Is Religion a Scam?

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That is not a useful division of labor. I have two feet and use them both. And everything above them, all the way to the top.
 
*Tonitz

I just think that there is much to be mined from the failures of the Church that is not accounted for in the promotion of its other aspects.*

We should remember that the Church established by Jesus Christ is very good. From time to time you are bound to have a few evil members cause some problems. Even very serious problems.

Jesus, man and God, did not select 12 good apostles. Jesus had a batting average of 917so we cannot expect an organization ran by mere human beings to be more successful.

We do know that the Church will exist until the end of time. So that means the bad guys will be handled properly and the Church will be successful.

God Bless
 
Short answer no.

However, I do believe that religion was created for one reason, to aid the human mind to comprehend things it couldn’t understand. To that degree, it’s still very useful in helping families or individuals cope over loss; in encouraging a thoughtful and community based relationship with others; in defining a morality or code of ethics; and in lending strength and support to others, or obtaining it from others.

Do I believe in a god? No, but I do believe in people and their compassion.
 
I’ll save my testimony for another time or thread…

Honestly Religion is the human confines of a God given gift of Faith.

Faith is a mystery revealed through Christ and profession of Faith through our Lord Christ is the exercise of religion. But, God wants people who have Faith to practise a personal relationship with Him.

Which, isn’t easy… because we are all human beings with free will. In the end, you have to believe that Faith is gift of God because we all can practise a religion in any mundane thing… and still call it a religion… but where Faith lacks… we falter.
 
AngryAtheist8 said:
If your speaking specifically of the Judo-Christian God, a lot of people have simply embraced other religions. Like Hinduism or Shinto Buddhism.

Christianity is not the default setting of religion.
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People who fall away from the faith of their upbringing often return as more mature adults. No, Christianity is not necessarily the default position for everyone. However, if there are thinking atheists or people of other persuasions, they need to ask the question why they should believe. What does it entail for their eternal destiny? What are the eternal verities? Then, more specifically, why believe in a religion that doesn’t admit of sin and forgiveness, atonement, love and mercy, an afterlife with God and the saints and so on. Why believe in a religion that teaches violence or, at the opposite end, mysticism without God? Why believe in a religion that refutes science when science demonstrates for us the results of a personal Creator, who gave this earth to his creatures to study and care for?

Why deny religion because of science? Does it make sense to deny when we are talking on two different planes? Science can’t “prove” the spiritual world, which is more vast and incomprehensible to hypotheses and theorems. What I’m trying to get at is that we are here for a reason, and it is inborn in us to seek that reason. Some people see it naturally while others (especially those brainwashed in universities) can’t see where beauty, goodness and justice meet.

Are atheists running away from God?

Hannah Hurnard wrote a poem called Hind’s Feet on High Places, which is an allegory about a young woman named Much-Afraid, who left her Fearful Family with compannions Sorrow and Suffering.

The book takes its title from Habakkuk 3:19, “The Lord God is my strength, and he will make my feet like hinds’ feet, and he will make me to walk upon mine high places.”

Although it is Christian, I think it would apply to those who seek God with all their hearts.
 
*That is not a useful division of labor. I have two feet and use them both. And everything above them, all the way to the top. *

Very good. Then I be watching for you to trumpet the triumphs, if you are ever so inclined. 😉
 
Was the atheistic government of the old Soviet Union a scam?
 
Is our Federal Reserve System which is neither Federal nor a Reserve a scam?
 
Tonitz

*Is our Federal Reserve System which is neither Federal nor a Reserve a scam? *

Haven’t you answered your own question? 😃
 
Yes; I have in this case. It just bears on the practice of framing of many questions on here in a way that reveals a need for some semantic improvement. “Is religion a scam” had so much inherent subtext as to make it a meaningless question. Now if the question had been “Can religion be used as a scam?” or “Is the X religion a scam?” or “Is Cleric Y using this part of his faith in a way so as to constitute a scam?” Then we might start to approach questions that have an actual relevancy and meaning thus eliminating much of the extraneous issues inherent in such as the OP’s question as it stands. this frequent asking of questions way too wide angled or asking question in an either/or framework not reflecting degrees, kinds, and other dimensions of dynamics is not befitting a genuine inquiry.
 
