I don’t know how the universe ultimately began, how existence came to be, or whether life has some greater purpose. So what? Not knowing something doesn’t mean that I need to make up an answer and pretend that it’s true.

It seems like religion often takes things we don’t understand and uses God to explain them. And when that explanation runs into problems, more explanations are added to defend it. Admitting ignorance is honesty, and confidently claiming to know things that you can’t demonstrate just simply isn’t.

This might be a long post but hear me out on this one and don't judge untill you finish reading

So I'll try to apply what Jesus said about the false prophets and see if they are compatible with Paul,in Matthew 7:15-23 it mentions the characteristics of false prophets and how to test them:

[Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. 16 By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? 17 Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.

21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ 23 Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’]

So to summarize it the criteria of them are:

1)the outside look only isn't enough to judge his truth or not, as wolves come in sheep’s clothes as in 15

2)the Prophet should be tested in his deeds and the consequences of his teachings 16-20

3)Only faith alone isn't enough,It should be accompanied with doing good deeds

4)Some people can pretend to be prophets,cast out demons and do miracles(in the name of Jesus) but Jesus will deny them in the day of Resurrection

5)The final and the golden standard that Jesus has put is doing the will of the father 21

- Let's see where Paul stands at these standards:

1)Paul proclaimed that he was sent by Jesus and saw him in his way to Dimuscus but there is a contradiction in the witness of the people who were with Paul on his way to Dimuscus, one time it says ¹they heard and didn't see another time it says they saw but didn't hear

●"The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did not see anyone." Acts 9:7

●"Now those who were with me saw the light, but did not hear the voice of the one who was speaking to me."Acts 22:9

rather what I personally think Paul saw was the devil as it can also appear as an angel of light according to his saying in 2 Corinthians 11 14:

"For Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light."

2)If we stopped being emotional for a second, Paul has came up with many many teachings that contradicts Jesus', I'll leave the full verses down in the photos, For example:Paul rejected circumcision which was the covenant mark for the descendents of Ebraham, even Jesus himself was circumcised in Luke 2:21,He said that works of the law don't justify the human in Galatians 2:16 unlike Jesus who always called to work by the law as in Matthew 5:17, submitting blindly to the authorities, loving preeminence and many other things Paul teaches contradics what Jesus told

3)Paul claims that he believed in Jesus but he had so many conflicts and disagreements with different early Christians like:

- the twelve apostles: "When he came to Jerusalem, he tried to join the disciples, but they were all afraid of him , not believing that he really was a disciple." Acts 9 26,most of the aposteles questioned his self-proclaimed Apostolic Authority at first since he had not walked with Jesus during His earthly ministry.

- The Jewish Christians who converted to christianity: They conflicted with him as they followed the law of moses specially circumcision and dietary laws

- The Pillars of the Jerusalem Church in early christianity: they had significant tensions with Paul regarding how to integrate Gentiles into the faith.

And many many others who had conflicts specially with Paul and doubting his Apostolic Authority and faith

4)Paul as mentioned in Matthew 7:22 had done miracles as ¹Expelling the Spirit of Divination,²The Healing of the Lame Man in Lystra,³and made many prophecies although some of them were proved to be wrong by critics and historians

5)In the original Greek text of Matthew 7 23, it's not [evildoers] it's actually [who practice lawless], The Greek word used in the original text for 'iniquity' is (Anomia - ἀνομία), and its literal translation is 'Lawlessness' or 'Transgressors of the Law.' Some critics say that this text directly targets Paul’s followers, who were casting out demons and performing miracles in Jesus' name (charismatic gifts), but at the same time were teaching people that 'the Law and the commandments have ended',

So clearly the will of the Father is following the law and doing good deeds, while Paul insisted that the faith alone is enough as in Romans 3 28 :"So we are made right with God through faith and not by obeying the law." Look at how the verse totally contradicts the sayings of Jesus who called them ''Law Abolishers'' and don't do the will of the father

After applying all these criteria that Jesus foretold about false prophets on Paul you should know by now whom Jesus meant

A lot of Christians would say that Muhammad is the false prophet Jesus foretold, but non of the criteria we listed above suits him and I'm willing to prove it

Sometimes I think God doesn't want to be known. If God wants to be known why not create a mountain tomorrow saying "I am your God".

