Is Religion a Scam?

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To TruthSeeker60: You say you do not believe in God because he has not proven his existence to you. But you also cannot prove that God does not exist. So since you cannot prove either God’s existence or nonexistence, why is it you chose not to believe in him? This is not an idle question. I myself searched for over 20 years to prove or disprove the existence of God and came to the conclusion it was an unanswerable question. So I chose to believe in God because I think it’s a much better life. And I see this a lot. People, such as yourself, say they don’t believe in God because they can’t prove his existence. But I hardly ever hear about people like me that say I believe in God because I can’t disprove his existence. I am honestly asking why did you choose to not believe in God when you can’t prove he doesn’t exist. (Not the same question as why do you not believe in God because you can’t prove he exists.)
 
Betterave said:
LOL! And some Christians are so obstreperously irrational and rude that they give the appearance of perhaps being trolls posing as Christians.

Question (Originally Posted by TruthSeeker60):
By “rational existence” do you mean something along the lines of “ability to reason”?
  1. A rude and irrational answer:
    “I have used the term “rational existence” many times in philosophical discussions and you are the only person who has failed to grasp what I mean. Perhaps you have little experience in that aspect of philosophy - or perhaps you are averse to the implication that the truth is essential for a rational existence. …”
This answer a) is a fallacious ad hominem, b) commits a fallacious appeal to popular attitudes, c) is a red herring that doesn’t answer the question, d) makes a false assertion, e) ignores what TruthSeeker has repeatedly stated about his own position.
  1. A respectful and rational answer would do none of those things. It would be something like:
    “Yes, that’s what I mean.”
    or
    "No; what I mean is…[fill in this space with *an honest attempt to explain what you mean
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]."

A further example of a belligerent, uncharitable post to which can be added two recent examples to different persons:

“(Please note that I could easily multiply such examples. If you really are unable to understand this simple point, I think I might be better advised to not waste my time attempting to have a reasonable discussion with you about rather more difficult matters. Let me know.)”

“In other words, you seem to avow ignorance about what ‘value’ even means and you seem to want to say that it can mean anything. But it seems that a concept that can mean anything is actually meaningless, and as such does not constitute a suitable basis on which to have any kind of a rational discussion (such as the one we are possibly having here).”
 
ElizabethCorbel said:
To TruthSeeker60: You say you do not believe in God because he has not proven his existence to you. But you also cannot prove that God does not exist. So since you cannot prove either God’s existence or nonexistence, why is it you chose not to believe in him? This is not an idle question. I myself searched for over 20 years to prove or disprove the existence of God and came to the conclusion it was an unanswerable question. So I chose to believe in God because I think it’s a much better life. And I see this a lot. People, such as yourself, say they don’t believe in God because they can’t prove his existence. But I hardly ever hear about people like me that say I believe in God because I can’t disprove his existence. I am honestly asking why did you choose to not believe in God when you can’t prove he doesn’t exist. (Not the same question as why do you not believe in God because you can’t prove he exists.)
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That is an excellent question - the answer to which I await with curiosity! It will probably be something on the lines of:

“For the same reason I don’t believe in fairies”!

To which I would reply that the belief hardly has the same life-transforming impact that it has had on countless billions of people. By their fruits you shall know them… 🙂
 
The OP asks whether religion is governed by people who specialize in hawking wishful thinking. Religious beliefs are wishful thinking only if they are false. The onus is on the unbeliever to show they are false. But some religious beliefs, notably beliefs in moral values, are shared by most non-believers and cannot be false unless they too are victims of wishful thinking!

The net outcome is that religion is a scam only if some religious beliefs are false and if religion as a whole is a fraudulent business scheme. So far no evidence has been presented for either allegation.
 
tonyrey said:
To which I would reply that the belief hardly has the same life-transforming impact that it has had on countless billions of people. By their fruits you shall know them… 🙂
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Clarification:

The belief in fairies has hardly had the same life-transforming impact that belief in God has had on countless billions of people.
 
The secularists who condemn religious believers for ignorance pride themselves on having greater knowledge and rationality, but they don’t apply the same standards of belief to themselves that they apply to believers. They attribute to people of faith belief in wishful thinking when they, themselves, harbor wishful thinking–a desire for some claim to be true. They, too, have an interest in the existence of God but want to believe so conclusively that atheism is true that they actually do believe it to be so. They don’t just believe there is no God; they hope there is no God. In that way, they believe they are free from moral standards and a fear of the real or imagined consequences of religious belief. So they attempt to explain everything in the universe through evolutionary biology.
 
tonyrey said:
A further example of a belligerent, uncharitable post to which can be added two recent examples to different persons:

“(Please note that I could easily multiply such examples. If you really are unable to understand this simple point, I think I might be better advised to not waste my time attempting to have a reasonable discussion with you about rather more difficult matters. Let me know.)”

