Why are the big 3 abrahamic faiths still so respected and believed in?

Arguing science is like arguing over photograph, arguing philosophy is like arguing over an impressionist painting that borders on the abstract.

Arguing theology is like arguing over a blank piece of paper. Was a man born of a virgin and capable of walking on water? Or did a man go to a mystical realm on the back of a flying horse?

Where do you even begin with this shit? Why is it taken seriously at all when it doesn't start with material evidence or a logical starting point. Why does Christianity get a tradition of apologetics when the twitter account of Tila Tequila will not?

>inb4 fedora or some other tired meme
>inb4 read the Bible

Went to a Christian middle and high school where I was taught the Bible from Lutheran pastors who all spent the better part of a decade learning the shit in its original language. Still don't see why it is not immediately dismissed like scientology, mormonism, or cargo cults.

Obviously third worlders and the blighted poor and uneducated of the first world will be attracted to religion, but why do even academics still approach it as if there is still some doubt about it when they don't extend that treatment to the Gods of Mt. Olympus or Aztec religion or even crazy nonsense starting in the present day?

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Padre_Pio
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logos
twitter.com/AnonBabble

Religion is comforting, conditioning people to become atheists at this point in the first world offers no real benefits.

t. atheist

It's literally delusion. Some people have existential melt-downs at the thought that there isn't some kind of Divine Judge - it freaks them out, so they will continue to believe in it and ignore whatever evidence shows it to be false.

God is the only way all of this makes sense

Please elaborate

Religion provides you with comfort, it provides a solution to the existential question.

It also makes you less likely to fall into depressive moods because it provides you with faith. Which could make you a more productive person.

I'm an atheist, but religion has its benefits.

Death/non-existance is one of the if not the scariest thing in human existence

Most humans want to exist forever so they naturally gravitate towards things that tell them they can

Some people just think the existence of a Supreme Being is the most accurate explanation for nature. This, like everything else in the world, can't be objectively proven but we can nonetheless put forth arguments that we think are in the right. This is very simple stuff, that you can't understand it doesn't reflect very well on you.

>conditioning people to become atheists at this point in the first world offers no real benefits.

Makes them less likely to vote for bad policies which in the long run is a benefit.

Religion is stronger now that Atheism has begun to cannibalize itself

>mormonism
MORMONISM IS THE ONE TRUE FAITH

>Some people just think the existence of a Supreme Being is the most accurate explanation for nature

And they're absolutely lying.
They don't believe in "a supreme being".
They believe in a very specific being described in their favorite holy scripture.

Benefits that can also be derived from other sources if you stop holding on to the fucking baby bottle, but yes, there are benefits.

...

He didn't say anything wrong.

>le hat xD

The holy scriptures teach that God is the supreme being so actually he did.

I see.
And why should i believe your holy scripture?

The short answer is because it is true.

A more detailed response will require me to know more about where you are at right now. Do you believe your life has a purpose or is meaningful and if so why?

That's obviously not true. While a Christian, a Diest, a Muslim and a Zoroastarian will disagree about the nature of the supreme being, they would certainly be able to produce a statement of commonalities, and hold that they are all speaking the truth when they speak of these.

>but why do even academics still approach it as if there is still some doubt about it when they don't extend that treatment to the Gods of Mt. Olympus or Aztec religion or even crazy nonsense starting in the present day?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Padre_Pio

There are still phenomia in the world which can claim to be beyond the reach of man's understanding.

>Why does Christianity get a tradition of apologetics when the twitter account of Tila Tequila will not?

This is how I know this thread was not made out of a sincere desire for understanding but rather just an excuse to be edgy and contrarian.

However I will address your question anyway. It is not an exaggeration to say that Jesus presented a revolutionary interpretation of Jewish law that would fundamentally realign the way His followers (who account for a plurality of religious people on Earth) see themselves in relation to God. That almighty God would choose to reveal Himself as carpenter who was born in a stable completely scandalized the Jewish power structure of the time and had far reaching implications for how people understand what true power is. Jesus overturned the notion that pomp and circumstance are what make a king and instead proved that Love is the most powerful force in creation. Jesus demonstrated this Love by willingly suffering an excruciating death for a crime he did not commit and then raising Himself back up from the dead. These accomplishments have eternal significance because they atoned for humanity's sin and provide us with the most vivid example of what true Love looks like. Jesus' earthly ministry changed everything about the way we understand our place in creation and this is why people literally worship Him.

