Understanding Religion's Relationship To Human Social Systems

Responding to: This video .    About me: Age 51. I believed in Bible-God for most of my life; until age 41. I went through stages, after I realized bibles were BS. (shout out to Darkmatter2525, Christina Rad, 43Alley and others; for provoking me think and helping me realize Bibles are BS) I then switch to: Deistic, "agnostic but spiritual", atheist-ish, atheist, 6.5 on the Dawkins scale, and eventually (at this point) completely antitheist (aka "gnostic atheist"; antitheist; ant-God-ist and anti-religion-ist). ----- I'm sure this video's bait and switch (or "clickbait") tactic is motivated by good intentions. So I won't be one of the people who give you a hard time about not really trying to destroy our arguments. [although, I hesitate to say "our", there; since atheism isn't a camp. We're all just individuals] It can't be done anyways. The best arguments against religion, "God", and Christian...

When a Christian Fundamentalist says  "I doubt God wants babies murdered in the womb for no good reason." [Note. This is, word for word, what a Christian just said to me. And it's not the first time]  -- [In reply] It's really odd to hear them say "for no good reason". It's not as if pregnant girls/women sit around after finding out they are pregnant ... and say "I'm bored. And I hear the abortion clinic gives out free orange juice and cookies. I'm tempted to go get a casual abortion. Anyone have a coin I can flip?"  Setting that aside,  I don't care what Christian fundamentalists' conceptualization of "God" wants. But a Christian fundamentalist  supposedly cares what "He" wants. And according to their religion, "He" wants to REFRAIN from interfering with anyone's "Free Will" ... no matter how much hates whatever people are doing with that Free Will. Their "God's" persona...

  In response to this: One Christian replied with:  "antitheists strive so hard to validate their hatred for a being they refuse to believe exists. Exerting all that energy must be exhausting. No wonder they're so angry all the time... ----- [In reply, I offer this:] At least you correctly used the word "antitheist" in a sentence. I'll give you that much credit. But no. And I think you're fully aware that what you just said  does not comport with reality. You're just hitting back at what felt like a personal attack against your very sensitive religious identity. I get that. I do. But this is why I always advise people to seriously consider unhooking their ego from their lens.  Stop letting ~what you perceive~ about the larger whole of reality (your perceptions OF the larger stage you find yourself upon)  define who you think you are and what you think you're worth.  Otherwise, you'll keep needing more from Stoicism than it can provide. In any even...

  "why should a divine being (hypothetical) do something we have the free will to do for ourselves and choose not to?" --  We don't actually have Free Will.  But I'm willing to pretend we do; for the sake of argument.   There are some statements where it makes sense to speak of: all of humanity  as a collective "we".  Granted. But the issue raised in the OP  is not one of those times.  [for reference] For all of recorded history, there have been an unknown % of individuals who ~did what they could~ and found it was never enough. There were always even more people  who just only randomly tried to help heal the world and prevent further tragedies.  Most were too busy just trying to survive. And there was always some who just went around causing tragedies. -- Until humanity became literate, most people were pretty clueless about the struggles of the larger whole. Until most people were on the internet,  most people were unable to...

 Regarding The intolerance for Stoic Christians;  as seen in Stoic discussion groups.  The intolerance of Christians is certainly a problem for humanity and for such groups.  And honestly, everyone needs to stop giving them more lenient social rules to abide by than everyone else is expected to.  Although,  I'm not convinced there is such a thing as actual "Stoic Christians".    If there are, I'd like to see a wiki or other walkthrough of their belief-statement.  In other words, I'd like to see it under a microscope; to see if that's what someone really created.  When some people were still creating Christianity,  they used some Stoic words like "logos" and the names of virtues; but not the actual meanings of those words. Even words like "justice" and "love" mean something very different,  when Christian Fundamentalists say those words.   Employing those words as antonyms of their true meanings was as much merging as they ...

re "(Atheists) are saying things like “our sky wizard” and “fairy tales”.  I have never heard an insulting response from a Christian." --- [In reply]  I have. I have heard Christians (here) say way worse things. I'll come back to that in a moment. But still I understand your objection.  Sometimes  a critic will launch(!) into challenge over a trivial and harmless thing.  Whenever that happens,  I'm right there with you.  The critic needs to chill. And even when the issue is actually important, ... It's certainly not going to win any Christians or Muslims over, when critics speak that way. Although, they have no chance of that anyways. Also,   often times, it's not just atheists giving a Christian some grief.  People just assume it's always an atheist, because of the false dichotomy of "atheists vs theists". Pagan, pantheists, deists, etc ... all speak the same way, on occasion. And they have even more reasons for that; because their "God...

I posed a question: "If someone matters,  (then):  If their life already has value, and if their lack of religiosity isn't causing a problem for anyone, then how could a "God" justify throwing then away like trash?" -------- Someone responded with this: "without being too theological, according to Christian theology, and other religions, man is sinful by nature. God gave his chosen people, the Jews, the Mosaic Law. In which there were 613 commandments, we usually only hear about the first ten. Within those were ways to atone for sin because no man could fulfill all the law and the wages of sin is death. God loved mankind so much He gave His Son Jesus, who we believe is the only person to live a sin free life, as a perfect sacrifice to atone for all sin. All we have to do is accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior, confess our sins and through Jesus we are saved. So God is not trashing or throwing anyone away. He as made a way whereby all can be saved. I hope th...

Responding to THIS (clickable link)  Someone has replied with this: As scientists peer out into the Universe using increasingly sophisticated equipment Astronomers and Theoretical Astrophysicists are mapping the presently perceivable area. What we seem to know is that something they call dark matter and dark energy are thought to be the glue that binds the visible components together. The size of our known Universe is beyond anything most of us can imagine. As we clump everything together to give us a picture we find it looks more like an intricate fibrous structure occupying an unknown but vast amount of space. There's a constant motion/interaction of energy that could be described as representative of a living organism. We don't witness a lot of what goes on because of the scale and relative timing of the interactions. Discussing the many descriptions of what the word "God" represents to individuals accomplishes little. Living life in real time; working on trying ...