My complete argument against religion

This is a very basic argument that shows why it is that religion is flawed.


We will start by looking at 6 religions: Ancient Egyptian, Roman, Greek, Hebrew, and Catholic. The first thing I want you to see is that while all of these religions have clear similarities, even if they seem very different. The big one is that they all have, in some form, a heaven and a hell. Greek, Roman, and Egyptian all have a boat trip with a guy asking for a coin. All of them have a form of judgement for where you go when you die. These similarities suggest 2 things: Every religion is in some form a copy of Egyptian, which is the oldest, or they all are some form of the same, true religion.

But Wait!

In North and South America, the religions are totally different from the ones in North Africa. The religions in Asia are, once more, totally different.

This means that these similarities are caused by only one thing: the sharing between cultures. Its entirely possible that Hebrew was, in fact, an adaptation that took the best parts of Egyptian, such as the concept of heaven and hell, and just made it into one god.

There can't be one correct religion because if there was, many concepts should be shared between religions, as they all originated from the same source.

 

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Speaking of flaws...

There was no Hell per-se in the religion of ancient Egypt. If one's soul was found to be heavier than the Feather of Ma'at, it was immediately consumed by the Goddess Ammit (Devourer of the Dead). In effect, the soul simply ceased to exist.

The Christianesque concept of Hell (everlasting damnation/punishment) does not exist in Judaic doctrine.

 

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I agree with you: it is a very basic argument.

And what if the 'one true religion' is not one of those six? That would invalidate your argument.

And can you demonstrate that the other religions are not the work of the devil? No.

Your argument fails because it lacks any interanlly consistent logic.

 

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Any similarities between all religions, such as some form of the "golden rule", will always be discounted as human empathy. There are simply no similarity arguments that detractors will accept, so it is pointless to make an argument of differences. There's just no refuting a confirmation bias.

 

@Syne --

That argument cuts both ways you realize.

 

His argument works because if there were a God, it would make all the religions of the world consistent with his teachings.

 

Why would it choose to do that? You assume a logical, benign God with an interest in humanity. Why do you do that?

 

Of course, one could assume any kind of God, but the only one worthy of worship would be one that cares about us and doesn't want to confuse us or give out mixed messages.

 

Not a new idea, really.

'religion' may indeed be flawed. Which has nothing to do with the reality of God.

Your second possibility has some merit.

Not really. Multiple gods to be placated, heavens and hells (rewards and punishments), working toward some sort of self-improvement.

Not all of them. Hindu and Buddhism seem to be, but really fall back into the same pattern.

This has possibilities; one needs to consider at what point in time the cultures 'shared' ideas.

Illogical conclusion.
Typically when ideas - especially 'religion' - branch out, the different sects split off because they disagree with the main group/idea. So 'many concepts' would not have to be shared. They split off to NOT share.

If the history of mankind is roughly what the Bible outlines, it means God - the Creator - has been dealing with mankind since mankind has existed. So it would not be any surprise all peoples of the Earth have some 'memory' of God in some form. Those groups that have 'departed further' from God's teaching would believe different tenets than those who 'stayed close' (metaphorical terms, not physical distance). For instance, Hinduism seems to have started as a monotheistic belief. Over centuries, other 'gods' have been added in.

Issoloc, your argument actually boils down to this: "Religion is false because God does not conform to my concept of proper conduct; or because God does not conform to my preferences and sense of logic." It's the standard 'proof' of God's non-existence.

I don't find it convincing.

 

What about on people don't obey god, Should he vaporize them with a bolt of lightening ?

 

If every religion did come from a single source, then that means that either:

1. God(s) stopped caring about humanity, allowing our beliefs to change irrevocably, or

2. (Assuming one god) He allowed 4 continents to believe whatever they liked, while trying to reconcile Africa to believe in him through Christ and other missionaries.

" And what if the 'one true religion' is not one of those six? That would invalidate your argument."

Because if it was, why would the Aztecs be so different?

" And can you demonstrate that the other religions are not the work of the devil? No."

Then God would have abandoned half the planet to the devil for several thousand years.

 

Heaven and hell are basically ethical ideas. They are saying that people's good and bad deeds will eventually be rewarded or punished, even if real life doesn't always look that way. Ideas of postmortem judgements are ways of addressing the thriving-sinner and suffering-innocent problems. They are assurances that things will eventually turn out right, even if it doesn't look that way now from our perspective.

The characteristic Indian idea of karma is another version of the same thing.

The relevance of those observations to the problem of religious diversity is that perhaps religious myth shouldn't always be interpreted as if it was simply sets of factual propositions about the world, propositions that can simply be labeled true or false. Perhaps some religious ideas are doing other things in human psychology, and the question might then be whether or not they are effective at whatever that is.

There may often be a variety of different ways of achieving functionally similar ends. If they all work, if they are all successful somehow, then we could argue that they all are true in a pragmatic sense, even if they are logically inconsistent when interpreted literally and factually.

In other words, it's probably possible in some cases to respond to the problem of religious diversity without assuming that at most one particular religion can be true and all the others must be false.

 

Actually, I've heard one Buddhist teacher note that the Buddha taught karma not in relation to the negative repercussions of one's actions, but to give grounds for faith in the power of one's actions - "If you do good, good will come around to you too."

 

That, however was not implicitly the subject of discussion.

 

Like I said on other thread, everyone has to believe in something, even those who say they don't believe in anything are lying. However, the pedophile Church and almost every other religion which requires I should do do something just to go in heaven or I'll end up in hell, only proves the true path of their target: to be stupid and remain stupid, because they need to control all people and do with them whatever they want, and fulfill their sick ideology. Religions like these should be brought down once and for all.

