Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, toxicity and dog-whistling are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
it was over a decade ago that I watched those debates, most of which were with Christopher Hitchens, though which ones specifically I wouldn't be able to say besides this one, which stands out in memory since it had both Hitchens and Stephen Fry arguing against religion. I also recall watching a lot of 'Hitchslap' videos which were snippets of Hitchens giving quick-witted responses to religious arguments.
For context, the doubts I had as a teenager were:
What could God possibly be achieving by giving children cancer and dying slowly and horrificly?
If those children all go to heaven, why not kill all children at birth to ensure they don't go to hell?
What's the point of this whole game, anyway? Why create this planetary diorama to fill it with people just to see if they believe in a capricious God that doesn't answer prayers and seemingly makes itself as difficult to believe in as possible? Why has Jesus/God never spoken to me directly, like so many other people claim to be able to do? Why did God allow thousands of other religions throughout the world and various points of time, each one claiming they alone are the true path to Heaven, how does one pick the correct needle of salvation in a haystack of religions? The only reason I was my specific flavor of Christian was because it's what my parents believed, what research did they do before choosing this one specifically (virtually none, just vibes).
When I looked to the Bible for answers, I was struck by how awful God was to Job, killing his entire family and giving him unhealing sores, all to win a bet with Satan. God's response to Job asking why the fuck this was being done to him was to basically say "Don't fucking question me, Job, look at how powerful I am boy, look, I can control leviathan or some shit!", which was astonishing to read, as it made God seem like a child ranting at Job for being rightfully upset at him, and with no reasonable answer for all the suffering, just a hand wave from God. Needless to say that didn't help bolster my belief.
At the end it was simply too much that didn't make sense, too much doubt in the foundations of the whole thing, too many failures of religion to make any impact whatsoever when I prayed.
The debates with Hitchens touched on at least some of those doubts, which made me realize all those doubts weren't from the devil, they were well founded and others shared them. At that point I'd finally had enough and said fuck the whole thing.
1 It takes immense wisdom to understand God's plan for yourselves, so, it is almost impossible to understand God's plan for the world.
2 Heaven depends on Faith in Christ and the fact that He died for your sin, not age. And they are still born with Original Sin.
3 Frater, God will always speak to you, but not in the ways you expect. It will be subtle, not a voice in your head. You need to listen and notice. And God answers your prayers, if they align with his will. Lies will always exist, it is your duty to see through them.
4 What denomination were you?
Ah, I didn't realize you yourself were religious. I thought you were just curious how doubt could lead to leaving a cult. I understand now why you think it wasn't an apt comparison with ML.
If God is real and has a plan, at this point I would argue that God is very much not equipped to be God, and contrary to the concept of being all-knowing, is very clearly making things up as He goes. I think Job is a good example of that, since God seems to realize that he actually fucked up pretty bad when Job rightly questions why his family was killed and why he had to suffer so arbitrarily despite believing in God fully, and God basically doesn't have an answer besides "Cause I'm powerful, bro. Look at all these giant beasts I control". Job's challenge seemed to shake God up pretty good, and make him decide to see what it was actually like to be one of the Humans he fucked with so much, so he decides to make Jesus so he can experience human mortality, which gives him a whole new appreciation for how messed up he'd been before, causing him to turn over a new leaf, being way less brutal and far more caring instead of, ya know, letting his followers dash babies against rocks like in the old testament (which leads into our next point).
That means every single baby and child not old enough to understand the concept of faith or Jesus went straight to hell, or, depending on your denomination, purgatory I guess.
Many religious people have claimed to have literal conversations with Jesus or God as part of their 1 on 1 relationship, are you saying they are lying or suffer from delusions? God's Will is an explanation to cope with the fact that praying is as good as a random coin flip; if the thing you prayed for happens, hurry! God answered your prayer! If it doesn't, guess it just wasn't his will, tough luck sport.
Generic Protestantism that promoted belief in the Trinity. Why do you ask?