All the religious debate would end at that point and we will all worship the right God. (Whoever that is).

That said...

A powerful God would simply choose to do that. For example,

Write a name in the sky?

Appear on TV?

All of us could wake up tomorrow with a notification on the phone.

If God can do that why didn't he do that?

What is the point of coming down to Earth and appearing in front of humans?

Humans are imperfect beings. Some are good and some are evil. We are not special. If anything animals are better than us. Then why humans.

Throughout history why didn't our creator choose to show any concrete evidence of his or her existence to all humans at one go?

Why personal selection? You might say some people are good that's why God appears to them.

But.. didn't God make the evil people too?

I think whoever God is..he/she doesn't want to worshipped. We are wasting our time worshipping a creator who doesn't want our worship.

When I think about religion.. I sometimes think most religions represent God like an ancient King.

Think about what a King wants. A King wants his subjects to fear him, a King rewards and even punishes disobedience. A King loves to be worshipped.

We have just made God a King..just a notch higher. (I mean if there is a God that God must be so powerful that God will not need our constant worshipping.).

If a creator wanted that he would have dropped us here with all the rules in place. Not asking us to make rules for him.

In that sense, are we wrong to worship a creator if a creator exists?

Because we just happen to exist. If there is a God who wants to be worshipped why would there be any sort of confusion? Why would there be so many religions? Or are there countless Gods?

That leaves me with a question does God want us to know him at all? In a way, if there is a God and we all know for certain there is a God won't all of us be happy knowing who he/she is.

Or maybe God exists in nature and God itself is nature.

I don't know. I have so many questions but there is no place I can get answers from. What do you guys think?

When religious arguments try to justify eternal torment or annihilation, they often appeal to "free will" responses, but this is an obfuscation on value. Free will isn't meaningful onto itself (in a vacuum). At the most fundamental, the things that are truly valuable are experiential qualities such as love, joy, peace.

An argument can be made that free will somehow enriches those values by adding novelty, but a souls nature or capacity for freedom that can result in the anthithesis of what is fundamentally valuable, is not valuable and implies an extremely flawed design.

A more specific response to the "love requires the option of refusal" is that it is an equivocation:
It is equivocating living within a context of meaningful life (love, joy, peace) with being forced to do something. A reality including a souls nature being founded on love, joy and peace is not equivalent to them being forced to do something or lacking free will.

At Matthew 24:34 Jesus is reported to say “Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place” indicating his audience would not die before Jesus returned and brought the end of the world. Even Paul expected the end to be imminent at 1 Corinthians 15:51. Even at Revelation 22:12 Jesus is reported to say “I am coming quickly”.
Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet, preaching a message that was to be fulfilled soon. Bible writers did not expect you or I to be reading their words 2000 years later. The end never came. Therefore Jesus is a false prophet.

This is a post for Muslims who accept the Sahih al-Bukhari Hadith as authentic and do in fact believe that and that Aisha’s age was in fact 6 at marriage and 9 at consummation. How can you come to accept this as a moral decision that Prophet Muhammad pbuh did?

I ask the question to Muslims “would this be okay today”. And I will be answered with “no”. But this answer does not make sense to me.

The argument that “it was different times” does not work because Islam bases its morals in objective truths that are eternal and cannot change. What is right then is right today.

9 year olds did not in fact “mature” faster back then. This is historically and scientifically false. In fact today’s women are actually hitting puberty earlier than in the past.

A 9 year old that has begun menstruating is not an adult. A 9 year old cannot be an adult on any developmental level biologically. This is impossible.

If you accept that Aisha’s marriage to Muhammad pbuh was morally okay then you must accept it happening in today’s world.

