Understanding Religion's Relationship To Human Social Systems

 . Best way I can see it is this: I have a dog. I love my dog, whether he behaves himself or not. This does not mean that he gets to do whatever he wants. There are always consequences to his actions. As his caretaker, I maintain his home. I created the environment in which he resides. If he behaves in such a way that proves he is unfit to live in my home, then I must make the decision to either remove him or train him to properly conduct himself. I cannot do this without building his trust. I do this by giving my time and money (i.e. a sacrifice), whether he knows that or not. For him to disregard those things over a period of time in my home is not within his nature. We as humans are in fact capable of disregarding the very God who gave us life in the first place. He loves us unconditionally, but we are not fit to reside within His home. If we think so highly of ourselves that we know better than Him, and even question the very nature of His sacrifice, the...

Under that video, the following conversation caught my attention.  Yet again, we see fan-followers of religious-fundamentalist apologists ... demonstrating how stupid and dishonest they are. A skeptic named  @fatfrankie  asked a Christian: "What’s the strongest argument for Christianity being true that you found? I’ve never seen a rational argument." ------------- In reply, that Christian offered this rambling and nonsensical non-answer:  @josephtattum6365 5 hours ago "@fatfrankie I can give you the short version but it basically comes down to whether or not you think God exists and then if God has revealed himself. There are many sound philosophical arguments why God exists, which I don’t have tune to get into now, and the historicity of Jesus is widely accepted as accurate historically and since he resurrected he vindicated his claim to be God thereby revealing God’s nature. That is the short version." ​ ---- My reply: @josephtattum6365 Re: 1. "whether or n...

  ​  @RyanPauly  On any given matter of insight into history, scholars will have a range of arguments that run from strained speculation to (in some matters) virtually inarguable. This is true even when there is unanimous agreement on an issue. They'll still have a tier list of best-to-worst arguments. In any case, reaching consensus means the data to support the majority view is ... very substantial. I'm glad you and I both understand this. Moving foward, I'm fine with citing some of the arguments I was most impressed by. To cite a few: 1. References, in the affirmative, to other gods existing.   Those texts don't say that those (nor all) other gods are false gods. 2. Yahweh loses a battle with another god. 3. Yaheh has a dad-God over him. 4. ALL references to Yahweh begin to appear in the record only after various other gods have been phased out. 5. Some of the gods previously phased out had some very specific stories, idioms, names, and at...

 ​ @Gorillagangsta202    18 minutes ago Have you seen the video where your Derek got dog walked by Jay Dyer" ---  My reply: Greetings, Gorilla Ganster.  It's "great" to meet you. ;)  I never saw that incident.  But the script is always the same.     Presuppositionalism is gaslighting via: * semantic sleights of hand  * asserting as "facts" and as "necessary" things that are neither,  and * circular reasoning, to satisfy their special pleading. It's also an attempt to pre-dismiss all challenges to the presupper's politically weaponized, religious *identity*  via * social humiliation, and * orchestrated confusion (aka: mind-fogging). gaslighting /ˈɡasˌlīdiNG/ noun The practice of psychologically manipulating someone into questioning their own sanity, memory, or powers of reasoning. The goal of gaslighting is to get people so profoundly doubting their own critical faculties that they'll go "soft" or otherwise abandon their cr...

As for the question of any "god" existing, it's like arguing whether the Eternal King of the Leprechauns exists.  Nobody is ever going to prove or disprove it.  But honestly, I never try to. Nor do most atheists.  Instead, we just point out how counterfactual, fallacious, and unethical the claims and arguments are. Few of us care about people believing in fantastic things. For most of us, our attitude is: "Worship dryer lint, for all we care.  Notice how we never really tangle with Wiccans, Buddhists, or Native Indigenous spiritual persons about their beliefs.  That's because those people are not troubling us with it. In fact, they hardly ever harm or intrude into other people's lives as a consequence of their spiritual beliefs.  Whenever someone's weird relationship to dryer lint threatens to (or actively does) greatly intrude on non-consenting people's lives, ... now we have a problem that can't be ignored." As Will Smith's character in...

@Christmas1914-dg5xc 3 hours ago  @BionicLatino  "murder is still wrong" How would you try talking someone out of it, if they don't care that it is, and if it's to their benefit? You know what politicians are capable of. Their believing in God isn't a guaranteed way to stop it, but it's something. At least you can then try to introduce some cognitive dissonance, if their motive is purely personal gain. --- --- My thoughts about it:  ​ @Christmas1914-dg5xc  I understand your point.  As someone once said, "I may not believe in God, but I sure hope my maid does". I get it. And by "I get it", I mean ... I truly and deeply understand it.  The easiest counterpoint would be to offer this: However, Weinberg really underestimates the problem.  Now, I do understand that some Christians are genuinely loving people.  But that actually makes it worse. Because those people are taught to rob themselves of their credit for being decent people. -Believing...

  LOL He was about to plug my channel, but, ... mid-sentence, he realized he shouldn't. I'm too hated by the cult. And that cult is ever-present in every channel within that network. -always ready to ensure "consequences" for violating social doctrine. #TheShunningIsReal This was why the only person in chat who was willing to say Hi to me was Dave, as always. Even people who do talk to w/ me privately via Facebook ... just refuse to talk to me in front of a specific social-cult of atheists, which I call "The Mean Girls" (pop culture movie reference). So the host (Chris Mallard's) brain grabbed the first random safe channel he could think of and inserted it to complete his sentence. The stress of trying to make that sudden shift appear natural ... resulted in momentary decoherence of his thought process. That, in turn, resulted in putting his foot in his mouth, insulting Joe (Kentucky Atheist). And then Chris had to do some messy and awkward...