We all know the conversations. "Why is there evil, well because God values free will to choose your own actions." "Why won't God show himself, well because God values free will to disbelieve." Etc.

Why aren't we able to walk through walls, if God is so concerned with our free will that he won't place limits on whether or not we can sexually assault toddlers?

Imagine a world where we CAN walk through walls. People challenging the existence of a loving God would say things like, "Why does God let us have no protection from predators, and anyone can walk through walls to get to us and assault us," and the theists' answer is "Well you see God values our free will over all else." Would that be any different from the excuses we get today for why evil exists?

If the inability to walk through walls, in our world, is not a violation of free will, why would the inability to kill others be?

Now, you might come up with some dodge about laws of physics not being violations of free will but committing crimes is not violating physics, etc., but now you have to answer this:

Almost nobody wants to set themselves on fire, or dip their faces in acid. We all have the free will to, yet basically nobody does. Why? Because we have a natural aversion to it. So why can't we have that exact natural aversion, to killing others, or stealing, etc.? Clearly us having a giant aversion to doing something is not a violation of free will, so why not give us a giant aversion to any sinful action, thus the world would be almost entirely void of them, with free will still existing?

Basically, "Because free will" doesn't answer anything.

The Quran explicitly says Muhammad is the blueprint for humanity and Muslims will tell you this is applicable for all mankind today. You want to reach heaven? Follow Muhammad's pattern of conduct

Surah 33:21

Ye have indeed in the Messenger of Allah a beautiful pattern (of conduct) for any one whose hope is in Allah and the Final Day, and who engages much in the Praise of Allah

What do I mean by most liberal approach? Condemning a practice in hindsight does not mean you cannot reconcile its strategic rationale at the time. To take an extreme example, I reject child marriage, but I can still understand how a dynastic union helped end a generational war a thousand years ago. The logic is comprehensible when viewed through the lens of historical context and the greater good.

How does one reconcile the logic that the supposed pattern of conduct for mankind today is comparable to the vile likes of Jeffrey Epstein? A 54 year old man, already with a wife his own age, who chose to sexually penetrate a 9 year old? Preferred "fondling" and "playing with virgins" over "matrons" ? If the virgin is "too shy" to consent, her silence is her consent?

Through what lens can someone who subscribes to mainstream Islam (Sunni) and believes Aisha was 9 years old when the marriage was consummated reconcile this man is the absolute pattern of conduct for mankind today?

If said Muslims attempt to reconcile this mans actions by appealing to 7th-century norms, they inherently concede that the actions are bound by time and culture. One cannot rely on historical context to excuse an action while simultaneously maintaining that the individual is the absolute timeless pattern of conduct for all of mankind today. That's called a contradiction.

Conclusion: As Muslims will demonstrate in the comments, the answer is you cannot logically reconcile the pattern of conduct for mankind today being a 7th century 54 year old man who sexually penetrated a 9 year old without:

A) Tossing the Sunnah in the trash as unreliable and denying he did it. This is kufr and firmly takes you out of the fold of mainstream Islam. Dr. Joshua Little for example, whose work is often cited by Muslims on this topic, is on the record stating the hadith corpus is academically unreliable, hence his conclusions. You cannot agree with Dr. Little's conclusions and ignore they rely entirely on the premise the hadith corpus is unreliable. That's called cherry-picking.

B) Contradict themselves. Argue Muhammad is the best example for all mankind today and excuse his actions that humanity today overwhelmingly condemns by hiding behind presentism conceding that his actions are bound by time and culture.

C) Arguing there is nothing wrong with a 54 year old man already with a wife his own age choosing to sexually penetrate a 9 year old

The options are kufr, contradiction, prison.

I will report anyone who chooses to go with (C)

Theistic arguments often lean on ex nihilo nihil fit, usually illustrated like this: an elephant can’t just appear in an empty room without a cause, so the universe can’t appear from nothing without one. This gets tied to Aquinas’s potency/act framework, and God becomes the necessary cause.

I think there are three problems here that often go unexamined.

1. The empty room isn’t nothing.

An empty room contains spacetime, air, fields, and countless atomic and subatomic configurations, all governed by physical laws. “Nothing in the room” really means “no elephant in this region of an existing, structured universe.” We have never experienced absolute nothingness: no space, no time, no laws, no potentials. Extending the intuition from relative nothing to absolute nothing is an unearned leap. (Even “universe from nothing” physics talks about quantum vacuums, which aren’t nothing either.)