Tonitz

this frequent asking of questions way too wide angled or asking question in an either/or framework not reflecting degrees, kinds, and other dimensions of dynamics is not befitting a genuine inquiry.

Since we are on page 20, it would seem that others do not agree with you that this is not a genuine inquiry.

As usual, you are nitpicking. 😃 I will be ignoring all future post by you. 😉
 
As to whether Christianity could have begun as a scam, one would have to be hard put to make the case. There is genuine belief exhibited by the founders, all the more so as they were willing to be tortured or beheaded or crucified for Christ. The blood of the martyrs is a well known cause attributed to the spread of Christianity. The Romans who saw the Christians are said to have remarked, “Look how these Christians love one another.” And that example was followed by hundreds of thousands of conversions within the first century alone. Have people gotten into the Church and used the Church to exploit others? No doubt. The corruption of Churchmen in the Middle Ages is sufficient proof of that. But the Churchmen were not the Church, and it is this that is lost sight of by those who charge that religion is now and always has been under the thumb of con men and crooks.
 
revert_jen said:
Presumably what he meant is that it is a fact that there is no God. I would invite him to prove it, but as it is notoriously difficult to prove any negative (much less one that is not true), I don’t expect he will have much luck with that.

–Jen
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Jen,
It is actually impossible to prove any negative, true or not. That is why the burden of proof lies with the one making the claim, not the person denying the claim. An atheist cannot disprove the existance of God any more than a Christian could prove that I am not God. The Christian might be personally convinced that I am not a diety, but that is a long way from irrefutable proof.
 
Charlemagne_II said:
As to whether Christianity could have begun as a scam, one would have to be hard put to make the case. There is genuine belief exhibited by the founders, all the more so as they were willing to be tortured or beheaded or crucified for Christ. The blood of the martyrs is a well known cause attributed to the spread of Christianity. The Romans who saw the Christians are said to have remarked, “Look how these Christians love one another.” And that example was followed by hundreds of thousands of conversions within the first century alone. Have people gotten into the Church and used the Church to exploit others? No doubt. The corruption of Churchmen in the Middle Ages is sufficient proof of that. But the Churchmen were not the Church, and it is this that is lost sight of by those who charge that religion is now and always has been under the thumb of con men and crooks.
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Christianity really got a kick start with the conversion of the Roman Emperor Constantine. Painting croses onto his soldier’s shields was either a very divine revelation or a stroke of genius on his part. However, it would seem strange that he would put the symbol of a persecuted group onto the shields of his soldiers and ask them to believe and label it as merely a stroke of genius. Something strange happened that caused Constantine to become a Christian and the persecution of Christians ended… In fact, he elevated Bishops to the rank of imperial advisers and gave the Church what is today the Vatican.
 
Charlemagne_II said:
As to whether Christianity could have begun as a scam, one would have to be hard put to make the case. There is genuine belief exhibited by the founders, all the more so as they were willing to be tortured or beheaded or crucified for Christ.
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So what?

Plenty of cults have retained and even gained faithful followers in spite of (or even because they were) being persecuted. The first example that comes to mind is the Mormons here in the U.S.

That doesn’t mean the worldview such religious groups teach is right.
 
True religious beliefs are based upon reason (philosophy and logic) as well as Revelation (the Ten Commandments), prophecy that is borne out and the love of Christians for their fellow man as commanded by God–to be willing to give up their lives for their faith and even for others or sacrifice their time and talents for social concerns. Even though radical Muslims die for their faith (or at least its rewards, all 72 of them), they do not have love of neighbor in their hearts as a Christian should and their death is suicide not sacrifice.

The real scams are most of the “-isms” such as Communism, Fascism, hedonism, utiltarianism, fundamentalism, radical feminism, modern-day liberalism and a host of other false gods.
 
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