con’t
Why would God tell Moses for the jewish people not to eat selfish? Because MOSES not God, saw the ill effects of shellfish on his people wandering the desert, who btw, God led them into. Moses knew that without some greater authority, he would not be able to stop these people from eating the things that were giving them fatal diseases. The fact is that Humans are smart, Humanity is stupid. And without a leader humanity is doomed to quarrel amongst themselves without end. Religion is this leader, developed by brilliant individuals to control their retarded masses.
You are correct that humanity is doomed without a leader, and that religion is supposed to supply these leaders. However, your mistake lies in where this authority originates.
You seem to fall into the trap that if something can be explained by science or any other rational means, then it disproves God’s involvement in such an event. This is a dangerous fallacy. God can and often does work outside of the bounds of science, but He is not limited to that. He can and often does work within the realm that we can understand. In fact, who is to say that every time someone is cured, it’s not God working? It could just be God working through our human means and understanding.
Anyways, shellfish. You seem to be proposing that because it’s possible that Moses, a human, could recognize the ill-effects of shellfish on the Israelites and wish to remove that as an option for food, that God had no involvement. You say he just invoked God as his backing to give his words weight. I propose to you that God, all-knowing Deity that He is, knew that the shellfish would present a problem to His people, the Israelites. Knowing this, He tells His prophet, Moses, that the Jews were not to consume shellfish. God actually is backing this statement, because it’s His. It’s the same basic situation, the same end result, but the origins and implications are vastly different.
Lets face it, any form of organized religion did not have the purpose of salvation for those who followed it, it was created to serve the brilliant people who devoloped it, to give them the ability to control the masses through fear. Since the dawn of man, rulers have established state religions in order to set down law and order for their people. The people of Greece, Rome, Eqypt, Scandanavia and other various mythologies zealously believed in their respective religions. What are they now? They are deemed mere myth by modern society. What will Christianity, Islam, and Judiaism be in a thousand years? Probably no different then the thousands of out dated religions before them. They’re sole purpose was to provided the leaders of these backgrounds with divine authority in order to control the masses of whom they ruled.
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First off, you present some civilizations and note that their religions are now deemed as nothing more than myth, and ask “where will Judaism, Christianity, and Islam be in a thousand years?” I would like to begin by reminding you that Judaism predates many of these, especially Rome, and is still practiced worldwide. Christianity and Islam are both developments from Judaism and trace their lineage and history back along with the Jews.
As far as your points about religion only being used to control the masses, I refer you back to the previous section.
If man simply invented religion, along with our understanding of God and His teachings, surely we could have done a better job than Christianity.
“An “impersonal God”-- well and good. A subjective God of beauty, truth and goodness, inside our own heads – better still. A formless life-force surging through us, a vast power which we can tap – best of all. But God Himself, alive, pulling at the other end of the cord, perhaps, approaching an infinite speed, the hunter, king, husband – that is quite another matter. There comes a moment when the children who have been playing at burglars hush suddenly: was that a real footstep in the hall? There comes a moment when people who have been dabbling in religion (“Man’s search for God!”) suddenly draw back. Supposing we really found Him? We never meant it to come to that! Worse still, supposing He had found us?”
-C.S. Lewis
Most religion in history has been, as Lewis puts it, “Man’s search for God”. The difference we find in Judaism, and from it Christianity, is that this is “God’s search for man”. A religion with an all-power, all-knowing God, who knows not only my actions, but my thoughts and my intentions as well, who holds me accountable for them, that is not the God I would invent.
My final message is Believe, but dont put all your stock in God, God wont change this world, if we choose to let it burn to the ground, it will. God wont do a damn thing about it. We are the only ones in charge of this world, and we have to find the best in it. Reaching out to Him is pointless, this is a test, He wants to see if we can do it on our own, and so far we arent, we are just having people exploit His name for their own gain. We need to find comfort in Humanity before God allows us his hospitaltiy.
My final message is believe, and put all your stock in God. God will change this world, if we chose to let Him. He will not abandon us, “and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.” (Matthew 28:20). “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it” (Matt. 16:18).
We are in this world, and we have to live here. We must do the best we can with it, and we do that by living out the teachings of our God and his Son Jesus Christ. Reaching out to Him bears much fruit, by reaching out to Him and receiving His grace we can do much good. By turning away from Him we can do nothing but harm. We must find comfort with God, we must know His love and his Word, before we may find any true comfort in humanity, and before we can find true happiness with Him.
