God is an asshole if you read a random bit of the Bible in isolation of the theology/tradition that sits around and explains it. The way I’ve heard it explained by people who have lived this for a long time is a slightly different angle; which is that the way humans were created means that the way to be truely happy is to be aligned with God’s will. At the start you don’t really know what that is, which is why we have ‘commandments’/instruction, but as you deepen that relationship it becomes more and more fulfilling.
A lot of debates around christianity seem to resolve around the back and forth between "the Bible is really dumb and filled with insanities" and "people with two brain cells don't take it at face value, and only take away the parts that don't make them assholes".
I always wonder, if these people are smart enough to sift through all the insanities and come up with a safe path that makes sense, couldn't they just stare at the world for a few years and come up with their own sane path that only contains stuff that make sense for them...
Im(vh)o, all you need to do is stare long enough to realize how easy it is to get lost in a world in which you are constantly, intentionally exposed to calculated manipulation of human psychology to see how valuable it is to have a unwavering, structured approach to life and morality.
Hmmm...you're still choosing among a set of systems that were also designed to manipulate human psychology, but survived a few centuries, potentially getting refined.
One argument is that a system that survives that long can't be full blown toxic (would destroy itself in the process), but it's still not guaranteed to be better than any other system that also aren't full blown toxic (include one you make up by yourself), until you dig really deep into it.
To take an example from another field, full-blown royal/aristocracies government went on for centuries in France, and the country was quite successful from several metrics. But looking back we wouldn't argue it was a pretty nice system that could still be chosen today, just because it wasn't outright toxic.
I think the utility of religious systems can be determined by looking at the reason for their continuity:
Abrahamic faiths tended to continue via wars and forced conversions. Dharmic religions such as Buddhism tended to continue because adherents saw such immense value in the teachings that they spread them even despite resistance from authorities.
They have both existed for millenia but I see eastern faiths as more useful because they were rarely forced on their adherents.
As to your point on designing your own system, I think it's just hard to design something as complex as a religious system well. Instead of reinventing the wheel, people just choose the best among the time-tested methods. For me Buddhism seems to best fit the bill. If you want examples of people designing their own Religions, look at Crowley's Thelema, or for more philosophy-focused look at Theosophy.
Everyone has a philosophical or theological code, but most people just use what they are given. Even people who don't explicitly have a system still implicitly use a value system to guide their decisions.
I think religious systems have primarily been useful for community management, and religious beliefs being passed down generation from generation works well in that context. Same way, religious persecution is more often than not a proxy for eliminating a group's identity and cultural assimilating it into a conquering group.
In that sense, a religion's continuity is basically that group's continuity. Individuals within that group can switch to another religion, same way people move countries, but I'm not sure there are any case of a group switching wholesale to another religion by it's own decision. A king changing faith could be the closest to that, but I think it's usually a political move to join a bigger group, more than just independently switching for the sake of it.
> designing your own system
In general I don't think a "system" needs to be complicated, all ecompassing, nor needs to be fully from scratch. I'd compare it to cooking, you could look at a steak and carrot recipe and decide to try arrangements, and end up with mushrooms instead of the steak. You're still not building a new school of cooking, just doing your stuff on your own, eventually mixing and matching recipes you've seen elsewhere, without having to tag yourself with any specific cooking style.
You are right in that generally a whole group does not spontaneously decide to change faiths, but there are plenty of examples of a gradual erosion of a faith in communities .
"The vast majority of U.S. adults (85.6%) say they were raised as Christians. But more than a fifth of them (19.2% of all adults) no longer identify with Christianity." [0]
I think a ~ 20% change within a single generation is pretty significant. And most of these people will use the 'recipe' method you describe because it is easier than learning an entirely new system. There are many historical examples of this. E.g. Taoism + Buddhism -> Chan Buddhism -> Zen Buddhism.
Where did Judaism spread via war and forced conversion? Your historical claim is not entirely accurate and seemed very biased.
Buddhism was spread by missionaries throughout history. At times, much in the same way as Christianity. Undoubtedly the missionaries from both Buddhist and Christian societies thought they were spreading enlightenment and to some extent they stuck because other people agreed.
Lots of times, but much less than the Christians or Muslims. There's a lot of it recorded in the Bible:
"When Judah attacked, the Lord handed over the Canaanites and the Perizzites to them, and they defeated ten thousand men at the city of Bezek."
You are correct about the Buddhist missionaries, but the critical point for me is Buddhist missionaries generally did not bring weapons, whereas most Christian and Muslim areas today are so because of invasions.
A better method to compare is to look at the actual scripture. All Abrahamix faiths have some equivalent of "worship no gods before me" and various levels of actions towards this (ranging from killing non beleivers to not eating with them). The Dharmic relgions do not have this requirement, so are less likely to be used as justification to subjugate another people.
Whatever happened to the golden rule? Do people really need instructions on how to not be a selfish ass?
If this god isn't an asshole then he sure is needy in getting a ton of people to have a "relationship" with him/be aligned to his "will" in order for them to be happy.
He doesn’t need anything. The statement is that there’s a way to live a good (satisfying) life, the God being the creator knows that way, and he reveals it to people, who should follow it (to live satisfying lives)
God commands it for our own benefit, not because he needs it.
The Bible wasn't written in English.
> The Hebrew word translated into ‘awe’ in the Bible is yirah (יראה, pronounced yir-ah). It often directly translates into fear, like “fear of the Lord,” but it can also mean respect, reverence, and worship.
>John Mallon writes that the "fear" in "fear of the Lord" is often misinterpreted as "servile fear" (the fear of getting in trouble) when it should be understood as "filial fear" (the fear of offending someone whom one loves).
Alas, the majority of Christians are not very "reasonable" in that way today. Fosdick was asking 100 years ago (1922) if the fundamentalists will win[0], and it is pretty clear today that they have[1].
The last time it is recorded as coming here in the type-0 state known as “God” was to make an unsolicited gamble with Lucifer for fun to ruin Job’s life just for being God’s biggest fan, a process so egregious even literal Satan was like “maybe dial it back a bit”
That species gains its power from attention, and that one got its competitors killed and won with Abrahamic religions enjoying uninterrupted popularity worldwide, and to some, Christians by definition, its chimera spawn (type-2 state) has cast a perception of love to replace the history of fear, incongruent with its entire recorded history until that point. No other supernatural being aside from God or its current angels did anything with their supernatural abilities to harm humans in that book. They were just vilified for not being God or an angel. Nothing else killed babies if lamb’s blood wasn't smeared on the door.
It goes extremely long periods of time of inaction (to our knowledge), it does not act in the benefit of human kind and would be better off ignored, or making it an national security effort to guard against it.
This is Hacker News. It is not a place for intricate theological debate. God is bad, money is good, the systemic failures of capitalism can be ignored as long as we get to the Singularity, and we're all going to freeze our heads and be immortal.
