Ignorance might not truly be bliss, but it's certainly closer to it.

So you've NEVER seen evidence of human goodness?

That's where I think the analogy falls apart dramatically. It's the difference between "potentially kinda rare, sadly" and "non-existent and a signal of likely mental illness."

This is why I can't discredit faith, but I still do my best to point out how organizational religion has always exploited people. Not that all of it is bad. But there needs to be better safeguards for people to have the opportunity to find or reject faith for themselves, and instead it's mostly indoctrination.

You need more culture, art and music in your live.. But not the big corporations soul-less stuff, the good stuff, the real stuff

Have you seen Wake Up Dead Man? Had a really intriguing take on reconciling atheists and theists in a way I found very valuable.

I mean there's nothing wrong with believing. I don't, but I also don't go around trying to convince people to be like me. If it comes up I might share why I don't believe and I'm more than willing to listen to someone who does. I see the value in it.

It's fun to sing it to the tune of Happy Happy Joy Joy!

It's habit, I think.

I shout "By Grabthar's Hammer"

Gravity Falls--

Yeah, once I was searching something about Bill Cipher, my mother passed by and gave me a whole lecture about "satanic media"

And by bible you mean one of the many different versions from different denominations because none of them could agree what was correct. Or because the powers in charge at whatever period of time decided to create their own edited version to better control the population.

It’s all part of the plan innit.

Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings.

You appear to be moving the goalposts. These are all concepts. God is not as real as Money or Love or America. You're conflating several things here to try and obfuscate that the existence of God being proven isn't a "big deal".

You've ironically created the best counter to your statement by making the claim that it's as real as 3 abstract concepts that are all man made.

If something is real, it can be proven, observed, the effects replicated. This is how every thing in the universe works. No exceptions.

Money can be proven, even the idea of it, even though it's "conceptual". It has real value, it's a construct we created and it has physical objects in the real world and can be exchanged for goods and services. It's a real idea that takes physical shape in the world and it can be proven as a real world concept that we are 100% in control over. The idea of money changes over time, as our understanding of it grows and improves (or devolves). It is an abstract concept to explain a very real thing that exists in our world. Which we created.

Love is a concept, and while the nuances behind it aren't well understood, it's as real as anything anyone feels, like hate, fear, or any emotion. It's an emotion, and emotions are a part of the human empathic experience. It's something we've evolved and learned over time. It's real because we make it real every day. Love isn't existential, it doesn't have some power we're unable to measure. It can't bend or warp or shift reality. It can't do anything more than we can do as a human. In all the ways that matter, any result of love is 100% measurable and observable in the physical world, no matter how it manifests it is observable and measurable in the real world. It is an abstract concept to explain a very real thing that exists in our world. Which we created.

America is a real place, a real continent, a real country, with real people, and while the idea of a country or its people changes over time, it's not "fake" or made up, in the same way a claim about a deity is. The idea of America might be what you're referring to, but it's as real as any other shared idea or dream people have had in history, including Rome, the EU, etc. It is an abstract concept to explain a very real thing that exists in our world. Which we created.

God is not a real place. It is not anything more than an abstract concept that we shoved everything we didn't currently understand into the category of for thousands of years until we developed the tools and systems to better explain the world around us. There are real things from this abstract concept, like churches, and bibles, and books, and songs and stuff like that. All things humans created. None of the spiritual claims have ever been proven true, despite an insane amount of testing and observations made over millennia. There's nothing repeatable here. The only things we can observe about God that can be measured are the things the followers of the religion do. There's zero things we've observed or measured with regards to religion in the real world that have ever gone beyond the physical abilities of what a normal human or collective of humans can do. It is an abstract concept to explain things in the world we couldn't explain before.

And like the concepts you called out: Love, Money, America; God is also a concept that humans created.

I disagree.

Money and nations are well understood to be merely human made systems. They exist within the realm of human control to some degree, and therefore immediately invite open discussions and criticism.

God, in the eyes of those that believe in him, is the ultimate force of the universe of whom all existence and morality hinges upon. Unlike the other things you mentioned, there is fundamentally zero negotiations, criticisms, objections nor doubt's that can be had against God.

It is significantly harder to convince someone that their perfect being of a God is evil and than it is that money or nations are tools of evil.

How is it stupid if religious people really do argue that their god as an entity is real? I don't think the comic tries to dispute that the concept of gods aren't.

Someone could point to the horrible acts done in the name of religion, but just imagine if those people didn't have the fear of god in them

Lol no. Imagine if these people didn't think they were still righteous in the eyes of god, maybe they might not have felt the need to torture in the name of their god.

Short, memorable stories that show people getting punished for misdeeds and others rewarded for positive deeds is much easier to impart onto peasants than the nuances of collectivism.

I would agree if the stories consistently portrayed that. In the Bible and Torah, Job is the most righteous and good and gets fucked because of that. David has a faithful soldier that goes so far as to refuse to go home to his wife while his comrades were still fighting, and David has him killed in a fucked up way (told his general to send him where the fighting was worst and then have everybody pull back from him), all to try to cover up fucking the soldier's wife. David's "punishment" was he married the hot widow and the child conceived in the affair was miscarried. And as soon as she miscarried, David shrugged it off and moved on with his life.

Also, the entire Christian religion is based on absolution for whatever evil you do, you just have to be part of the club. If Hitler had "come to Jesus" right before he died, he would be in heaven while an atheist who spent their whole life doing good would be in hell. Deeds are irrelevant for punishment.

And let's not even get into Greek Mythology, where how good or bad of a human you were was completely irrelevant to what happened to you at the whims of the gods. Same for Norse.

I don't know how it is for any other religions, as I haven't studied them, but I don't think religion was required to establish a moral code and accountability. The Code of Hammurabi didn't require religion to have a legal code (while recognizing the relief at the top showing the god of justice handing it to Hammurabi, it seems pretty clear that was artistic expression), and it pre-dated the Ten Commandments.

Someone could point to the horrible acts done in the name of religion, but just imagine if those people didn't have the fear of god in them.

I just... what kind of argument is this? Do you think the people running the Spanish Inquisition would have tortured harder if they didn't have the "fear of god" in them? That the Crusades would have been bloodier? What reason do you have to think that the horrible acts done in the name of religion would have been worse if it wasn't for religion?

Short, memorable stories that show people getting punished for misdeeds and others rewarded for positive deeds

You don't need religion for that when there's folklore