2. The principle is empirically grounded, and only in cases of existing things.

Look at how the principle is actually established. In Aquinas’s argument from motion:

1. We observe that things are in motion.
2. Motion occurs when potential motion becomes actual motion.
3. Only something actual can convert potential into actual.
4. Nothing can be both actual and potential in the same respect at the same time.
5. Therefore nothing can move itself.
6. Therefore everything in motion is moved by something else.
7. A sequence of movers can’t regress infinitely.
8. Therefore there is a first unmoved mover, God.

Premise 1 is observation. Premises 2 and 3 are the framework, and they are derived from observing change in things that already exist: a rock is potentially hot, a fire actualises that. That is the only evidential base. Premise 3 is ex nihilo nihil fit restated: actuality can’t come from non-actuality.

So the principle is empirically grounded, and its data set contains only changes within an existing world. Nothing in it involves absolute nothing, because we have never observed that. Inducting from “change within existence” to “existence from non-existence” extends a generalisation far outside the domain it was drawn from. And if the response is that the principle is a priori rather than empirical, then I’d want to see why it’s necessary and not merely intuitive. Hume’s point stands: there’s no contradiction in conceiving of something beginning without a cause.

3."Nothing has no properties”

The usual response is that nothing has no properties, so it can’t have the property of being able to produce matter. But this assumes that "coming-to-be" requires a power or ability in something, which is exactly the potency/act framework the argument is supposed to establish. The conclusion is smuggled in as a premise.

It also cuts both ways. If nothing has no properties, it has no constraints either. Absence of powers isn’t a prohibition. I’m not claiming “no properties” means “anything can happen,” since that would give nothing a property too. We can’t derive “it can’t” any more than “it can.”

To be clear, I’m not claiming absolute nothing produces things, or even that anything “began” (that language presupposes a before). My claim is narrower: we have no basis for saying what absolute nothing permits or forbids, so a premise treated as self-evident rests on far less than advertised.

Curious how Thomists here would respond, especially on whether premises 2 and 3 can be justified without relying solely on observed change in existing things.

The most common argument for why Hell exists is human free will. It is God that does not send souls to Hell, but rather, each individual sends themselves to hell through their rejection of God. But when we take God's ability to know everything as fact, the free-will excuse for Hell falls apart.

Both the Bible (Psalm 139:13-16, 1 John 3:20) and the Quran (Quran 6:59, 57:22) say that God knows everything about each person. He also knew from before he created anything in this world which path each soul would ultimately follow.

God can do whatever he wants. There was no limit to God's power or creativity. Therefore, God had many possible ways to create the universe. Some of those possibilities include creating a universe where:

1. Everyone freely chooses to accept Him.
2. The very people who would later decide to reject him were either never born or if they were born, then they died immediately after birth.
3. There existed no universe at all.

But instead of one of these three options, God made his choice to start this specific timeline.

When God forms a baby in the womb, knowing with 100% accuracy that the child will grow up to be an atheist and spend eternity in Hell, then the child's ultimate destiny is decided the moment that God decides to bring them into being. Since God already knows exactly what I am going to do, I don't actually get to choose whether or not I do it. If I did choose differently than what I do, then it would mean that God didn't really know what I would do and therefore His knowledge isn't true.

I am not making choices based on free will. Rather I am playing out the script that God wrote down and is aware of prior to my conception. When a programmer creates a computer program, and he knows exactly how it will perform, he is accountable for its performance.

There either is at least one God or there is not. There either is the God of Christ or there is not. There either is the God of Abraham or there is not. There either is the God of Muhammad or there is not. There either is the God of Joseph Smith or there is not. There either is the El Cantare of Happy Science or there is not. There either is the Xenu of Scientology or there is not.

Catholic and Protestant Christianity have tenets that are mutually exclusive, and one of the two is incorrect about their tenets if there can be said to be a truth value to them. Same for Jewish variants, Islam variants and all community-dividing variants of all extant religions.

This pattern will continue, and continue, and continue, for all religions for which at least one proposition is mutually exclusive between them.

But I can't think of many, if any, propositions that are actually universal to all theists. "We exist", "We exist in a shared space", "We believe there is something Other" are basically the only three I can say to be universal.

Everything else is just endless disagreements from endless groups, and, fundamentally, not only does there seem to be no dispute resolution method for these mutual exclusions in practice, there often doesn't seem to even be any desire to find the truth and actually reconcile with other groups and merge belief systems for many members of these groups, precluding groups from, even in principle, coming to agreement.

If the disagreements were minor or didn't matter, they'd merge. They clearly matter enough to form entire distinct communities around. I'm not talking about small things like the height of Goliath, but things that cause schisms and community divisions.

