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If God exists, why does he behave like a narcissistic absentee landlord with a flair for blood rituals and dietary restrictions? The Abrahamic deity, revered across continents, seems less like a cosmic architect and more like a Bronze Age tribal chieftain with anger management issues. Yet billions genuflect before him daily.
Religious faith is often praised as a virtue. But what other domain celebrates belief without evidence? Would you board a plane built by someone who “just felt” the wings would hold? Would you trust a surgeon who prays instead of sterilizing instruments? Richard Dawkins famously called faith “a process of non-thinking.” Yet society elevates it above reason, as if ignorance were a badge of honour. Why is faith exempt from the scrutiny we apply to every other claim? Religion thrives not because it is true, but because it is comforting. It offers immortality, cosmic justice, and a celestial surveillance system that rewards obedience. Freud called religion “a universal obsessional neurosis.” Is it any wonder that belief correlates strongly with existential insecurity?
Consider: If you were guaranteed eternal life through science, would you still need God? Or is belief merely a coping mechanism dressed in sacred robes?
The Bible commands love, yet sanctions genocide (see Deuteronomy 20:16). It preaches humility yet demands worship. It forbids murder yet glorifies divine slaughter. If morality comes from God, why does it resemble the ethics of a medieval warlord?
Sam Harris argues that morality predates religion and is better served by reason and empathy than by scripture. So why do we outsource ethics to ancient texts?
Enter the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the Church of the SubGenius, and the Invisible Pink Unicorn parody religions that expose the absurdity of faith by mimicking its structure. Ethan Quillen’s “The Satirical Sacred” explores how these mock faiths challenge religious privilege and reveal the arbitrary nature of belief.
Ask yourself: If a belief system is indistinguishable from parody, should it be taken seriously?
Religion is not benign. It fuels sectarian violence, suppresses scientific progress, and enforces archaic social norms. From the Crusades to anti-vaccine movements, faith has often been a force of regression. Shouldn’t beliefs be judged by their consequences?
Religion persists not because it is rational, but because it is ritualized, institutionalized, and incentivized. It is a cultural fossil revered, untouchable, and absurd. The atheist does not merely reject God; he rejects the intellectual laziness that sustains Him.
Do you believe because it is true, or because you were told to? And if the answer is the latter, what else might you be wrong about?'

I'm upvoting due to the post title alone, but dude you've got to learn to paragraph. That wall of text is just too dense for me to even try reading.

Euphoric.

Brother, holy fuck, it isn't even just here. Their history is somehow worse.

OP, the fact the Bible has sensible formatting doesn't mean forgoing it is some kind of anti-theistic stratement.

Edit: Maybe they didn't realize it's a double line break that creates a new paragraph on Lemmy. But you'd think they'd have stopped for a second and pondered.

a Bronze Age tribal chieftain with anger management issues

Pretty spot on. Those tribal chieftains used religion to justify their power so it's not surprising they modelled their gods on themselves.

Very sorry. Point taken.

When someone shows who they are, believe them the first time.
-Maya Angelou

Even if he doesn't exist it tells all you need to know about the people/institution that made it up.

There is an edit button. Just FYI :)

If God exists

I challenge this premise.

Religion is useful to many. In the US as long as you’re seen sitting in a pew, or doing as little as poorly quoting a bible verse on occasion, you get a pass on being unchristian the rest of the time. Christianity absolves followers of their unchristian behavior. Easy peasy.
Billionaires and politicians exploit that slim veneer to create useful culture wars and gain political power through fake religious morality. As a US christian your inclusion is dependent on being indignant or offended whenever any of this is questioned, but you are never required to follow the teachings of Jesus.

Useful?

