If a personal "God" existed and cared, there would be either: NO religion OR only one religion.

Recently, I posted this on Youtube:
[link] 

In response,  
someone said: "If God were real, Christians would easily share consensus about the details. Analogy: If bullseyes were real, people would hit the exact same atom on a bullseye with the foremost atom of their darts. What you find wrong on principle with my example is just as what is wrong in yours" ----- Continuing the conversation, I offer this: Hi @aprendiz4

Thanks for engaging with something I said. In reply, I invite you to consider these points: If I entertain the popular Christian literal ideas about "God": 1. "God" designed the way the original human minds work. 2. "God" also chose which dysfunctions humans would "fall" into, once humans became imperfect. Think of this as "Plan B Design". This includes things like: * genetic mutations, * birth defects, * low IQs, * catastrophic epigenetic switches being altered in utero. This will affect how a child's mind and personality develop after birth. This is commonly due to the chronic emotional distress of the pregnant "mother".

This means that if anyone causes significant emotional distress to a pregnant person, they are: a.) physically damaging the fetus. And b.) pre-abusing the child. Because the "emerging child's" nervous system, blood chemistry, and mind are being shaped by that abuse. What else MUST we blame "God" for, IF Christians are correct? * compromises and limits to our neuroplasticity, * vulnerability to natural environmental dangers, * the very existence of natural environmental dangers (ie. invisible heavy metals in fresh water lakes, parasites, viruses, bacteria, etc) * fragile psychologies which are warped (in cognitive perceptions, and in emotional reflexes) due to: * physical environments, and * social environments. These are: * formative experiences, and * transformative experiences. Such things affect: * our nervous system, * blood chemistry, and * gut-microbiome. These things heavily determine * how we think, * what we think, and * how we feel about whatever we think. Thus, these things determine: * How we live our own lives, and * how we respond to others. [including how we respond to religious "messages"] Those things also affect: * sleep quantity, * sleep quality, etc.. - Which ALSO have tremendous impacts on how we feel, think, and behave. Additionally: We each develop our own individual "language maps" Every concept we have a *word* for ... carries meaning relative to some other concepts we have words for.

The nuances of meaning and *feeling* for every word and phrase ... is determined by our own lived experiences. This causes personally unique emotional triggers (even on a subconscious level) whenever we hear, think, or speak any specific words (or combination of words). Consider, also, how neurochemicals alter the ways we feel, perceive, and respond.

This neurochemical is produced in abundance during church gatherings. This is why it's so easy to imagine (and to "justify") a "Hell" for outsiders. Just as importantly, ... We aren't always aware of subtle emotions. Nor are we aware of how those feelings are altering our perceptions. Those emotional reflexes cause perceptual changes. All of these influences work together to shape perceptions about: * What's real, * what anything means to us, and * how we value or devalue the subjects and circumstances we're responding to. All of these things shape: * how we reason, * what seems "real", and * how we value and devalue real and abstract things; - In other words, our "personal values". As a result, these determine how we behave. This is actually one of the most powerful problems inherent to religions that claim to be "exclusively true" and "morally imperative".

This is partly what generates a mindset of "identity politics"; which is really an "identity polemic". It causes our social-perceptual lens to segregate. It detaches our narrative of identity ... away from the larger, living, breathing, whole of humanity, and also away from the larger living breathing whole of our entire global ecosystem.

In doing so, it generates a competitive relationship with other living entities, rather than a mutually cooperative relationship. This is a huge part of the reason why Conservative politics are so hierarchical and competition-oriented. It's also why "liberal" idealism keeps pulling towards an equitable spirit of global cultural cooperation.

This is why a renowned philosopher once said: “When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.” ― Jiddu Krishnamurti

Quite often, our "reasons" for our attitudes and choices are caused by many converging "factors of influence" we aren't even consciously aware of. As a result, we all generate "reasons" post hoc to justify (even to ourselves) why we make the choices we make. Often, we think we did a specific thing for a specific reason. But we actually did it for some other set of reasons. These effects are so deeply internal and powerful that they can actually mislead us about the true details of our own moral values and subsequent choices. For example, it has been proven through careful and repeated studies that judges impose radically different verdicts and sentences on defendants based on: * How well the judge slept the night before, * time of day, * being very hungry vs satiated, * temperature in the courtroom, and * how hard or soft the judge's chair is. The judges each thought they were being true and consistent to their own personal values and to their relatively objective and consistent understanding of the laws they were sworn to uphold. But they weren't. Physical factors beyond the range of their perceptions ... were generating skewed brain-states and subsequently skewed *perceptions* about: * other people's characters, and *other people's actions, and * those judges' own motivations. We literally change how we perceive someone else's character ... based on how comfortable our ASS is at the time.

