(05-29-2021, 02:20 PM)Dom Wrote: The whole debate is pretty ridiculous.
In my case, I was a kid in catholic school when I decided to read the whole bible.
One of the sticking points was Noah's ark. So this god decided that all humans were bad, and apparently all animals and vegetation too. So he picked one pair of each animal to survive, and had Noah save those.
Now, how can all humans be bad? Were they all facsimiles? Did he create them to all be identical and made a mistake? Or, did he not care about them individually? Why do people pray then, if it makes no difference?
Then instead of just making them disappear and creating a better version, he made them suffer and drown. Really? He could not possibly have cared about any of them. And what about all the innocent animals meeting the same fate? Why would he create so much misery?
In my young eyes, this was the epidemy of immorality, callousness, lack of empathy and cruelty.
Then all this slaughtering of first borns, what did they do that was so wrong? Every one of them was evil. Really?
So that was my turning point, the immeasurable cruelty and absence of empathy and understanding. Why would anyone want to worship that and expect a sane world where people supported each other and helped each other?
I am TOO moral and empathic to worship such a cruel entity. If he exists and resembles the version in the bible, he doesn't deserve any worship.
That was the root of my atheism. And it still is. Who knows, if the entity I read about back then had been a caring, benevolent being who helped eliminate undeserved suffering, I might have turned out different and more inclined to believe he existed. But this behavior in the bible was just too disgusting.
Now, where is the hedonism and nihilism in that?
People arrive at atheism via many different paths and for many different reasons. I am sure some of us are as hedonistic as the pope. Some are "good" and some are "bad" - and you fail to understand that in exactly the same way your god in the bible did.
Very well said, Dom.
I cannot find in any literature a character that is so distructive and vengeful than the god character in the bible.
What is amazing to me is that the biblical god cannot seem to forgive people without pain and death or in the case of Jesus, a child sacrifice. I've forgiven many people in my life who have wronged me and I did it without requiring them to die or divvy up a dead sheep or burn something. I simply forgave them. I'm not unique either. People around the world forgive others every day and don't require anything in return except perhaps an "I'm sorry".
Amazingly, this god cannot seem to do what ordinary people all over the world do, they forgive others. And unlike the biblical god they do it without needing a bloody sacrifice in return. Geesh!
