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I really like how the “empirical” evidence for god’s existence is just “math has rules and there are patterns in nature, therefore god exists” (hexbear.net)

submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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And you know what, that might just very well be true if we’re talking about some supernatural force that is indifferent to its creations, not out of malice, but because it simply is truly neutral.

But as evidence for the religious capital ‘G’ God, the one who communicates and plans every little detail because he loves us so much? What is the point of these “subtle” proofs that took thousands of years to be studied and recorded when he has shown that he can just pop up anywhere or perform miracles and whatever the fuck.

It is no coincidence that the vast majority, possibly 99%, of devout religious people do not give a shit about using math to explain god because it’s all proven in their holy books. It is no coincidence that the “empirical” evidence is, in reality, just pointing at the existence of features and concepts of math and science rather than utilizing said features and concepts to prove the existence of god. And no, philosophical musings about morality using the language of mathematical proofs does not count as utilizing math and science (literally, all the axioms in these types of "proofs" are subjective shit like "bad" and "good" and not, say, the difference between 1 and 0).

And I didn’t even want to make a post dunking on religion, but I’m irritated because YouTube recommended some dumbass video by a channel called “Reformed Zoomer” and one of the arguments is “there is an infinite range of numbers between two numbers, and if we turn those numbers into letters, then every book possible has already been written. Checkmate atheoids”. https://youtu.be/z0hxb5UVaNE?si=RpjF6S0fHiF71iH-

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 11 months ago (1 children)

That's the most annoying aspect of organized religion. They need to be ordered around by some ultimate authority telling them what to do. I follow an indigenous belief system and the differences between a spiritual belief system vs organized religion are night and day. Unfortunately, I've seen too many Western leftists act like the two are one and the same. Often mocking indigenous beliefs as "nature worship" or "ancestor worship."

The types who go out of their way to dismiss these beliefs from a group of people who don't actively seek converts remind me of Neoliberals dismissing Communism because their Econ books and professors have shown them why it's inherently flawed and wrong.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

There is something about how, in the west, gods become dehumanized.

It went from Pan being horny and Loki playing pranks, capricious gods with human emotions, and transformed into a slave-master who lacks all human traits due to being intrinsically perfect who we must love or else.

I think western religion - and hey probably all other organized religion for all I know but I’m familiar only with western religion - lost its spiritual content because it was repurposed as a tool to enforce power hierarchies.

I am just ranting and I hope not mansplaining anything but I feel that the reason why Christianity seems so empty of real meaning is basically because the Christianity we’ve received is a construct of the Roman Empire and its power structures and later of European monarchies. What meaning can come from that? Of course it’s empty.

The mistake that Dawkins-atheists make is to extend this criticism to spirituality in general. But spirituality is clearly something we have as humans.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago

nope christianity is not uniquely bound by the political expedients that harnessed it as a tool. this is just mystification of other religions that you're not as informed about the repressive instruments of, either because they were marginalized by the europeans or liberated from them. it's mostly academic today how traditional chinese belief systems were used for violence and oppression (though it still rears its head toward reaction from time to time), but that's a modern political effort, not a verdict on its history. Buddhists also get off easy in western spiritualism and that's because the communists murked their most odious examples