>but why do even academics still approach it as if there is still some doubt about it when they don't extend that treatment to the Gods of Mt. Olympus or Aztec religion or even crazy nonsense starting in the present day?
Because Helenistic Pagans are LARPers uninterested in real theology, and they'd have no groundwork to pull it off (the only extent philosophy/theology of the Greeks is the fucking cornerstone of Western Philosophy, so good luck mining that productively anyway).

Aztec Theology though, we've got enough written sources that the only reason there are no academically serious Aztec Theologians is because no one has gotten around to writing it.

>Do you believe your life has a purpose or is meaningful and if so why?
No purpose other than the one you set for yourself.

Except for possibly deists, believers don't really care about a justification for reality, they care about a justification for their belief, so they simply fit the "supreme being" model they have and fit it into anything that might justify a higher consciousness.

Was anything relating to that man ever verified by secular researchers?

They're still respected and believed in because a lot of people still respect and believe in them. I know that's a useless tautology, but that's literally the entirety of it. Social pressure keeps them getting new converts, and that same social pressure keeps fervent criticisms from becoming too widespread.

Hellenismos does not get this same consideration because there isn't the same social pressure to protect it (and likely wont be because they aren't evangelistic).

How can we set our own purpose when we did not create ourselves? On a purely material level, we inherit traits from our parents which influence what we are capable of and shape our purpose. For example would it make sense for someone who is 5'2" to conclude that their purpose is to be a professional basketball player? Of course not because our innate characteristics determine our purpose and since we did not choose these traits we cannot choose our purpose.

We're still free to choose our purpose within the confines of our abilities.

Your parents created you and they don't get to define your purpose.
Also, there's no guarantee you'll succeed at the purpose you choose anyway.

That begs the question of who or what defines our abilities. Humans posses unique abilities which differentiate us from the rest of the animal kingdom and perhaps the greatest of these is our rational self-awareness. Materialists will say this is the product of chance but it seems unlikely to me that chaos would produce human reason so instead I would ask you to consider the possibility that our self-awareness mirrors or is made in the image of a larger cosmic intelligence.

Human parents did not create the human form. What I mean by the creator defining purpose is the one who constructs the form. For example we see a hammer is composed of a large hard surface attached to a stick. We can intuit from this design, or form, that the purpose of the hammer is to hit things. Likewise we should look to the human form, with its capacity to feel complex emotions like Love, as a starting place for thinking about what our purpose might be.

Atheism don't equal good policy

Education = good policy

Not everything created has a purpose.
Sometimes things are created just because the creator enjoys creating for instance.
And sometimes, things are created by natural occurrence, as seems to be our case if talking about our "design"

What’s the concept of order? What does it have to do with things which exist? If they clash with each other, if there were contradictions, they wouldn’t exist. There is no such thing as a disorderly Universe. Our whole concept of order comes from observing reality. And, the reality has to be orderly because it’s the standard of what exists.

>Humans posses unique abilities which differentiate us from the rest of the animal kingdom and perhaps the greatest of these is our rational self-awareness.

This is a scientific misconception. Nothing about us is strictly speaking unique. You can find basically every aspect of humanity present in other organisms in some degree or another. Not all things in all organisms, but you can find things like problem-solving, awareness of self, and emotion in several different species. There are even animals out there that surpass our intelligence in some regards (tigers as I recall possess a better short-term memory than us, for instance). These qualities in us are greater than the sum of their parts, but everything that is something when existing in its proper cohesion is greater than the sum of its parts.

>Materialists will say this is the product of chance but it seems unlikely to me that chaos would produce human reason so instead I would ask you to consider the possibility that our self-awareness mirrors or is made in the image of a larger cosmic intelligence.

Actually I'm a materialist (I prefer physicalist, actually, because materialist makes it sound as though I ignore all things that aren't matter, which would be scientifically stupid) and I think it's a product of both chance and causal determinism. I've already considered the possibility of it reflecting a greater cosmic intelligence and I both consider the proposition absurd and can find no reason to believe it.

In that example you gave their purpose is for their creator's enjoyment and natural occurrences must have a cause.

The way those traits are combined in human beings is unique which does indeed separate us from the animal kingdom. Don't you find it odd that we are the only species that wears jewelry and builds altars?

>The way those traits are combined in human beings is unique which does indeed separate us from the animal kingdom.

But they're not. We have evidence of prehistoric hominids that engaged in largely the same shit humans were engaging in at the time.

>Don't you find it odd that we are the only species that wears jewelry and builds altars?

No, not really. Jewelry is just an extension of social status behaviours which you'll see comparable versions of in other species (birds competing for mates with elaborate nests for instance). We've observed religious artifacts in the remains of non-human hominids as well.

