entirely fair critique of the Jewish idea of God. It’s all very well to say “God has no form or gender”, but Judaism still follows rules from a set of deeply misogynist books that repeatedly describe God in gendered terms, always male. And much more to the point, consistently describes God as a patriarch - practically the perfect stereotype of an abusive father.
So, frankly, I don’t think this objection holds water. If religions wish to deride the simplicity of “bearded sky man”, they have a lot more work to do unpicking their imagery than just saying “oh no he isn’t”.
Yeah, the people that were writing this stuff down millennia ago were not stupid, they just didn’t have the understanding of the natural world that we do. They were perfectly able to understand that “omnipotent” implies “not limited to any particular form.”
Edited to add…The people that were writing this down, were the smartest people of the age. It’s the people reading it today that often seem…not so sharp.
Yeah some Malaysian Christians have been getting into legal trouble for referring to the Christian god as Allah.
edit: this reminds me of an article by Australian writer Philip Adams, who had to apply for an Egyption visa at one point. Under “religion” he wrote “nil”. This confused the Egyptian official who asked what that religion that was. Did he mean to write “nile”? Did he worship rivers?
The concept of no religion seemed to confuse them.
I doubt you will see this but on the small chance that you do, thank you for being brave. In that exchange it was shown that you were the better man, and you do atheists proud.
Got the impression that the blue-suited booby was actually more terrified by the thought that the priest - who calmly proposed the appropriate remedy for the young man in a timely fashion - might also recommend similar psychiatric ‘correction’ to the one who invited him to his show.
This is not quite correct. Allah is formless at times, but has form at other times. Sometimes his hand or foot comes into play. And is consistently gendered as He. And is given many human qualities, as the verse writers thought convenient when composing their thoughts. So, formless, sometimes with form.