I do not believe in leprechauns, pixies, ghosts, werewolves, jujus, angels, Tooth Faeries, Odin, Thor, Zeus, Ra, Brahma, Athena, Hera, Poseidon, Yahweh, Allah, or the Trinity, demons, devils, Astrology, the Tarot, Satan. For the same reason in every case: there is not the tiniest shred of 𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦 𝐨𝐟 empirical, 𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥, 𝐡𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥, 𝐨𝐫 𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐨𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐱𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐨𝐟 any 𝐆𝐨𝐝 and the burden of proof rests with those who wish to believe. Even given no evidence for specific gods, we could make a case for some unspecified "intelligent designer" or "prime mover" or begetter of "something rather than nothing"?
By far the most appealing version of this argument is the biological one - living things do present a powerful illusion of design. But that is the very version that Darwin destroyed. Any theist who appeals to "design" of living creatures simply betrays his ignorance of biology. Go away and read a book. And any theist who appeals to biblical “evidence” betrays ignorance of biblical scholarship. The burden of proof rests with those who wish to believe. Even given no evidence for specific gods, could 'his ignorance of modern scholarship. Go away and read another book. As for the cosmological argument, whose God goes under names such as Prime Mover or First cause, again no evidence. Because physicists are closing in, with spell-binding results. Even if there remain unanswered questions - where do the fundamental laws and constants of physics come from? Obviously, it cannot help to postulate a designer whose existence poses bigger questions than he purports to solve. If science fails, our best hope is to build a better science. The answer will lie neither in theology nor - its exact equivalent - reading tea leaves. In any case, it is a fatuously illogical jump from deistic Unmoved Mover to Christian Trinity, with the Son being tortured and murdered because the Father, for all his omniscience and omnipotence, could not think of a better way to forgive "sin". Equally unconvincing are those who believe because it comforts them (why should truth be consoling?) or because it "feels right". The wife of a former UK prime minister may stand for the” feels right” brigade. She based her belief on “an understanding of something that her head cannot explain but my heart knows to be true.” She aspired to become a judge! My’lud, I cannot provide the evidence you require. My head cannot explain why, but my heart knows it to be true. Why is religion immune to the critical standards we apply not just in our courts of law, but in every other life?” Richard Dawkins

Dude. You keep saying "sorry" when people ask you to use paragraphs and then you never do. What good is "sorry"?

Paragraphs. Fuck this wall of text diatribe.

if he's real, he's probably not behaving as a narcissistic whatever but you may perceive it as so cause you're just a human and can't understand what's going on

Just for funsies I'll challenge this.

In the Bible's beginning God gave man the power to choose what they wanted to do. Guess what they did? The exact opposite of what he told them. And ever since then every human has made the choice to go against God's will.

And before anyone goes why doesn't God punish the sinners?, the problem is everyone is guilty. Punishing the worst means punishing everyone.

We fuck up the world, not God. Shit things don't happen because God makes them, but because WE make them.

I'm sick of hearing the same circle jerk ahh argument that The world is shit and hence God must be an asshole (pun intended). It's shit because we make it shit.

Now I'm not going to tell you to submit to Jesus or anything like that. But if you're going to attack God you better not mis- at least make your argument with the realistic views of both sides.

(Edit) Lmao, I seem to have struck a nerve with some.

Innocent children dont deserve cancer. Or horrible deaths from IDF.

Many people who actually follow the Christian laws from God still are punished and get nothing. While those who break the most rules benefit the most.

This idea that no one deserves God's grace or help because their ancestors didn't follow every tiny rule is just silly.

Religion is just a way to control people by pretending to offer them easy solutions and answers to complex problems.

And to protect the bad people in our society from being held accountable. They are very happy to promote religion adherence and modify it to fit their agenda.

God will surely punish people if they are bad.

And since he hasn't punished the obvious worst humans (the insanely wealthy, the pedos, the war criminals). that must mean they are in the right actually. And aren't bad people after all.

And.

You should definitely live in poverty and low health your whole life and stop complaining cause you will get your doge check later. After you die.
Be patient you ungrateful pleeb.

Do you mean he has choosen to make us so that our perception of him would be that he is a narcissistic monster while trying to be our role model? Or that he was not abble to do us better? Or that he failed at making us?

Isn't it more reasonable to think he only exists in some human made tales and mythologies?

Baby animals living in the wild, far from humans, in forest and oceans, suffer and die by natural cancers (among other natural things). That was already happening before human existed. And this animals have nervous systems that make them feel and live the pain of the hopeless torture their life is.

If god exists, this is made by god. If it is the abrahamic god, he did it on purpose, fully knowing what he was doing, he has done it exactly has he wished it, he saw it and claimed it was good.

no, reason would fail you. kinda like looking at quantum physics in a intuitive way. it's like nothing you know.

So I have no reason to believe. In fact, I should not believe, because I could only believe in something I understand ; and if I can only misunderstand it, I would better reject the faith.