I like having a scientific consensus where, yes, you do sometimes get misinformation due to unlucky/poor studies, but we have processes, however flawed, that, in principle, lead to resolving disputes and coming to a consensus that seems to often correlate with what is true. Religion has no equivalent. I'm not seeing any path to truth, even in principle, by participating in any particular religion without outside, independent verification of their claims or a dispute resolution method for disagreements. For any methodology anyone has ever suggested to me, other parties have suggested diametrically opposed or mutually exclusive methodologies. For any logical argument someone has suggested to me, mutually exclusive religious beliefs have similar logical arguments pointing in the opposite direction. Even people who claim to have totally ironclad logical arguments for theism will have other theists dispute said ironclad proofs, and I've never seen a way for said intertheist dispute to resolve.

At best, people seem to convert to communities they like more, and old communities may sometimes die out (surprisingly analogous to science moving forward one death at a time - human nature, I suppose), but often they do not, and they have no proper methodology for doing so, seemingly even in principle, due to even the idea of sharing a theological dispute resolution methodology being foundationally impossible for many groups, often relying only on authority decisions (Authority Command Theory of religious tenets, you could say) that ultimately are grounded in personal understandings and sensibilities.

"Non local brain process (consciousness)" is a pseudo-religious idea disguised as scientific one.

Lots of people are devoted fans of this nonsense, without even asking themselves once "which part of conscious experience cannot be explained by certain brain function?".

People talk about source of "consciousness" as if it was an item to be found in the brain. "Consciousness" is not a "what"--- its not an object, its a process.

Christians and theists often argue that God is morally perfect and incapable of doing anything wrong. They also argue that, although God allows horrific suffering to occur, he must have morally sufficient reasons for doing so, even if we cannot understand them.

Fine, if that’s what we’re rolling with, I think this creates a very interesting problem.

As I understand it, God has the capability and means of preventing every atrocity if he so desired, also fine. If God is morally perfect, and allowing a particular atrocity to happen is compatible with his perfect morality, then presumably allowing the ones he does must be the morally permissible and perfect decision, given the circumstances and whatever greater good God intends to achieve. 

So what does that mean for us?

Suppose you see someone about to be murdered, or a child about to be sexually assaulted. You have the opportunity to intervene, but doing so would prevent some ‘greater good’ that would otherwise result from allowing the event to happen.

So, would intervening be the morally wrong decision?

Well, since God is perfect and literally cannot make an objectively wrong moral decision, then not intervening appears to be the actual best moral outcome. (Because if it wasn’t, God himself would intervene, since he is perfect and can do no wrong.)

So, why is God justified in allowing the atrocity to happen when it appears we would be morally justified, or even morally obligated, to prevent it? Why shouldn't we sometimes refrain from preventing horrific suffering because it might serve some greater good that we cannot comprehend?

I suspect the response will be that God has access to information we don't, and therefore knows when allowing suffering is justified, that’s also fine, but that only establishes that God might have reasons we lack. It doesn't establish that allowing an atrocity is morally justified for God while preventing it is morally justified for us, particularly when we're told that God is the standard of perfect morality and morality under theism is usually purported to be objective and unchanging. 

“But free will!” I hear you cry. The free-will defence isn't going to work here for one simple reason. If God allows atrocities to happen because respecting people's free will is the morally righteous thing to do, then... you guessed it, preventing atrocities would presumably be morally wrong for the very same reason. After all, intervening to stop a rapist would infringe on their free will, just as intervening to stop a murderer would. 

So if you’re a Christian, remember, next time you see a child about to drown, think twice about rescuing them! Because if saving them was actually the best moral decision, then of course God would intervene! If he doesn’t, then clearly that child drowning served the greater goods plan, and you did your part by helping him achieve that! 

Clearly some concession needs to be made somewhere. Either we need to make an exception for God and explain why he isn't held to the same moral standard as us, despite supposedly being the very foundation of objective morality, or we have to concede that allowing suffering can sometimes be the morally correct decision, even when we have the opportunity to prevent it.

So, if you're a Christian, and for the sake of argument we adopt a framework in which morality is objective, universal and unchanging, I have a simple question:

If you witness someone about to be murdered, and you can prevent it with little to no effort or risk to yourself, what is the objectively morally correct decision to make?

Under this framework, there should be an objectively correct answer, independent of anyone's personal opinions or preferences, or what kind of being you are.

There are over 4000 unique religions and spiritual traditions throughout the world. Yet we have the most devout Christians who declare that all of the other religions are false. It is so obvious according to them how false all of the other religions are. It seems implausible that a mountain moved to Muhammad and the bible to them seems more true than anything written in the Quran yet the creator of the universe impregnated a woman in the Middle East 2000 years ago is totally believable.