These are perpetually converging and interacting psychical phenomenon. To make matters worse, we are all: * born into complete ignorance, * born into circumstances which we have no choice about, and * raised helplessly dependent on the dysfunctions of the people who wield power over us (parents, teachers, family, culture, govt, religions, etc). These many circumstances (according to popular theistic theories. ie. "Christianity") are what a "God" has predicted, ensured, and left us *at the mercy of*. According to various Christianities, ... "God has a plan" ... to rescue us FROM the ignorance, confusion, and dysfunctions that he orchestrated. "God has a plan" ... to rescue us (aka "save us") also from HIMSELF. Because after he CHOSE to create me and you FLAWED, ... He realized how wrathful and disgusted he is ABOUT the flaws he "cursed" us with. Somehow, irrationally, HE blames you and I ... for the inevitable RESULTS of the flaws he chose to burden us with. Now, you can argue that "Adam and Eve" (who never actually existed in the first place) ... "chose imperfection". I could argue that those characters in that story were SET UP to fall. Also, they did not really choose the consequences that followed in that story. HOWEVER, I'll just grant it anyway. Let's pretend it really happened. Let's pretend they should be blamed. It doesn't matter. It doesn't affect my point. I wasn't there. You weren't there. The people we love weren't there. "We" didn't rebel. "We" didn't choose to be imperfect. We cannot rationally (nor ethically) be blamed or punished for what someone else did. We cannot be rightly said to inherit their moral debts. Nobody but "God" made God's choices. Nobody told God he had to curse their descendants with imperfections. Nobody told "God" he couldn't allow VISITING HOURS (or at least a damned one-way window) in a visiting-room (or garden) between here and "Heaven". NOR did "God" (in the Adam and Eve fable) WARN Adam and Eve that "God" would make trillions of other sentient creatures suffer horrifically as punishment for Adam and Eve eating a [tempting] piece of fruit. "God" (in that fable) did not issue "fair warning" (In other words, a "JUST" warning) to Adam and Eve about all the rampant suffering every human and animal (ever after) would be subject to.

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Also, Nobody told "God" to poison random sources of fresh water and soil. Nobody told "God" he had to make poisonous plants, mushrooms, insects, and microorganisms. -And then leave humans with no SAFE way to tell what is safe. Nobody told "God" he had to make the sun emit cancer-causing radiation. Nobody told "God" he had to invent the many different forms of cancer. Nobody told "God" he had to make random children fatally allergic to foods, plants, and bee stings. Nobody told "God" he had to invent countless horrible diseases, and then enable some flying insects to spread those around to random human victims. Nobody told "God" he wasn't allowed to protect innocent children from being abducted, horrifically abused, held hostage, or brutally murdered. Nobody told "God" he had to install tragic vulnerabilities into our **MINDS** that allow predator humans to MANIPULATE and TRICK people into FALSE RELIGIONS.

