Is Religion a Scam?

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mkinson said:
No murders.
No rapists.
No wars.

I might as well just copy and past John Lennon’s “Imagine”.
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I know this wasn’t aimed at me, but the examples you give are rather poor. All of them would require God to not create (or remove) free will for humans. This itself is more evil than any concievable crime or war, because it destroys our purpose, our meaning, and reduces it to a bunch of people in heaven - for what? We’re all in heaven for no reason, there is no reason to rejoice, we probably can’t even rejoice. In the off-chance we *can *feel emotion, not only is that pointless because we were determined or forced to feel it but it is pointless because there is nothing we can do about it. So all in all, the problem of evil based on human actions is a fail.
 
Very well put, Pieman333272.

I absolutely agree that free will is a wonderful thing. However, let me pose to you this to you: If you grew up never knowing of any emotions but love, comradery, compassion, joy, and humility would you ever conceive of anything else?

I’m not saying that we should make humans as zombies, but removing such “evil” thoughts as greed, selfishness, and hate is ‘theoretically’ possible. It’s just incredibly difficult to imagine in the world we live in.
 
tonyrey said:
I quote this not because I doubt the Big Bang theory but because the scientific Establishment is undoubtedly a closed shop which has scandalously opposed ideas and explanations which threaten physicalist orthodoxy./QUOTE]

Tonrey, can you give some examples of this scandalous opposition?
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Rock_Happy said:
The Church struggles to achieve credibility with the secular world, which is a different matter entirely, but when it fails to engage the average educated person, this disinterest is what seems to be confused with atheism today.
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And the Church will continue to struggle to achieve credibility while there are Catholics who reject modern science.
 
I have been reading the mkinson/tonyrey dialogue and have a few comments. I hope you don’t mind.
  1. Birth defects are caused by our genes (evolution), not by God. God does not promise us no adversity but to be with us during adversity. God does not promise us no tragedy, but to help us through the tragedy. Etc.
  2. Tsunamis that wipe out thousands of people are not caused by God. They are caused by underwater earthquakes that displace water that then crosses oceans, piles up on continental shelves, and roars ashore.
  3. The problem of evil (murders, rapists, war) is, in my opinion, the greatest argument in favor of atheism. It is the abolute, hardest point to refute because all we have to do is look around us and see it. But consider:

    a. The Free Will argument brought up by Pieman 333272. It’s not an idle argument and has very profound implications.

    b. Consider evolution–technical, genetic and social. You’re right. We’ve evolved technologically and we have longer lifespans, better medicine, buildings designed to withstand earthquakes, etc. We’ve evolved genetically, i.e., we’re a long way from amoebas. And we’ve evolved the capacity to think about God. We’ve also evolved socially. For example, 200 years ago slavery was accepted and now it isn’t. It still exists in some places in the world. But generally speaking, now we say slavery is evil and try to get rid of it.

    c.
 
Sorry. I hit the wrong button and posted before I meant to.
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  c.  If you take Free Will and Evoluton together, I think it points to a god who is very concerned for us and trying to guide us to the world we all want.
  1. Why so many religions? Because there’s many people and many ways of viewing the world. I converted to catholicism because this is where I hear God the best. And both of my parents were converts to Mormonism and I believe in my heart that that’s where they could hear God best.
  2. Why is Christianity “better” than other religions? Because Jesus saves the entire world, not just the proponents of one religion. And yet Jesus is a personal god, not an impersonal one, such as you find in Taoism, for example.
I hope you find these comments helpful/enlightening.
 
ElizabethCorbel said:
I have been reading the mkinson/tonyrey dialogue and have a few comments. I hope you don’t mind.
  1. Birth defects are caused by our genes (evolution), not by God. God does not promise us no adversity but to be with us during adversity. God does not promise us no tragedy, but to help us through the tragedy. Etc.
  2. Tsunamis that wipe out thousands of people are not caused by God. They are caused by underwater earthquakes that displace water that then crosses oceans, piles up on continental shelves, and roars ashore.
  3. The problem of evil (murders, rapists, war) is, in my opinion, the greatest argument in favor of atheism. It is the abolute, hardest point to refute because all we have to do is look around us and see it. But consider:

    a. The Free Will argument brought up by Pieman 333272. It’s not an idle argument and has very profound implications.

    b. Consider evolution–technical, genetic and social. You’re right. We’ve evolved technologically and we have longer lifespans, better medicine, buildings designed to withstand earthquakes, etc. We’ve evolved genetically, i.e., we’re a long way from amoebas. And we’ve evolved the capacity to think about God. We’ve also evolved socially. For example, 200 years ago slavery was accepted and now it isn’t. It still exists in some places in the world. But generally speaking, now we say slavery is evil and try to get rid of it.

    c.
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God wills only our good, but He allows these evils that greater good may come from them. As Job says, “The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away. As it hath pleased the Lord, so is it done. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” Nothing happens in this world without God’s wisdom and approval.

In this little book I have, Trustful Surrender to Divine Providence, Fr. Jean Baptiste St. Jure writes “Trials and punishments are blessings from God and proof of His Mercy.” He also says that we should not let ourselves be troubled and beset by adversity, for we know that it is meant for our spiritual welfare and “carefully proportioned to our needs, and that a limit has been set to it by the wisdom of the same God who has set a bound to the ocean.”

Then why the tsunami, the earthquakes, the tornadoes and other natural disasters? Yes, as you said, they are due to the geological workings of the earth, yet God is not only aware of them, He allows them for His reasons. Some peoples’ lifetimes are short; some are long. Who knows the mind of God? “My ways are above your ways . . .”
 
