Stating that there’s no evidence for god is not any kind of belief. Now stating that there’s one even though the lack of evidence, that requires belief
Christians don’t state there’s no evidence for God, no idea where you pulled that one from. You’d have to believe that all of that evidence is invalid, and believing that religion in turn should be destroyed because you so whole-heartedly disagree with the evidence does require belief.
Christian evidence for God amounts to “because someone said so” + a vague sense that some force is working in their life. That’s just animism with extra steps.
The “story” aged thousands of years are several historical documents that popped up in the first century, all talking about a man who was born of a virgin, performed miracles, was crucified, died, was buried, then rose again and ascended into heaven over a month later. The earliest was written after at most 30 years of it happening and the latest regarded by all Christians was written at latest 70 years from it happening. Several of those were written by people who knew the guy, the rest were written by people who knew people who knew the guy. They don’t contradict and have marks of being an honest account. And then there are accounts which are not even from people who believe the guy. So this “story” which is about God coming down to earth in flesh, and rising from the dead was large enough to cause several of these documents to appear and then only a few hundred of years later have more archaeological evidence appear showing signs of an early church. It was big enough for us to start counting years from roughly when this Guy was born.
Now what about other people? Alexander the Great? Earliest source written 200 years later. Caesar? Two sources from when he was alive, one written by himself, other written by cicero, more sources will come hundreds of years later. Pompeii? Was likely witnessed by a quarter million people, saw many elite die in the Roman empire, has one source written by Pliny 30 years after the fact. We have archaeological evidence for these people and events, of course, like coinage and such. But what archaeological trace would Jesus leave personally? He lived a life in the same land, didn’t own an army, wasn’t a king, possibly didn’t even have a house. So the writings we have are obviously the best evidence for Him.
The “evidence” is a story in writings aged thousands of years… it is not something we can observe or have physical or visual proof of, all we have is words that go against all scientific evidence, so it’s not “evidence”. You have to actually believe in magic to believe in that kind of stuff, it holds as much salt as any other pseudoscientific garbage.
It’s laughable to say that you must respect the beliefs of people into astrology or flat earth or electric universe or anything of the sorts, and it’s just as laughable to say you have to respect the beliefs of people who believe in supranatural/divine beings. Because false beliefs actually cause harm, and religion especially has caused far more harm than any other pseudoscience (and the amount of good it may have done is extraordinarily outweighed), it is currently causing a lot of harm, and it will likely continue to cause great harm in the future.
I personally value the lives of hundreds of millions to billions of people more than appeasing some long outdated beliefs (and especially the people who exploit those beliefs for personal gain), but that’s just me. I’m agnostic, I don’t choose a belief, there might be some divine being or afterlife but I see that it’s completely insane to propogate any of said beliefs, it causes suffering and has set us back potentially hundreds of years progress-wise.
Honestly all of humanity would probably have much less suffering if it weren’t for organized religion and its consequences, including but not limited to either directly causing or being the biggest contributor to the far-right and fascism & corporatism, and a large amount of general imperialism/authoritarianism (divine right anybody?). Guys banging other guys was the norm in most of the world until Abrahamic religions came along and brainwashed the entirety of the west lol, then it became a heinous crime and caused a over a thousand years of suffering and oppression for gays, people of “heretic” religious beliefs, anyone that opposed the authorities of an organized religion, those who faced the wrath of most imperialism/conquest – which was generally propogated by religion (and would have been a lot less strong without religion scaring people with eternal damnation) in Europe and the Americas and even in Asia, and often in Africa, etc. etc. And now modern religion is once again making society try to regress.
On paper religion alone isn’t bad, but people can’t handle religion, up to this point humans just try to find things to hate each other for and religion is BY FAR the most successful & easy tool to use for that, nothing else comes even close, sure if religion was gone other things may go up in usage as reasons to arbitrarily hate others, but it won’t have even near the power of religion, nothing’s more effective than threatening people with fiery hell for them or their loved ones, or offering them eternal glory in the afterlife, or whatever, because that’s forever and Earth life is temporary!
The “story” aged thousands of years are several historical documents that popped up in the first century, all talking about a man who was born of a virgin, performed miracles, was crucified, died, was buried, then rose again and ascended into heaven over a month later. The earliest was written after at most 30 years of it happening and the latest regarded by all Christians was written at latest 70 years from it happening. Several of those were written by people who knew the guy, the rest were written by people who knew people who knew the guy. They don’t contradict and have marks of being an honest account. And then there are accounts which are not even from people who believe the guy. So this “story” which is about God coming down to earth in flesh, and rising from the dead was large enough to cause several of these documents to appear and then only a few hundred of years later have more archaeological evidence appear showing signs of an early church. It was big enough for us to start counting years from roughly when this Guy was born.
