Religion: Book 1.
I tried my best to kill this thread early on, though I am surprised with the civility to the discussion thus far. I suppose that, in my first attempt, I wasn’t verbose or encompassing enough to do what I set out to do.
Just for that, you all get to suffer through my point of view. You brought this upon yourselves, so no complaining now.
Further, I may go ahead and quote some of you, or other sources. It’s nothing personal, really, so don’t get all in a huff if you feel I’m inaccurately portraying you or your attitudes. It’s more for the purpose of illustrating how things
might be misconstrued, rather than them actually being misconstrued.
I make no claim to be right, encompassing, or representative of anyone but myself. I will, up front, admit to the innate hypocrisy in a lot of what I am about to write. I apologize in advance. I can think of no better way. Also, I’m going to make an attempt at being critical of all religions, but my life experiences have centered around Roman Catholicism, so that may be where most of my examples or prejudices lie.
Aren’t disclaimers fun? You always need them when it comes to religion.
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Who is anyone to question him? Hes God!
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I was worried I wouldn’t have an opening statement, too.
Dictionary.com defines ‘entitlement’ as, “A government program that guarantees and provides benefits to a particular group.” Consider, for a moment, that the ‘government’ modifier is extraneous and unnecessary given the common usage of the word, and keep that in mind as I continue.
In my opinion, Chris’ post reeks of entitlement. While he is certainly not alone in this trait, nor inherently guilty, his example was concise enough to be chosen for my little diatribe. Let’s take for granted, if only for a moment, that some of the implied (and stated, but perhaps excluded) truths that form the foundation of this argument are gospel (intended, yes). God exists. God is beyond our comprehension.
If such is the case, it seems clear enough to me that man the opinion of man is inconsequential against the word of God. That, for all of the scientific reasoning, knowledge, and inference that we possess, our level of understanding of the world and universe around us is, at best, naïve, and at worse, misguided. With that said, I can think of no legitimate, convincing, conclusive reason to give any worth, credit, or value to Chris’ argument.
See, Chris is, last I saw, human. Most who believe in God, to my knowledge, are human. So, in my mind, there exists an inherent dose of entitlement in the tenable position of all who follow religion – myself, perhaps, included.
I can see already that what I’ve written is a bit obtuse, so let me make one last attempt at clarifying myself before I move on to other, more important things. To claim the will of God as justification for nearly any cause is an infinitely defensible position. It is, after all, the implicit absoluteness of a God that defies reason, and thus, disallows anyone who argues with the support of God to be wrong. However, I am not speaking absolutely, in the apocalyptic, judgmental sort of way. Instead, I am talking about meager, simple discussions such as these.
For those who try to reason, there is logic. For those who follow God, there seems to be no reason. There is only God. There is no argument, nor hypocrisy, nor enlightenment. There is only the word of God, an incomprehensible being, as interpreted by man. There is only entitlement.
In this point, I, as the Devil’s advocate, and others, as the followers of God, each have an advantage. They all take solace in knowing that their word of God is truth, and I take comfort in realizing the futility of everything I’ve written, and expecting little to come from it.
To fairly acknowledge other sides of this issues, the statement,
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“…here we are blindly following a devine being without knowledge of existance and a lack of imperial evidence.
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[sic] was made as well, and is no less guilty of such entitled behavior. Instead of God, replace all I’ve said above with Science.
It’s odd how my attempt at clarification took nearly as long as my original point, huh? Oh well.