I am a former Catholic follower verging on Jainist and Atheist principles.
Janist because they have the closest precepts to what I believe in life.
Atheist because I believe in the reverse of "Pascal's Wager":
IF there is a God, this mighty being would take everything I have done in my life on the balance and accept me anyway whether or not I kowtowed to any faith or dogma. In this vein, I believe that IF God exists, God would take in Atheists regardless so long as they were good in their life.
I feel very sad for you. Obviously you have never asked and received Jesus Christ as your personal savior, or you wouldn't be saying these things. By your words you may condemn some impressionable young person to a Godless life devoid of any hope. Because of your influence this person may become one of these mass murderers who have no conscience because he/she was encouraged by you to believe there is no God.
ReplyDeleteHello Mr. Chandler.
ReplyDeleteActually, I was a happy Catholic. It's repeated efforts by Christians asking me to be born again that finally prompted me to start on the path towards knowing Christ better. What I found is that I don't believe in a God who accepts human and animal sacrifices to erase sins. Like it or not, the sacrifice of Christ and his death is supposed to be the perfect offering in the same vein as when one killed animals to please God and hopefully get divine favors or in this case, forgiveness.
Today, we will get arrested if we killed a lamb and offered it to God.
If you are happy with what you got, then do not read up on the entire bible or even the history of how the bible was made. Just don't do it. It may shatter the illusion for you like it did for me. I am not a stupid man. Neither of us are. We are both intelligent people accomplished in our fields of expertise.
I just did not know enough about the bible or its history. Once I read it thoroughly and read the history of how the bible was made... I could not unlearn that, you see.
I used to say the same things, man.
If there is no religion, why don't people just murder one another?
Because morality, we are finding out, is not attached to religion.
If it was, we'd still have slaves, women would be second class citizens, and children are things to be married off to other families to secure powerful dynasties.
We are finding out, we are good to others because there is a benefit to being good to one another. We get favors. Animals don't have religion, yet they have morals of a lower kind. My favorite example is the nile crocodile which allows a tiny bird to enter its open mouth. The bird cleans the teeth and gets a meal out of it. Both benefit. There's lots of beneficial relationships like this in nature and with people. We do the same thing. We don't attack other people and they won't attack us back. It's just logic.
Honestly, dude, I used to be afraid of Godless types. But you know what I found out? They're just normal people like you and me. They have jobs, families and kids. They enjoy Christmas and Thanksgiving and treat them just like we all treat birthdays (birthdays used to be a pagan ritual --today, we no longer practice the rituals but still value the occasion as a special moment).
There's nothing to be afraid of, my friend.