Useful to powerful people who need to control the masses through manipulation and culture wars.
And useful to anyone who can socially check boxes without living in accordance with the teachings of Jesus.
Check out his sermon on the mount— it’s radical socialism which is not exactly aligned with your average christian conservative here in the US.

Stream of conscious has no boundaries :)

To be fair that is only one god. Have you heard the good news of odin?

All the ritual and diet stuff is just humans fabricating nonsense and attributing it to a deity

This reasoning is so braindead it isn't worth engaging with. You're probably religious.

He doesn't exist though

yes, the things that are beyond your world will never be available as knowledge to you. If you can only believe up untill your own limit that's an OK faith.

We can go a little beyond our limit even. Niels Bohr was wrong about electrons but I think we got it right even though we've never seen one. Quarks and gluons behave the way we thought they would.

I'd love to know where our limit is in 100 years. And how wrong our current understanding is.

I can't imagine an "ok faith". If you understand that you do not know something, isn't it better to go for "I don't know" rather "but I believe"?

Also, religions are old and have spent a lot of humans ressources and efforts without being able to prove their point. Quantum physics progress so much faster!

We should not have faith in the explainations of a given group of physician. You may accept what makes consensus among groups. Electrons existance, nature and laws make some kind of consensus. No god does. Also, science keep ways for demonstrating electron false, and incentives to do so (the one able to contest the existence of electron with strong arguments would be seen as a great physician). Religions don't accept to be contested, but build defenses toward logic and reason when it is not aligned with their beliefs.

Should quantum physic be a pure scam, it would be possible to demonstrate it. Should a religion be a pure scam, it could not be proven. Yet one at least is false! Polytheists and monotheists religions can't be all true at the same time. Usually, a religion is not imposed by its truth but by the weapons or the will of the king.

As a hypothyroidism, would you be more inclined to believe in a god if they simply removed every natural predator from Ebola to polar bears? Would you be more likely to believe if murder by the IDF beyond impossible but completely impossible to comprehend?

I don't agree.

The Talmud for example is thousands of pages of century long academic debates with logic and reasoning.

That's part of their religion too.

Opinions of minorities are welcome and debates often include counter arguments for your arguments to have value.

Please use a capital letter! Odin.

Hypothyroidism?

It is a perfect example of a religion that would never ask to the roman to crucify someone who say things that go against their faith.

Yet if you push it up to the point you would compare archeological datas with Moses story, and dare find doubts Moses even existed, I am not sure they are really receptive and open to an evidences based discussion.

This is a quotation.

Do you mean the designer, omnipotent, omniscient, benevolent, creator, Jehovah, or the lord god that gave that gave us viruses, deadly bacteria, genetic diseases, parasites, , volcanos, earthquakes, blindness, cancers, floods, droughts, starvation, meteorites, death from lightning strikes, pestilence, holy wars, tidal waves, asbestos, infant mortality, trachoma, life threatening radioactive elements, solar flares, malaria, smallpox, despots, dictators, slavery, mass extinctions, ice ages, trachoma, hare lips, cleft palates, animal sacrifices, infant genital mutilation, mental illness depression, bilharzia and anxiety, autism, Parkinson's disease, Hansons disease, hernias, the appendix, compacted wisdom teeth, acne, dementia and complete morons?

And?

I think all religion is trash, yes even the ones started by rich kids who sat under trees because no one told them they might die until they were adults.

oh that's very true! That the Jews are the chosen people is non negotiable to them. They were very smart about writing the old testament.

I swear my phone's autocorrect is making up words, I don't even know what hypothyroidism means

You can interpret quantum mechanics intuitively if you want. As pointed out by John Bell, the insistence on adopting very counterintuitive interpretations, like that cats can be both dead and alive until you look, multiverses, or whatever nonsense, is purely a deliberate theoretical choice, not mandated by the mathematics or the empirical evidence at all. People want quantum mechanics to be "weird," because it scratches the same itch as believing in a god. It sounds cool to say you live in a world filled with magic and whimsy, and so there is an emotional appeal to claiming somehow quantum mechanics proves there's a multiverse or whatever.

Don't feel bad. I'm the same when it's something that I'm passionate about. I'm learning. Lol

Wait. May I try here?

Double line.

Normal line.

Edit: Double line with some spaces there.
Edit 2: No line. It doesn't seem to work for me.

Hypothyroidism is having an uderactive thyroid gland.