You do realize pic related would still argue for Christianity, even if he lived in today's world?

Anyways, it's just another philosophical "answer" to metaphysics. Science can't provide the answer for existence (yet?), although perhaps one day we will find the source of the cause, that is uncaused, that which lies at the end of the explanatory chain (god?).

>Humans aren't unique

How can you /write/ that with a straight face?

no it fucking doesn't, not as humans have imagined it, to be sure.

I too am an atheist, and although I am happy to make certain concessions to religion (social cohesion etc), 'comfort' with respect to abrahamism is not one of them. At least, not comfort as people ought properly to take it, in my view. I instead maintain that the attachment to abrahamism betrays in its adherents a certain benightment, and yes, let's go there (we're here, after all) /cuckoldry/, exactly because a rather cruel and arbitrary god who is not to be questioned, is thus called for.

It is immoral in any relevant sense (which, yes, is to say the human sense) to hold up such an arbitrary tyrant. Now the religionist invokes mystery, 'you are not in full possession of the facts', that type of thing. /yet damnation is still called for, and of a rather long sort/. And why? Because the false creature is a jealous sort, perhaps, or is otherwise arbitrary.

Suppose that the creature is in any wise as it has thus far been described. Then it is nevertheless abhorrent.

We're unique in the sense everything else. But the qualities that make us us in a metaphysical sense are most certainly not. As I said, those specific qualities can be found in other animals, and there's plenty of evidence that other hominids exhibited the same behaviors as us. Neanderthals weren't human and were still tool-using and exhibiting religious behaviors.

The way those qualities are combined in humanity does make us unique and the written word is a prime example of this.

The presence of our vestigial appendix is also unique. It's not evidence of a creator. Also other hominids, again, they were already engaging in art, there's no reason think they wouldn't have developed writing eventually.

>In that example you gave their purpose is for their creator's enjoyment
The creator's enjoyment in this case came from creation itself, not from them.
Someone can draw something because they enjoy it, doesn't mean they will take any enjoyment from the drawing later.

Natural occurrences do have causes, but not really a purpose.

your post hints at a view that I have veered toward in recent years, with a certain addendum to human nature. Specifically, /that human beings want to

1) imagine a life after death, and
2) THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PART: IMAGINE THAT THAT LIFE AFTER DEATH CONTAINS SOME DIFFERENTIATION OF STATUS.

This, I think, is the big, central, social lie of religion in general, this need to believe not merely in a continuance of existence, but in a /differentiation of status/ afterwards. Thus Christians stroke themselves as to their rightness that it will happen that others burn in hell forever and ever, as proof of their faith. Likewise muslims, and eastern religions conceive of some forms of lower reincarnation corresponding to morality, behaviour. The intolerable thing for many humans, and what is simultaneously such a great comfort to myself, is the simple fact that so far as I am justified to understand it, all human beings ultimately end in the exact same one undifferentiated way. This is a large part of what makes existence bearable, the simple fact that where it really counts, no one who has ever lived is any morally better than, say, a Jeffrey Dahmer. Exactly because we are all nothing again in a blip, and it all amounts to nothing, with no comeuppance.

Reality itself forever militates against religion, until anyone see otherwise. Even now, some of the Veeky Forums userbase are slowly becoming bored of the fedora meme, so that the contrarian pendulum necessarily swing back to a certain sincere atheism.

The existence of creation actually is evidence of a Creator.

The drawing fulfills its purpose either way and the good news is that creation does have a purpose.

>The existence of creation actually is evidence of a Creator.

Reality doesn't show the hallmarks of a creator. Consider our eyes and their blindspots, a product of the way our optic nerve connects to the retina. There's no reason for our eyes to function this way, there are animals there the optic nerve is positioned so this doesn't occur. What kind of designer would commit such an oversight in what is supposed to be his masterpiece?

The fact that there is even a creation does suggest the existence of a Creator and sin has infected all levels of this creation.

>Reality doesn't show the hallmarks of a creator.
Yes it necessarily does. Reality is where you receive your 'proofs' for the existence of God. That is something the Koran talks about.

I don't want to cherry pick too hard (as i'm sure many good leaders from Europe have been atheist), but the the big three, Mao, Stalin, and Hitler, along with dozens of lesser dictators, were atheists and some of the worst leaders of the 20th century. Their only redeeming characteristics were, ironically, their ability to consolidate power and create a politically unified government-although this only occurred after massive use of force.