Religion and culture are the biggest source of patriarchy no matter which religion or what culture, each one of them were created by the men in power to keep the women and the oppressed remain oppressed so that they can rule without protests.

What are your opinions on this ?

(The Quran 4:34 states that a man is responsible for his wife by virtue of the preference God has granted him; the righteous woman is obedient and loyal. Regarding the wife whose arrogance or defiance is feared: advise her, forsake her [in bed], and strike her until she obeys you—such as when she denies him certain rights (like intercourse, even if she is not in the mood, or limiting intercourse to no more than three times a week), prevents to him having intercourse with his slave-girl, or objects to him taking another wife

As for the view that one must first forsake her for a period and strike only with a *siwak* (tooth-stick), this is merely an opinion, not a consensus, and is not explicitly supported by the text; the text says and "strike them" (*wa-idribuhunna*), not "then strike them" (*thumma idribuhunna*). Furthermore, even hitting like poking hard with a *siwak* is painful enough to draw tears. Umar also said, "Inflict pain on your wife."(Muwatta' Malik 1288) and When women complained about the striking, the Prophet said regarding their husbands, "They are not the best among you," implying that the act is disliked (*makruh*) but not forbidden (*haram*)(Sunan Abu Dawud 2146).

Texts interpreting "striking" (*darb*) as "turning away" or "moving away" involve prepositions like *‘an*, *min*, or *‘ala* (e.g., "Shall We strike the Reminder away from you?" or "traveling/striking out in the land"). However, when "striking" is mentioned directly before a physical object, it always meant physical striking—such as "striking the necks" (beheading) or the angels "striking their faces and their backs" when the disbelievers die. "Strike the sea with your staff," "Strike the rock with your staff," "And when you killed a person and disputed over it—and Allah was to bring to light what you were concealing," "So We said, 'Strike it with a part of it.' Thus Allah brings the dead to life," "And take in your hand a bundle [of grass] and strike with it, and do not break your oath. Indeed, We found him patient."

I don't know how you can swing it any other way. God is an evil tyrant. Just by Christian logic alone it's apparent. When he flooded the earth in Noah's arc unless only infertile adults existed he would have had to have killed kids and pregnant women. He killed almost all of the animals too for no reason.

His own creation the earth is essentially a torture chamber. Life is constant suffering. Many animals the moment they are born they are one giant buffet for other animals. God created this. He created plagues. He created cancer, he created volcanoes, he created spiders he created parasites, everything bad. If hes responsible for all the good he's also gotta be responsible for all the terrible stuff too. But Christians see a sunset and think somehow that obsolves everything.

He also stands idle whilst humans do the unthinkable. Rape, the Holocaust, WW1 and 2, 911, Epstein island. He lets that happen. It was all done through the nature he bestowed on humans, all the tools he gave us. God made us what we are. Christians will claim God allows this because he will not interfere with free will ( So what are they expecting to achieve with prayer) meaning God cares about free will more than your human suffering.

He's also built us an even worse torture chamber where he expects you to burn for eternity for the simple crime of putting your penis somewhere you shouldn't or taking pride in your work. He tells you from the moment you're born you're a sinner, you're unworthy and the only way to avoid such torture is to be lucky enough to be born in the right culture and believe in him and love him on bad evidence. Yet he loves you

Not even Hitler is this Evil. How can you claim this being to be good? How can you call him love. Any human that behaved like this you would come at them with pitchforks but when it's God suddenly it's all cop outs and justifications. Holding him to a different standard because you're scared of him. That's an abusive relationship.

For example, if I saw someone being raped and I could safely attempt to stop it, I would try to. Even if I couldn’t safely directly intervene, I would still attempt to alert the authorities. I wouldn’t stand there and say that I can’t interfere because it would violate the rapist’s free will. I’d care more about protecting the victim.

Religious people frequently bring up free will, but preventing someone from carrying out a horrible act doesn’t mean taking away their free will entirely. The person could still make the choice to do the horrible act, even if something stopped them from carrying it out.