[link to a slightly clearer copy of this chart] Nobody told "God" he wasn't allowed to have visibly-obvious angels float down from the heavens (with halos, harps, wings, golden radiance, etc) ... to "set the record straight" about what GOD ***really*** thinks, feels, and wants. Nobody told "God" he had to create human MINDS in such a way that: They are helplessly vulnerable to neglect and abuse AS CHILDREN, ... AND (as a result) can be forcibly TURNED INTO "emerging adults" who have super-monsterous "Major Personality Disorders" (sociopaths, psychopaths, clinical Narcissists, etc.) In other words, adults can sabotage the souls of children, so they grow up permanently soul-disabled. They grow up blind to their true inner spark because it's diminished, lost, and disconnected from them. However, let's be clear about this. Christianity often CAUSES that outcome. But it never ever remedies that outcome. Nobody is ever cured of a Major Personality Disorder. Now, when I say "soul", I just mean "the essence of a person's character; how healthy, creative, and courageously alive they are.". I can think of MANY examples of truly brilliant souls. A few are Christians. But most are ... not. In either case, most humans grow up to be ... NOT monsters. They're just ... "complicated". They develop skewed perceptions. They go out into our world, reasoning (sometimes) badly ... but believing they are reasoning well. As a result, they (sometimes) behave in ways that hurt others. But they perceive themselves to be behaving reasonably; maybe even "heroically". -Even when they are hurting others. I'd argue that Christianity is exactly that kind of thing. It's people reasoning badly, hurting others, and hurting themselves ... "in the name of Love". Why? Because Bibles and Bible-based religions do NOT have a healthy understanding of what LOVE actually is. "Paul" was a cult-personality with gangster ambitions. Bible writers were really just: MEN ... with Major Personality Disorders ... writing "HOW TO Guides" ... for getting away with it. When readers are MANIPULATED into making themselves HOSTAGE to that content, ... Their minds are being CONQUERED by OTHER humans ... via: "complex viral memetics" spread (in other words, contaminated) into their mind(s) by ENTIRELY unscrupulous methods. Literally NONE of the methods used to convert people into your religion ... are ethical methods. But that's exactly why those methods work. Because human minds can be hijacked; due to: no fault of their own. [link] And that's exactly what we're talking about here. Jehovah's Witnesses don't wake up every morning and think "I know @aprendiz4's conceptualization of "God" is the correct expression of "God". But I feel like sacrificing EVEN MORE of my personal freedoms and personal resources ... to a GOD who doesn't exist ... INSTEAD OF making the same (or fewer) sacrifices to a GOD who does exist". Roman Catholics don't wake up in the morning thinking that either. Neither do Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Janeists, Wiccans, Native American Indian Spiritualists, etc.. Neither do "Atheists" do that. They aren't electing themselves as the "false God" they'd rather waste precious resources on. No matter what theory about "God" is correct, ... People who are "wrong about God" ... are wrong by accident. They don't "hate God". They don't "secretly know that your iteration of "God" is the true "God". They have not "made themselves blind to God by means of an act of (libertarian) "Free Will". They have not made themselves "blind to God" by "wilfully and knowingly choosing bad moral character"; - not even if we just mean "worse moral character" compared to yours. If they happen to hear from your church about "God", ... The REASONS it won't sound CREDIBLE, or REASONABLE, or "Divine" to them ... is because of the PHYSICS which 100% **determines** their emergence of MIND. -The very same PHYSICS which your religion says your "God" designed. If an all-knowing, all-powerful, perfectly wise, universally loving, and deeply invested personal BEING wanted everyone to KNOW something ... Everyone would know ... whatever that BEING wanted everyone to know. It wouldn't depend on chance encounters with messengers from some obscure sect of a religion. It wouldn't depend on random levels of impressiveness demonstrated by those messengers. It wouldn't depend on the PHYSICS of how we think and feel. We would all simply and directly know ... everything we need to know. As a result, there would NOT be multiple rival religions. Instead, ... There would be: ONE organized and divine worldview. [I don't really care if you want to call that a "religion" or not] The FRUITS of that collective would be so impressive that their STATISTICS for EVERY measure of health and happiness ... would be as undeniable as their collective reputation. Instead, we find the opposite. The more literal, conservative, and obsessively God-focused a population is ... the WORSE their health statistics, education statistics, crime statistics, civil liberties, etc..

Secular Societies Fare Better Than Religious Societies

[Link] Spending all day at the God-Beach, ... God-Bathers would all have a God-Tan; - metaphorically speaking. But that's not at all what we see. It just is what we WOULD see, if any such "God" existed, and if any such "body" of believers existed. Everyone else (IF there were anyone else) would live and identify independently. They would not BOTHER to intentionally create or join false religions. Why not? Because it wouldn't make any sense to anyone ... to cower and sacrifice to any "God" they knew didn't exist; - especially if the REASON they didn't serve the TRUE "God" was because they selfishly wanted to "live only for today" and selfishly live only for themselves. Meanwhile, I watched a video review at Paulogia's "atheist" channel yesterday. Paulogia was reviewing a Christian Apologist's live stream. A large panel of popular CHRISTIAN apologists ... had recently reviewed an ex-Christian's discussion with Alex O'Connor. Guess what EVERY SINGLE ONE of those popular CHRISTIAN apologists had in common? They all wish people like "Teach YHWH" would STFU. They do. They really do. And why? Because: People like her are making this job of Christian apologetics harder than it already is. She is betraying the project of "Christianity". And in doing so, she is creating more atheists. How? Here are Christians explaining it, in their own words: Click here. Worse yet, every single one of those Christian apologists are ALSO betraying the project of Christianity. To understand how, click here. Even worse yet, Literally ALL Christians are betraying "the God of Abraham". - No matter if he literally exists OR If we're just going to SAY he literally exists. How so? click here. And yet, he TOO is betraying "God", IF any such entity literally exists. How so?

When you came to my virtual space to share what you knew, ... You did not know what you thought you knew. However, if you'd like to discuss any of this with me, on a live stream, here at my channel, ... I promise to be kind. I'm sure we could have a great discussion. Let me know.