Then such a purpose would already be fulfilled by default on creation, leaving the creation no other purpose whatsoever.

Alright then. Thank you for that. It's clear I'm talking to someone experiencing a complete disconnect from reality. Well I wont waste my time then. I was hoping to enjoy some actual dialectic, not getting slapped with a Bible (or a Koran, in the case of the latter guy).

The point is that it has a purpose.

May God open your eyes.

Go in peace.

That's people (plural) :)
Maybe there's a reason people believe in God other than the existence of religious institutions. God is all around.

>Go in peace.

Please start posting on /x/ rather than wasting the time of people that want an academic and philosophical discussion of this subject.

>The point is that it has a purpose.
You didn't give any reason as to why

What would you like to discuss user?

Because it's what the Creator chose.

>What would you like to discuss user?

How you should go to /x/ because your position relies on paranormal proofs rather than academic and philosophical ones.

user the Greeks themselves converted to Christianity in part due to its philosophical appeal and there are certainly ways to harmonize Christian ethics with Stoic and Platonic precepts.

>Because it's what the Creator chose
Proofs

I am not the OP, and there are exactly two possibilities: you are the OP, or you are not. If you are the OP, then you have special authority to speak about what you had hoped to obtain from this thread. If not (more likely), then you have no special place, and so have no authority.

I am coming to a larger point about you, about this thread, as an athest who can apply a little reason. You immediately reject a sentimentality as silly in favor of some technical discussion, and in so doing you seem to dismiss whatever seriousness. You insist on a technical and academic discussion of what ultimately amounts to god, because that's your comfort zone. Hypocritically, you condemn someone for using cutesy mystical language that you don't like, because you wish instead to discuss in a clinical way the same fundamentally unscientific concept.

No, they converted to Christianity because it was a fashionable near-eastern cult that happened to appeal to the lowest common denominator of their society. Its philosophical base came considerably later than it becoming a cultural force in Greece.

No, I condemn someone for using a "not even wrong" premise that you can't actually engage with. You can either accept their premise or you can reject it, because it's completely detached from both reason and reality. This is a board for history and humanities, and while religion is an acceptable subject here (because blocking it would castrate the discussion of philosophy), that's still not an excuse make arguments that amount to "I dun feelt it really hard, so it's true!"

You should expect better of this board too.

But user John wrote:

>ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο

Do you know what that means?

I really don't give a shit. John was either crazy, lying, or an idiot.

That's right, God has showed them to you by this point most likely. Why did you ignore?

Then why do you keep replying?

Nice doubles btw.

If only God can show me proof why are you talking to me?
Get out of this board or stop wasting people's time talking about the supernatural.

Yes maybe God would show you some implications of how I'm feeling all the time, every day. Wouldn't that be a nice PROOF TYPING AT YOU RIGHT NOW

Because most humans are dumb animals that need fairy tales to keep their animal instincts in check.

Because you keep asking me questions. But seriously, what the fuck did he say there? Now my curiosity is piqued.

Also Christianity explicitly rejects philosophy and wisdom in Corinthians IIRC.

He said "the λόγος became flesh."

λόγος is a philosophical concept which you can learn more about here:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logos

and Christianity rightfully points out that philosophy alone cannot grant salvation but to say Christianity is against wisdom completely ignores the Holy Spirit, the Counselor.

How you feel doesn't really prove anything to me sorry, and this type of argument has no place in this board.

Using a word that was commonly used in philosophy and mysticism doesn't mean it had a sound philosophical base. It was popular because it exalted the lowest echelons of society and promised them paradise after life due in part to their poverty and suffering whereas the classical paganism largely had nothing to offer them.

>and Christianity rightfully points out that philosophy alone cannot grant salvation but to say Christianity is against wisdom completely ignores the Holy Spirit, the Counselor.

It tells you not to listen to any philosophy that might contradict it and to explicitly reject wisdom because it's not the word of God. It's explicitly anti-intellectual.

Christianity appealed to elite people from the beginning as well; Nicodemus was a Pharisee.

You wouldn't happen to know anything about the Pharisees would you?

I didn't say it didn't appeal to some of the elite. Part of its success was owed to the conversion of Constantine after all. But so did classic Greco-Roman paganism (though it was actually declining at the time) and near-eastern cults (of which Christianity was one of). What Christianity had going for it that these didn't was its broad appeal to the bottom of society.

>You wouldn't happen to know anything about the Pharisees would you?

Like. Fucking. Clockwork. Someone disagrees with the loony fundie and the loony fundie starts accusing him of being a Jew. Go get your ass pounded.