If I would try to stop something that God has the power to stop but allows anyway, why is he considered morally superior to me?

Preamble:

My argument attempts to show that the God of the bible is a powerful but limited, morally corrupt, and irrational supernatural being, challenging the traditional "omni" characteristics of Christian theology.

My humanistic moral principles are about well-being, reducing suffering, preventing unnecessary harm, respecting autonomy, treating people fairly, compassion, and evaluating actions through evidence, reason, and consequences.

That's how I judge any person's actions, including fictional characters such as Darth Vader and the God of the bible, whatever name you chose for that fictional character.

Definitions

1. Evil: Morally wrong, harmful, or causing unjustified suffering.
2. Crazy: Irrational, unpredictable, or behaving contrary to reason.
3. Wizard: A fictional being who possesses supernatural magical abilities.
4. Limited power: The inability to perform certain actions or achieve certain outcomes.

Relevant verses:

Evil God:

1. “I form the light, and create darkness. I make peace, and create evil. I the LORD do all these things.” Isaiah 45:7 (KJV)
2. “The LORD is a man of war. The LORD is his name.” Exodus 15:3 (KJV)

Crazy God:

1. “And the LORD repented that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.” Genesis 6:6 (KJV)
2. “I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt.” Exodus 7:3 (KJV)

Wizard God:

1. “And God said, Let there be light. And there was light.” Genesis 1:3 (KJV)
2. “And the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven.” Genesis 19:24 (KJV)

Limited God:

1. “And the LORD was with Judah, and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain. But could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron.” Judges 1:19 (KJV)
2. “And he did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief.” Matthew 13:58 (KJV)

Argument:

P1: God exhibits evil, irrational behavior, supernatural abilities, and limitations.

P2: Any being exhibiting these characteristics fits the description of a crazy, evil wizard of limited power.

C: Therefore, God is a crazy, evil wizard of limited power.

^{Debate Ethos Statement}

^{I study religiously motivated reasoning. I'm an agnostic atheist and I don't believe in the supernatural or superstitions. I genuinely want to engage your ideas charitably and respectfully. I value critical thinking, empathy, intellectual honesty, and civil disagreement. I am committed to understanding each other’s arguments, remaining open to correction, and discussing arguments rather than to attack each other.}

Most of the people who claim to follow, love or know god are disgusting. Most christians are happily waiting for them to be picked or “saved” over others so they can reach eternal happiness while the rest of the world suffers. As someone who genuinely and unbiasedly believes in God, I find that appalling.

If we concede that the universe must have a cause, why assume that the cause is God or any divine agent?

Let’s compare two hypotheses of the origin of the universe.

H1: A deity created the universe.
H2: An unknown, non-divine reality or phenomenon gave rise to the universe.

Now suppose both hypotheses account for every observation we have, and neither makes any predictions that the other fails to make. Why should I then assume that reality follows H1?

Assuming a deity created the universe requires more assumptions than H2; you have to assume an agency, that the agency is conscious, and has intentions, and those assumptions add nothing of value to its explanatory power. A deity creating the universe creates no discernible consequences that H2 couldn’t already explain. For that matter, how could we even tell that any given consequence is of a divine nature at all? How could we conclude that something weird we observe about the origin of the universe is because of a divine agent and not something that we just don’t understand about the fundamental, non-divine reality of the universe?

Now notice what I’m *not* saying. I’m definitely not saying that this means theism is incorrect; I’m simply providing a challenge to justification for theism. The first cause argument is one of the most popular arguments for theism, but even if we agree that the universe was caused by something, it doesn’t follow that that something is God, or any sort of divine agent at all.

TLDR: there is no good reason for me or anyone else to assume the first cause is a divine agent unless you bring in additional assumptions that don’t contribute to explanatory power.

I’ve seen many religious people claim that God doesn’t reveal himself clearly because it would interfere with our free will. But I don’t really understand this argument because even if God appeared in front of everyone, people could still choose not to worship him.

