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Comparing and Testing the Foundations of Religion |
We now know that all religions are relative to their foundations. Lets take a look at this and see what this means to us in our quest for reality the way it really is. I am again going to pick on the Christians because I'm more familiar with them. I know Judaism too, but they don't take their holy books as seriously as Christians do. At least not the Jews I'm familiar with, and the ones who do take it really serious, I don't care to meet them.
How do we know if we are right or if they are right? There is a lot of text out on the Internet by Christian authors claiming that God and the Bible are the real absolute truth and that the rest of us are engaging in Relativism, that we are being irresponsible with reality and that we are therefore immoral because we shun their truth and take the position that reality is whatever we want it to be. Our position is that God and the Bible are fiction and their reality is relative to their fictional beliefs and therefore they are just flat out wrong. So - who is right, us - or them?
Christianity is supposedly based on the Bible. The Bible defines God and everything we know about God comes from the Bible. The Bible is the sole source of information about God and the Bible claims to be the word of God. There are no other books that God wrote. So the Bible and God are supported only by a circular reference. That in itself is highly suspect.
Through the Bible God demands blind faith from his followers. If you believe, all sins are forgiven, except for the one unforgivable sin which is to doubt. In order to believe you have to suspend all logic and reason because if you doubt you will lose eternal life in paradise and be thrown into eternal punishment. God remains hidden perhaps as a test of faith because if you have proof then you won't have faith. It's only through the suspension of logic and reason that you are saved.
The Bible has a LOT of things in it that are inconsistent with reality. But these are easily explained away. Whatever the Bible says, it could mean anything else. For example, a day to God could be 1000 years. Therefore, the Bible can be adjusted to say whatever you wish. This is why there are tens of thousands of Christian denominations.
And if changing the meaning of words doesn't get it, then there's the omnipotence factor. God is all powerful, can perform any miracle, is far smarter than you and he is beyond your comprehension, and Satan is controlling you making you have doubt. How do you argue with that?
Unlike most religions, the Church of Reality is unburdened with the challenge of having to defend ancient holy texts. Our assumptions are far more modest and reasonable.
In contrast, the Church of Reality does not rely on ancient fiction. We have no Bible to defend. Our base assumptions are far more modest and logical. We assume that we exist. We choose to explore reality. We choose positive evolution over extinction. We have to work as a community to best explore reality. We embrace doubt and self scrutiny. We commit to changing our minds if we discover that we are wrong. This is a far cleaner place to come from as a starting point.
In fact, I would argue that it is nearly impossible for the Church of Reality to be wrong because even if the Christians are 100% right and the Bible actually is the word of God then the Church of Reality will eventually figure that out and we will all become Christians. Unless of course God hates Realists because of the doubt thing and that God will allow Satan to trick us into never finding our way to salvation. In that situation, all I can say is that we were tricked by God and we did the best we could under the circumstances.
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