 

@Gravage --

Yeah, even nihilists believe in something.

 

"O.E. belyfan "to believe," earlier geleafa (Mercian), gelefa (Northumbrian), gelyfan (W.Saxon) "believe," from P.Gmc. *ga-laubjan "to believe," perhaps lit. "hold dear, love" (cf. O.S. gilobian "believe," Du. geloven, O.H.G. gilouben, Ger. glauben), ultimately a compound based on PIE *leubh- "to care, desire, love" (see belief). Spelling beleeve is common till 17c.; then altered, perhaps by influence of relieve, etc. To believe on instead of in was more common in 16c. but now is a peculiarity of theology; believe of also sometimes was used in 17c. Related: Believed (formerly occasionally beleft); believing. Expression believe it or not attested by 1874; Robert Ripley's newspaper cartoon of the same name is from 1918. Emphatic you better believe attested from 1854."

So the source meaning of believe is based around loving something. Is there a better word to ascribe to the meaning of knowing something exists? So we can move away from the issue of the definition of the word blurring across meanings. I don't think believe as a word to describe thinking god is real needs to be blurred with I believe my hand is in front of my face. I don't want to pull the discussion down into BS theoretical philosophy; just would like a better term to differentiate here. Any suggestions on how theists can word their beliefs, and how we atheists can word our descriptions of the things were KNOW exist.

I know it's just vocab, just would like to hear some different approaches for a change (maybe this is a new thread).

 

Its kind of a bind.

If you want to discuss a philosophical claim you have to discuss philosophy, period, as opposed to calling it derogatory names

:shrug:

 

By the same logic, "know" is just as problematic:

know (v.) Look up know at Dictionary.com
O.E. cnawan (class VII strong verb; past tense cneow, pp. cnawen), "to know, perceive; acknowledge, declare," from P.Gmc. *knew- (cf. O.H.G. bi-chnaan, ir-chnaan "to know"), from PIE root *gno- "to know" (cf. O.Pers. xšnasatiy "he shall know;" O.C.S. znati, Rus. znat "to know;" L. gnoscere; Gk. *gno-, as in gignoskein; Skt. jna- "know"). Once widespread in Germanic, this form is now retained only in English, where however it has widespread application, covering meanings that require two or more verbs in other languages (e.g. Ger. wissen, kennen, erkennen and in part können; Fr. connaître, savoir; L. novisse, cognoscere; O.C.S. znaja, vemi). The Anglo-Saxons used two distinct words for this, witan (see wit) and cnawan.

So when you "know" something, you
- claim to witness it,
- recognize / acknowledge it,
- are familiar with it,
- are able to do it.

 

If we dig a little deeper into what you are addressing, it illustrates how deeply language affects the ideas that are associated with religion. It's not a very precise language since it melds these old European ideas with the foreign religions that were imposed on them from the time of Roman conquest. I think your point is important and arrives in a parallel path to what the OP says: modern religion is the product of the melding of prototype religions, languages and cultures. Confusion in and over religious ideation is just as easily analyzed as the confusion that normally arises over language and the etymology of words.

You can create a long list of words that trace the jumble of Nordic, Greek, Roman and Hebrew mythology that have come together to form the modern Western ideas about religion and religious terminology. You will be quickly led from linguistics into history. Religions and religious ideas are ancient, so to try to get to the bottom of what they are saying, and why, necessarily involves understanding the history of religion itself. From there you will arrive at the idea in the OP, that religions do not spring up out of local discoveries of cosmic truths, but from superstitions, myths, fables and legends that cultures have relied on since the dawn of history to explain phenomena for which they had no science. Now that we live in an era in which science is nearly free from the yoke of religious superstition, we are able to see this from a global perspective that was not available to them.

Thus the Gott/Guth/Goth (God) that one was beliebed (beloved) in order to get to Haven (heaven) to be with the Angelos (evangelios - messengers, angels) by avoiding the Deuwill (devil, demon, daemon), etc., takes us on a journey though Nordic, Roman, Greek and Hebrew concepts alone, and that's just scratching at the surface. Angels, the devil, and Hell in modern context can be traced to Persian influence, in the era of Alexander the Great's mixing of cultures. Jesus speaks of a fiery hell - not a Judaic concept, but a Persian one - just as one example. Jesus himself mixes several archetypes - Hebrew rabbi-prophet, Greek martyr (Socrates with the cup), Persian son of God (Mithra) with twelve followers (zodiac) who died and rose on the third day (the sun at solstice), etc., and the Roman contribution to the founding of Christianity begins with the destruction of the temple at Jerusalem and the insurrection of the Hebrews against them, which introduced severe punishments like crucifixion.

We could keep drilling deeper and we would be pursuing world history and anthropology, which certainly support your idea of the significance of language and cultural roots in the development of ancient religions.

More directly to your point, the words "believe" and "know" are ideas themselves founded in ancient culture. One is founded on emotion and the other is founded on the intellect. Besides the plain reasoning you used, I think we can trace the roots of language and history, as your reminder of etymology shows, and quickly converge on a host of ideas that support the strongest of arguments against religion: that it's founded on ancient superstition.

Unfortunately, as far as dialogue with "beliebers" is concerned, there is rarely in any interest in digging around at the roots of their ideas. So it's rare to get their participation in uncovering ancient history and culture, for the same reason they avoid the basic idea stated in the OP. They already know religion is based on superstition, they just don't like to be reminded of it.