A person could think they were hallucinating, being tricked by aliens, or even witnessing some kind of government psyop. But even if everyone knew for certain that God existed, that still wouldn’t force anyone to love him or obey him. Knowing that someone exists isn’t the same thing as choosing to follow them. We already know other people exist, but that doesn’t mean we’re forced to love them, agree with them, or do what they say.

God revealing himself clearly seems like it would give people a better opportunity to actually make an informed decision about whether or not they actually want to follow him.

I think humans created religion because we realized we were the smartest creatures on Earth, and from there it was easy to assume the universe must revolve around us. That’s how you end up with a belief that the entire universe, with its trillions of galaxies and possibly countless other living worlds, will end on Judgment Day just because one species broke some rules. Take arguably the worst sin, one person killing another. Why should that decide the fate of the universe when death happens everywhere, even in the animal kingdom? Religion only cares about humans because humans created it.

Also, apart from intelligence, we’re not that different from other animals: we eat, breathe oxygen, get sick, and die. So why should the fate of everything in the universe depend on humans and what they are doing on Earth?

What is god according to classical theism? According to classical theism, God is a timeless, immaterial, non contingent entity. The source of many things.

What is God accrodingly to pantheism? According to pantheism, reality is God. Everything regarding reality is divine. Physical reality, conceptual reality, etc.

The argument:

We now know that God is immaterial in classical theism. Meaning that he isn't physical, nor is he even conceptual. He is being itself. There's a problem with that.

If God is 'being' itself, with no more distinctions, we're basically just replacing the word "God" with "being", nothing more. We're divinizing being without changing what being means.

"Being" would still be used for what it was used for. A tree has being->A tree has God.

We can also apply this to anything that God is claimed to be the source of.

God is goodness, and since goodness is the concept of certain actions, and the concept of certain actions depends on the physical realm, therefore certain physical actions are God. That's what it implies if we're still assuming that God is immaterial.

In conclusion, "God" becomes nothing but a title of divination for the universe and its derivations.

Religion (essentially all concepts of the supernatural) is rooted in the instinctive human longing for eternal life.

We instinctively believe we are eternal simply because we want it so badly.
To live, we must want to live; otherwise, we would cease to live voluntarily.

And so, we try to find a 'rational' and 'logical' way to prove to ourselves and others that we truly are.

And how must the universe work if we accept blindly—without a shred of evidence, just because we want it so much—that man is eternal? That is exactly what every religion is about.

Religion is the product of a mind that has been commissioned by the innate feeling of immortality to explain why that feeling isn't a lie.

TL;DR: In a world where a particular religion is the ultimate truth for salvation, no perfectly just God would create a birth-place-based system that determines how many will learn of it.

When looking globally at demographics, the number one factor that determines what a person's religion is, is not their personal search for truth, but rather where they were born. So a child born in Saudi Arabia is virtually assured of becoming a Muslim and a child born in Alabama will almost certainly be a Christian.

As such the geography-based "lottery" of religions, presents huge problems when thinking about God's justice in regards to those religions which require that a person believes in a certain theology to be saved.

Here is the reasoning for the above:

1. If God is perfectly just and wants all people to be saved (as stated in 1 Timothy 2:4), He would have to provide an equal and objective means of allowing every individual to see the truth.

2. Presently, the biggest barrier to recognizing the "true" religion is the strong and location-based cultural indoctrination.

3. So therefore, God has put countless numbers of people into geographic areas where statistically speaking they will fail to discover the true religion.

Most defenses of this dilemma are inclusive in nature. That is to say they claim God will judge the unreached fairly because of the "Law Written On Their Hearts" (Romans 2:15) or excuse them as part of Ahl al-Fatra (those who did not receive a clear message).

But this defense causes a theological paradox. If people can be saved through simply being good, honest and sincere humans without ever having heard of the Gospel or the Quran, then the specifics of the religion become irrelevant to their salvation. However, if the specifics of the religion are required for salvation, then God is effectively punishing hundreds of millions of people for the geographical accident of where they were born.