What it had going for it was the truth.

Which is why it's declining in the parts of the world the developed an expanded sense of philosophical and scientific rigor.

The meek shall inherit the earth.

Why isn't this guy being fucking banned?

He already admitted he has no argument besides personal experience.

...

Report his posts, hope for results.

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There is no argument whatsoever here.

It's a story about a guy who was dissatisfied with his beliefs, read the bible and thought it was cool, then decided to take a leap of faith and believe it.

The argument is that it works for me so I want to share it with you.

That story makes you seem like kind of a dumbass.

Guilty.

Oh i totally believe it works.
I'm sure it makes you feel better, and you're happier believing it.

Doesn't mean any of it is true.

No I know that it doesn't prove anything but it's still good to talk about.

This is just semantic nonsense.
"Purpose" is an abstract concept we apply to objects that we intend to use in a specific fashion (i.e. the purpose of a hammer is to hammer, the purpose of a gameboy is to play videogames). But if you give an uncontacted tribesman in the Amazon or an orangutan a gameboy they won't know what it's for, and may just give it the purpose of paperweight or stone. Things and people don't have "purpose" if they're not being used and only the user can give purpose. it's not some magic stat inherent in everyone that you can right-click and look at.

The creator's intent is not an abstraction; it is literally manifested in the design of the creation.

A gameboy has buttons that were designed to be pushed and this is unchanging even if you only use it as a paperweight.

Polytheistic faiths were too complicated. There's a whole system of gods that represent natural/universal forces. It's too scientific. Esoteric faiths are too complex as well and don't offer a complete answer, usually holding to something like "the answer is in the question" or something that requires too much thought input.

Monotheism is streamlined. The answer is always "God did it." He does everything. Why? He just does. There's no delving deeper. A simple religion for simple people, of which there are plenty in this world.

Nice doubles!

>Arguing theology is like arguing over a blank piece of paper.
you're dumb as fuck or ignorant. theology uses observable reality as its testing ground. and it's not limited to empiricism, the other half is based wholly on arguments from pure logic.

That it's used more efficiently as a paper weight or a videogame console doesn't ascribe some magical property into it. When you say "the gameboy buttons were designed by" you mean "the man who fashioned the gameboy made the buttons in such way because he wanted human fingers to touch it in so and so way" ergo still just the purpose a man intended for it and not a magical property by itself, even if we may deduce the frequent purpose of things by deducing "people who make tools try to make the most efficiently used tools for the job". In a materialistic world view lack of ""assigned"" purpose isn't a problem.

polytheism isn't rational. monotheism is the modern philosophy because it is more rational and not coincidentally has prevailed in the age of scientific development.

All I'm saying is that the creator imprints his purpose on his creation through its design and that by studying this design we can learn about its purpose.

That's all for me tonight anons I love you all

Real talk, religion survives because it's forced on the children via their parents and via society at large. Even people who "convert" in adulthood are almost always converting to the religion they knew as a child, even though they never committed to it before, and it's often a result of some traumatic event or stressor. Where you see widespread secular values, where you see less authoritarian parents, you see a lot less religion.

Being an academic doesn't magically remove the overwhelming culture pressure instilled on you as a child. It paints your entire worldview and escaping it is very difficult. It's much easier to try to compromise your deeply held values rather than throwing them out altogether. Humans are not purely rational, and this applies to all things, not just religion.

If you think it's irrational, especially compared to monotheism, you don't get it. It's the human art of storytelling used to describe what is and how it came to be. The gods are representative of physical forces. Thor, gravity (protection). Tyr, light. Odin, wisdom. Etc. The same can be found in other pagan myths. Chronos, time. Eos, light. Gaia, matter. These are the 3 primordial titans that we're birthed from Chaos, representative of void and disorder. Think about that. Greek and Germanic pagan origin stories actually describe the big bang. The original god, or force presented to the universe, is light. "Let there be light" was just a ripoff of that.

Polytheism stories are meant to describe the interactions that forces have with one another in the universe. Many of these stories are bastardized fanfiction of people who didn't get the point, and that's probably why you don't because you've only read these parts. Who the hell is Homer to say what the gods are and what they do? Only the thrice born can dictate that.

well there's a reason God killed the gods and I think from a psychological perspective it's a more powerful idea. Might be more accurate as well. Realistically monotheistic God may be true and polytheism false.

The closest you'll get to that outside of pure faith is evolutionary psychology, or just anthropology in general. And evolutionary psychology isn't too far from faith anyways