Petter ([info]petter_haggholm) wrote,
@ 2006-10-10 20:10:00
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Entry tags:essays, religion

Suicide is not a sin if there's an Undo button

The thing that confuses me the most about Christian dogma is…well, I guess it's the lynchpin of the whole religion, really; it's the untenability of the notion of divine omnipotence and benevolence—and it's not even the usual “Why does evil exist?” argument.

As I understand it, the theology behind the death and crucifixion of Jesus is that

  • Humans are corrupt
  • Humans can't possibly redeem themselves to the point where they don't deserve to burn in Hell forever (a cynical and anti-humanitarian sentiment that I disagree with, but this is incidental)
  • Someone had to pay a price of blood and suffering for all this, so Jesus was selected as the collective whipping boy of mankind

How does this make sense to those who believe in it? I've heard people say things like “If you don't believe, God can't forgive you”… Say what? Your omnipotent and infinitely benevolent deity is incapable of forgiving your failures unless you are a Christian?

No. No. I'm sorry, but this is bullshit. If you assume an omnipotent deity, then everything that deity does is out of choice—that's what omnipotence means. If said deity then condemns people to an eternity of suffering, then it is because the deity chooses to do so, not because of a lack of choice. You can then make up your own mind about the benevolence.

This musing was inspired by NormalBobSmith.com. I'm surprised I haven't seen him raise the question, really, but who knows—it may be somewhere in the hate mail section.


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[info]dark_wolf
2006-10-11 11:47 am UTC (link)
Yeah, it always bothered me that the default option was hell. Basically, if you don't believe or whatever, no matter your actions in life, you wouldn't get in. It kinda looks like if such a superior entity did exist, then it seems rather childish/selfish to me O.o

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[info]chutzman
2006-10-12 01:54 am UTC (link)
I think that particular section of the dogma is actually there for propagation. If anybody could get the benefits of believing, then there is no reason to believe. If there is no reason to believe, then the religion won't do very well and won't get many followers. I don't think there are any religions where the founder actually believed what they preached. Generally religions are founded to either garner wealth and power for it's founder (see Scientology for a perfect example of this), or something along the lines of a chain letter "lets see how many idiots we can suck in".

One way of thinking about it, that I believe is a rather useful way to view the phenomena is that religion is a mental virus. As such it is subject to the same evolutionary pressures as the little bits of RNA that make us physically ill. As such, a religion without a strong method of self-propagation (aside from the standard parent to child propagation) will die out to the ones with a strong propagation method. This is why most religions encourage proselytizing. It also explains why some religions demonize non-believers, and encourage their followers to protect themselves from them. Another effect of this point of view, is it allows one to view religious proselytizers as suffers from an illness simply exhibiting the symptom that encourages the disease's propagation.

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[info]kokopellinelli
2006-10-16 04:32 am UTC (link)
Yeah, I always thought that was kinda stupid...a serial child molester can rape and murder a dozen victims, then on the eve of his execution he can claim he "found god," and supposedly he gets to go to heaven. But if a person leads a genuinely good life, is kind and is loved, makes a difference in people's lives, but is an atheist or a believer in some other religion, they go to hell. Nope. Doesn't make sense to me, either.

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[info]dark_wolf
2006-10-16 05:23 am UTC (link)
Yeah I think the other commenter expressed the idea behind it quite well. It's pretty much the replication clause of the story so that it gets around, similar to memes, chailetters or any time of self-replicating system or idea. It makes the ideology flawed in my eyes, as it makes it that those who abide by it and do good only to gain access to a greater reward, nothing but mercenaries in the end. However, it is technically necessary, in order for the idea to spread.

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