ElizabethCorbel said:
I have been reading the mkinson/tonyrey dialogue and have a few comments. I hope you don’t mind.
  1. Birth defects are caused by our genes (evolution), not by God. God does not promise us no adversity but to be with us during adversity. God does not promise us no tragedy, but to help us through the tragedy. Etc.
  2. Tsunamis that wipe out thousands of people are not caused by God. They are caused by underwater earthquakes that displace water that then crosses oceans, piles up on continental shelves, and roars ashore.
  3. The problem of evil (murders, rapists, war) is, in my opinion, the greatest argument in favor of atheism. It is the abolute, hardest point to refute because all we have to do is look around us and see it. But consider:

    a. The Free Will argument brought up by Pieman 333272. It’s not an idle argument and has very profound implications.

    b. Consider evolution–technical, genetic and social. You’re right. We’ve evolved technologically and we have longer lifespans, better medicine, buildings designed to withstand earthquakes, etc. We’ve evolved genetically, i.e., we’re a long way from amoebas. And we’ve evolved the capacity to think about God. We’ve also evolved socially. For example, 200 years ago slavery was accepted and now it isn’t. It still exists in some places in the world. But generally speaking, now we say slavery is evil and try to get rid of it.

    c.
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Why should I mind, Elizabeth? I’m delighted some one agrees with me. 🙂
 
4Horsemen said:
Then why the tsunami, the earthquakes, the tornadoes and other natural disasters? Yes, as you said, they are due to the geological workings of the earth, yet God is not only aware of them, He allows them for His reasons. Some peoples’ lifetimes are short; some are long. Who knows the mind of God? “My ways are above your ways . . .”
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This actually doesn’t say anything more than that God permits to happen anything that does happen, which is sort of tautologous.
 
A big thumbs-up to ElizabethCorbel. I read through your responses and find those all to be reasonable assumptions.

I’m going to go a bit further with it though and state that IF the world were like a giant ant farm, meaning we were put here on earth to our own devices without any direct, or indirect, manipulation from God, then I could reasonably conceptualize the existence of a deity. That, at least in my mind, would make more sense considering the adversity we face on a day-to-day basis.
 
StAnastasia said:
This actually doesn’t say anything more than that God permits to happen anything that does happen, which is sort of tautologous.
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But didn’t you read the first part of my post? I was referring to what many saints have said, that God not only permits to happen anything that happens, He works in our lives, using these events (both good and bad) to draw us closer to Him. Of course He doesn’t interfere with our free will. It remains sacrosanct. But He often grants us special graces, signs and acts of Divine Mercy. The wise man or woman will seek God’s will and look for His little (and big) acts of Mercy.

(Was I clear?)
 
mkinson said:
A big thumbs-up to ElizabethCorbel. I read through your responses and find those all to be reasonable assumptions.

I’m going to go a bit further with it though and state that IF the world were like a giant ant farm, meaning we were put here on earth to our own devices without any direct, or indirect, manipulation from God, then I could reasonably conceptualize the existence of a deity. That, at least in my mind, would make more sense considering the adversity we face on a day-to-day basis.
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Don’t you think ants face adversity? :confused:
 
mkinson said:
It’s **because **we face adversity that we are like the ant farm.
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The difference is that we can understand it and put it to good use whereas for ants it is merely a threat, an obstacle or a full stop!
 
tonyrey said:
Don’t you think ants face adversity? :confused:
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Actually ants are quite strong; they can carry 100 times their weight. But they do face adversity. We too face adversity but with the help of the Holy Spirit we become strong too. Peace to all! [BIBLEDRB][/BIBLEDRB]
 
larryjay said:
Actually ants are quite strong; they can carry 100 times their weight. But they do face adversity. We too face adversity but with the help of the Holy Spirit we become strong too. Peace to all!
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Welcome to the forum! As you point out, ants are more powerful than us in some ways but they lack our intelligence, insight, knowledge, conscience and free will. So it does not make sense to say “if the world were like a giant ant farm… it would make more sense considering the adversity we face on a day-to-day basis”.
 
I think you’re reading too far into “ants”. I don’t mean to say if we were like ants, I mean to say if the world were like an ant farm and god was it’s keeper.

If you’ve never owned an ant farm, the premise is simple. You put together a construct to store the ants (the earth), then you put the ants in the construct (us), and then you watch to see what happens. You generally don’t interact with the ants except to bring them water (rain) and food (vegetation/animals).
 
Here’s something on topic!

Recently I’m seeing posters up about the end of the world being proven to begin on May 21st. Supposedly the scholars of this branch of Christianity believe that we’re all going to die soon… do you think this is a ploy (or scam) to get people to come to church?
 
mkinson said:
Here’s something on topic!

Recently I’m seeing posters up about the end of the world being proven to begin on May 21st. Supposedly the scholars of this branch of Christianity believe that we’re all going to die soon… do you think this is a ploy (or scam) to get people to come to church?
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No, because the CC isn’t and wasn’t an eschatology oriented Church in the first place. Any valid representative of Catholicism would tell you that. It’s really the Baptists and Evangelicals who are advocating this, not us, thank you very much.
 
I haven’t seen anything about the end of the world being on May 21st. Who’s putting it out? I would be interested to see what they’re saying.

But no, I don’t think the world is going to end on May 21st or on December 21, 2012 for that matter.

Jesus said even he did not know when the end of the world was, that it was known only to the Father. But he did promise it would be like a thief in the night, i.e., unexpectedly when no one is looking for it.

I think the whole point of the End of Days is to live each day as if we expected to die very soon and then to leave the “when” up to God.
 
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