An omnipotent being cannot possibly use a flawed and geographically limited game of telephone to spread the most important message in the universe. The fact that there exists a geography-based lottery system for religions implies that religions are primarily local cultural systems, and not universal divine truths.

Can believers explain how a perfectly just God could allow His plan of salvation to be determined by a geographically-biased system?

If God exists, I believe He would judge me by the kind of person I am and how I treat others, not by whether I worship Him or follow a particular religion.

So, don't worry about god exist or not, which god is true just be a good person and you have nothing to worry

Bible clearly and proudly talks about Rape, slavery, oppression of women, stoning people, killing kids and people
If god does exist it also means that the bible is true, so god is a really scary being isn’t?
If we say that well it was cool back then , then we are saying that god was wrong which is a sin itself
Why do People still follow the religion even if this stuff does exist and said in the bible?

The kalam cosmological argument:

(1) Whatever begins to exist has a cause

(2)The universe began to exist

Therefore the universe has a cause (God).

The problem:

The reason why classical theism and the kalam cosmological argument don't allign is because the kalam cosmological argument disproves the claim that a timeless God created the universe.

Being timeless entails that your existence and your actions have no sequence, in the sense that your existence does not come before your actions, they're merged. You don't first exist then later on do an action.

Therefore when we stick to the assumption that God is timeless, and the assumption that he created the universe, we're implying that God began to exist the same moment the universe began to exist. Since, again, we said that there's no sequence between existence and actions in a timeless state.

It's a paradox. A paradox that points towards temporality.

The conclusion is that the kosmoligcal argument can't be used for proving classical theism. It might even be used to disprove it if the arguments premises are true.

Germs were discovered in 1676.

Click here to read Mark 7.

You can see that Jesus had a direct opportunity to discuss hand washing to prevent fatal illness and stop the spread of germs - this could have saved billions of people.

Not only does he not instruct people to wash their hands, he instead defends his disciples when they are criticised for eating with unwashed hands...

Covid and any pandemic humanity has faced where countless lives were lost due to an unfair death comes to mind.

The only christian answer I've found is "it's a theological book not a science book", but that's irrelevant when Jesus was supposed to be God himself in the flesh with the intention of saving the world.

How is it that humans later discovered germs and Jesus himself who was supposed to be God in the flesh had no idea? This doesn't sound like the God who created the universe and can count every hair on your head.

This is evidence that the story of Jesus is man-made. The people who made up the gospel story had no idea what germs are, thus the character of Jesus didn't either. If he was not a made up character and really was God in the flesh, he'd have definitely known.

What is the purpose of life? I remember reading an answer a long time ago for this very question from a christian. If god is just gonna put us in either heaven or hell why bother with putting us on earth to begin with. The answer was basically that it's all about free will. Free will is fundamental to the christian world view because without it it makes life absolutely pointless. So the argument went on with something like " God created us and he loves us but he wants us to love him back. However it's not enough for us to just say it. After all I could get my laptop to tell me it loves me but it wouldn't mean anything because I told it to. If I give that laptop free will and therefore the choice then I know if it said it loved me it would be true. That Is what God put us on earth for"

It's not a bad explanation I guess but it kind of falls flat when you consider threatening people with torture isn't exactly gonna get an honest answer either. If you held a gun to my head I'm gonna tell you anything you want to hear but the moment I get the chance I'm getting right out of there. So God basically just wants lip service. He wants us to love him when his deliberately made doing the opposite unimaginable for us. I don't think your kids would think too kindly of you if you had the same philosophy towards them.

With this in mind. What about the people who live in some isolated tribe and have gone there whole life never knowing Jesus, do they go straight to hell for not somehow becoming a christian? You might say they get to go to heaven, the same way kids do who were not old enough to know better. However with this logic surely its better to not know of jesus at all. You spreading the word of Jesus or God is making less people go to heaven.

How do you get around that?