“In other words, you seem to avow ignorance about what ‘value’ even means and you seem to want to say that it can mean anything. But it seems that a concept that can mean anything is actually meaningless, and as such does not constitute a suitable basis on which to have any kind of a rational discussion (such as the one we are possibly having here).”
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LOL! Another non-response, to a perfectly clear rational critique, with an idiotically hypocritical, completely question-begging ad hominem. Doh! :o

Tony, if you have the least inclination to rational thinking or the least love of truth, or even just plain honesty, in your mind or heart, please go ahead and explain to me what you think was belligerent or uncharitable about any of the three posts you have mentioned here. (Maybe you simply won’t be able to understand this, but my intervening to attempt to curtail your abuse of reason, and of Truthseeker, was intended as an act of charity. You’re a Christian, so I suppose that you do know, deep down somewhere at least, that this kind of thing (fraternal correction) is part of love, not contrary to it.)

Then explain to me what is the purpose of your posting these quotes from other threads here, where they are plainly irrelevant to the discussion, such that your doing so isn’t simply a violation of “Rule 1” (which you are so fond of citing, in lieu of giving rational responses to honest and rational critiques of your position).
 
4Horsemen said:
The secularists who condemn religious believers for ignorance pride themselves on having greater knowledge and rationality, but they don’t apply the same standards of belief to themselves that they apply to believers. They attribute to people of faith belief in wishful thinking when they, themselves, harbor wishful thinking–a desire for some claim to be true. They, too, have an interest in the existence of God but want to believe so conclusively that atheism is true that they actually do believe it to be so. They don’t just believe there is no God; they hope there is no God. In that way, they believe they are free from moral standards and a fear of the real or imagined consequences of religious belief. So they attempt to explain everything in the universe through evolutionary biology.
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I agree that this is true of many secularists - perhaps even most - but not all. They have been brought up in a secular society in which religion is regarded as an outmoded superstition. They start out with the conviction that belief in God has no rational basis and that is their weak point because - as Elizabeth has recently pointed out - precisely the same argument can be applied to belief in a Godless universe. The fact that secularists do change their minds shows they are not always inflexible! 🙂
 
Some people and some religions may be scamming others, but not religion in general. The Holy Mystery is not something we can understand completely or fully but it is available to us.

A reknowned Theologian, Karl Rahner, who served as the theological advisor on the 2nd Vatican Council, theologized that so long as the word “God” exists in the human language, than God exists as we would be unable to have any concept of Him if He did not exist.

Rahner would say that the simple fact that Atheists say that they don’t beleive in God, acknowledges that there is a God.
 
julia07734 said:
Some people and some religions may be scamming others, but not religion in general. The Holy Mystery is not something we can understand completely or fully but it is available to us.

A renowned Theologian, Karl Rahner, who served as the theological adviser on the 2nd Vatican Council, theologized that so long as the word “God” exists in the human language, then God exists as we would be unable to have any concept of Him if He did not exist.

Rahner would say that the simple fact that Atheists say that they don’t believe in God, acknowledges that there is a God.
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Welcome to the forum, Julia. All philosophical contributions gratefully accepted!

I’m sure atheists would disagree with Rahner but there is no doubt they have some idea of what “God” means. You can’t deny what you don’t understand at all!

It is also true that no one can fully understand the Holy Mystery - or in the words used by Rudolf Otto the “mysterium tremendum et fascinans”.
 
julia07734 said:
Rahner would say that the simple fact that Atheists say that they don’t beleive in God, acknowledges that there is a God.
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You had to know that someone would bring up how silly that argument is. Take these words for example, unicorns, pixies, dragons, superheroes. Those are all words we know but there is no relection of them in reality.
 
VicApple said:
You had to know that someone would bring up how silly that argument is. Take these words for example, unicorns, pixies, dragons, superheroes. Those are all words we know but there is no relection of them in reality.
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LOL! Same old, same old . . . You might as well add “The Three Stooges” to your list of imaginary characters. Who ever claimed any of them ever created the universe, whereas, there are serious philosophical claims that an all-Powerful, Omniscient, Benevolent (plus a lot of other attributes) Creator we call God (“I AM WHO AM”) made the universe and all of creation, angels and human beings? You have no argument. :rolleyes:
 
4Horsemen said:
LOL! Same old, same old . . . You might as well add “The Three Stooges” to your list of imaginary characters. Who ever claimed any of them ever created the universe, whereas, there are serious philosophical claims that an all-Powerful, Omniscient, Benevolent (plus a lot of other attributes) Creator we call God (“I AM WHO AM”) made the universe and all of creation, angels and human beings? You have no argument. :rolleyes:
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I don’t think it’s fair at all to laugh at me for failing to infer the remainder of your argument. I DID not claim that faries or dragons created the universe. if I did the burden of proof would be on me. There are also serious philosophical claims that the concept of all-powerful is self-contradicting and that and omnibenevolent god would not have created the world such as it is(problem of evil, it has been discussed never totally decided). I know you don’t believe that one but you are putting your head in the sand to deny that reasonable arguments can be made on those lines.
 