Now what about other people? Alexander the Great? Earliest source written 200 years later. Caesar? Two sources from when he was alive, one written by himself, other written by cicero, more sources will come hundreds of years later. Pompeii? Was likely witnessed by a quarter million people, saw many elite die in the Roman empire, has one source written by Pliny 30 years after the fact. We have archaeological evidence for these people and events, of course, like coinage and such. But what archaeological trace would Jesus leave personally? He lived a life in the same land, didn’t own an army, wasn’t a king, possibly didn’t even have a house. So the writings we have are obviously the best evidence for Him.
You refer to pseudoscience. Is this stuff like miracles and Jesus rising from the dead? We don’t believe that science can allow someone to rise themselves from the dead, rise others, turn water to wine, etc. Which is why it was kind of a big deal when Jesus did it.
Christianity has not set us back. In fact, quite the opposite. The Catholic church spurred on most early scientific research. Also worth noting that Athiests held back the idea of the big bang happening because the scientific consensus at the time was that the universe always existed and that the idea of a beginning was a Christian belief.
You say religion is the biggest factor relating to the far right fascism and corporatism. But that doesn’t make sense. Basically all capitalism goes against what Jesus said and is grounded in a belief in no god and only saying things to be popular, using cheapest labour, exploitation, etc. I fail to see how it has anything to do with religion except lack thereof. In fact, Cadbury’s was run by Christians and was known for basically being the start of the “fair-trade” idea with treating employees well. (Unfortunately it’s just another product of capitalism nowadays as it has abandoned it’s roots.)
I fail to see how Capitalism is any religion but the lack of one, or it’s own.
As for fascism, what?
Let’s list off the biggest propagators of Fascism:
Hitler - Claimed to be a Christian, but very much wasn’t. Was only doing it to try and appease. May have claimed islam was a better religion at one point. Imprisoned clergy for speaking out.
Mussolini - Was a big athiest, brutalised Priests and Catholics who opposed him.
Franco: - Roman Catholic, I’d give you that one. But I doubt it had anything to do with the faith and not power
Other states that caused mass murders?
Soviet Russia - Athiest. Maoist China - Athiest.
If anything, it’s quite the opposite.
Imperialism would have happened with or without religion. It’s still happening nowadays through capitalism.
So, back to the evidence based argument - How come the belief in these things which are actual ly perfectly reasonable to many should be destroyed. What makes your opinion that all of this didn’t happen outweigh that it did. How does your belief in whatever dismisses the evidence away outweigh those who don’t?
I could literally make the same argument for Athiesm causing harm. Does that mean that I should respond to you by saying “we should destroy Athiesm?”. Or should we realise that both of our religious-based beliefs should be tolerated.
Of course it is, and it’s an irrational belief if you’re unable to define God.
I’m a theist but i’m probably an atheist with your definition of the Creator/Light/Highness/‘absolute Existence’/…, which is probably some long-bearded man with superpowers that you can touch like in Marvel movies, or something like that, yes ?
it’s an irrational belief if you’re unable to define God.
There is literally an infinite number of things that do not exist. We do not need to define them to not believe in their existence.
In fact it is up to theists to define what they mean by God but conveniently it means a different thing every time it comes up, depending on what is needed to make the lunatic arguments that religious people come up with for God’s existence (e.g. ontological argument, Pascal’s Wager,…) work and to explain why there is never any evidence of God’s intervention in anything and to explain why somehow people should still care and structure their entire lives around the belief. Classic Motte and Bailey arguments by changing the definition around depending on how strongly their belief is being attacked.
“Everything that was/is/‘will be’” is the evidence of God’s intervention. There’re many definitions because the “First Cause” implies many other things, like the Past/Present/Future/End, the Existence/Reality, but also the Maximum/Perfection/Guide/Light, and at least a dozen of other things that i haven’t perceived and/or am too lazy to add to the list, negative theology is also very interesting.
Is your only argument the old one of the existence of bad things ? There’re many answers but my usual one is that a perfect world gets boring after a while, even if that’s the goal, there’s no meaningful purpose afterwards if you think about it.
Another old answer is that suffering comes from desire(, hence, i.m.h.o., i prefer to suffer than stop desiring, and can’t complain since i ‘am responsible for my own suffering’/‘can always decide not to desire’).
Thanks for your answer though.