There are some religions, such as Mormonism and Jehovah’s Witnesses, that I consider to be a scam. But then again, there are also others such as Catholicism which are most definitely not a scam! 👍
 
VicApple said:
I don’t think it’s fair at all to laugh at me for failing to infer the remainder of your argument. I DID not claim that faries or dragons created the universe. if I did the burden of proof would be on me. There are also serious philosophical claims that the concept of all-powerful is self-contradicting and that and omnibenevolent god would not have created the world such as it is(problem of evil, it has been discussed never totally decided). I know you don’t believe that one but you are putting your head in the sand to deny that reasonable arguments can be made on those lines.
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There is a vast difference between God and unicorns or pixies. Unlike them God is and has been for millenia the fundamental Reality for the vast majority of human beings all over the world. To reject the concept of God profoundly affects one’s attitude to reality - which implies that one has a good idea of what one is rejecting. As I pointed out in another post, you can’t deny what you don’t understand! No one can fully understand what the term “God” entails but it is sufficiently intelligible to warrant belief or disbelief.
 
tonyrey said:
As I pointed out in another post, you can’t deny what you don’t understand!
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Addition:
You can deny what you don’t understand but it is irrational to do so unless you give good reasons for your lack of understanding…🙂
 
tonyrey said:
Welcome to the forum, Julia. All philosophical contributions gratefully accepted!

I’m sure atheists would disagree with Rahner but there is no doubt they have some idea of what “God” means. You can’t deny what you don’t understand at all!

It is also true that no one can fully understand the Holy Mystery - or in the words used by Rudolf Otto the “mysterium tremendum et fascinans”.
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Thank you Tony, I am happy to be here! As a lover of both philosophy as well as theology, I hope to learn and contribute all that I can.

I would agree that Atheists would not agree with Rahner, but I suppose he was not writing for them.

I think that is the beautiful part of the Mystery that it is and will remain a mystery so long as we exist in the finite world.
 
VicApple said:
You had to know that someone would bring up how silly that argument is. Take these words for example, unicorns, pixies, dragons, superheroes. Those are all words we know but there is no relection of them in reality.
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Perhaps so, but again, Rahner would say that God exists in the transcendental dimension of self and can be known a priori, this means that we are able to know Him without having any experience of Him. This may or may not be something we are cognizantly aware of. However, in order for us to derive meaning from our transcendental awareness of self, we must be able to connect our a priori knowledge with our concrete and a posteriori knowledge.

Thus we would use language to define things that transcend our concrete awareness of the world. I wonder if these words: Unicorns, pixies, dragons and superheroes could be the use of language to define transcendental realities in the world?

For example, could the word dragon correlate to a demon? Could pixie refer to an angel? Could Superhero mean an prophet or perhaps Christ himself? Unicorns generally represent purity and raw but gentle power, could this also relate to a theological concept?

Greek and Roman Mythology attempted to do the same thing. The problem is that mythological gods, dragons, fairies, etc, are all mythological concepts of the Holy Mystery. What Rahner and some other theologians attempt to do is to demythologize God so that we can experience the Holy Mystery in more meaningful and relevent ways than simplistic understandings of mythological creatures.
 
julia07734 said:
Perhaps so, but again, Rahner would say that God exists in the transcendental dimension of self and can be known a priori, this means that we are able to know Him without having any experience of Him. This may or may not be something we are cognizantly aware of. However, in order for us to derive meaning from our transcendental awareness of self, we must be able to connect our a priori knowledge with our concrete and a posteriori knowledge.

Thus we would use language to define things that transcend our concrete awareness of the world. I wonder if these words: Unicorns, pixies, dragons and superheroes could be the use of language to define transcendental realities in the world?

For example, could the word dragon correlate to a demon? Could pixie refer to an angel? Could Superhero mean an prophet or perhaps Christ himself? Unicorns generally represent purity and raw but gentle power, could this also relate to a theological concept?

Greek and Roman Mythology attempted to do the same thing. The problem is that mythological gods, dragons, fairies, etc, are all mythological concepts of the Holy Mystery. What Rahner and some other theologians attempt to do is to demythologize God so that we can experience the Holy Mystery in more meaningful and relevent ways than simplistic understandings of mythological creatures.
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So more meaningful and relevant than, say, Rainbow Brite? How it that possible? 😃

I think VicApple was right to object to this:

“Rahner would say that the simple fact that Atheists say that they don’t believe in God, acknowledges that there is a God.”

Why “acknowledges”? What does that mean?? (‘Facts’ don’t ‘acknowledge’ - that’s a category error, isn’t it?)
 
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