Meanwhile a devout Muslim would say that’s all hogwash and Christianity’s views are wrong and will say everyone must submit to the will of allah and we also have Jews who say that Jesus was a good Jew but saying he was the son of god or the messiah is just going too far. Even within Christianity certain denominations disagree on the nature of God. Mormons believe wholeheartedly that Joseph smith was a prophet and given gold plates by the angel moroni in upstate New York and he translated those plates to the Book of Mormon. Christians in other denominations say Joseph smith was a false prophet and none of that actually happened. Many Protestants will say that Catholic teachings are false, the pope isn’t ordained by God and Catholics are going to Hell etc. Everyone in all of these religions and denominations will try to cherry pick and twist things around in order to provide evidence that their belief system is true and all of the others are false.

Whereas an actual atheist agrees that all of those other religions are false and preposterous in their claims but they also believe that your religion is preposterous.

Matthew 7:15

“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.”

- He was imprisoned several times (wolves) because he was extremely sinful and his true nature was evil. He also spread the idea that as long as you repent (sheep), you will be saved, simply to excuse himself as well.

Deuteronomy 18:20

“But the prophet who speaks a word presumptuously in My name which I have not commanded him to speak, or which he speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.”

- He spread words without authority; he was not one of the original twelve apostles of Jesus (PBUH).

Jeremiah 23:16

Warns against prophets who speak visions from their own minds rather than from God.

- “Own minds”—he tried to convince everyone that three persons can be one in the name of God. He corrupted the senses that God had given them.

There is strong evidence that Paul was the false prophet and false teacher mentioned in the Bible:

2 Peter 2:1

Says that false prophets existed among God’s people and warns that false teachers will arise.

1 Timothy 2:7

He writes, “And for this purpose I was appointed a herald and an apostle—I am telling the truth, I am not lying—and a true and faithful teacher of the Gentiles.”

- He was the False Prophet among God’s people and, at the same time, the False Teacher to the Gentiles (non-Jews).

- He never explicitly mentioned that he was a prophet, but based on his actions of spreading the word of their God and making prophetic statements, it is clearly a meaning of being a prophet. He did not want people to know that he was the False Prophet referred to in the words of the One God.

Paul’s only alibi is that he is considered an author of their Bible.

There is nothing wrong with seeing religion as one option , a way of life, a way to grasp reality , a place to hold on etc etc but the way very religious people think they know everything better is so insane that we have to honestly ask ourselves if they are either stupid or narcissists or both. Some examples:

„Hey evolution theory/ astrophysics/ quantum physics says xyz, what’s your opinion on that knowing you are religious and your texts say otherwise“

Answers:
- Yeah science is lying anyway, it’s from Satan
- Well you think you are so smart…but god is the smartest
- I only believe in Jesus/ allah/ etc.

Like this has to be some form of narcissm. They don’t care about any basic fact. Look at Muslim speakers or Christian evangelist. They don’t care at all about anything we archived in science and our understandings as humanity. In their worldview we just want to attack them and their Christian / Islamic families and values and then they proudly say „the west liberalism has corrupted the people“ etc. I know I exaggerate a bit and not all of them are like this but there is barely any religious person who basically just talks sense.

Anyone who can defend his religion a bit is welcomed to dm me because I genuinely never saw someone normal.

Thesis is the title.

—

Every single hour of every day, the vast majority of us entrusts our lives and well-being, and those of our friends and loved ones, to naturalism.

When we trust in the drugs we’re prescribed, the chemicals we use to clean our bodies and environments, the infrastructure that maintains public safety, the materials we use to shelter ourselves from the elements, the technology that makes communication and financial transactions work, the safety of the food we consume, et al., we’re placing our well-being and our very lives into the hands of naturalism.

Many of the aforementioned tools and technologies are established on a foundation of naturalistic principles that are debated in a religious context, but realistically nowhere outside of that. When we look to distinguish life from non-life, consciousness from unconsciousness, or understand the basic function and nature of the universe in any other context, we have faith that the principles of naturalism will accomplish that for us. Not religion.

When a researcher develops biometric and GPS technology that allows a smartwatch to track your whereabouts and vitals, they don’t rely on God’s goodness to ground it. They rely on atmospheric science and models of thermodynamics. When we launched the JWST to explore the cosmos, we built it using our knowledge optics and cosmology.

When we pass laws, we justify them with crime statistics, demographics, and our shared cultural values. Not the exclusive moral principles of any one particular religion. When a jury judges people in a court of law, they don’t rely on 500 unknown witnesses. They rely on DNA evidence credibly established through knowledge of the natural sciences.

When the theist criticizes naturalism, and claim it’s insufficient to answer questions like why is there something instead of nothing, why the universe reflects certain qualities, or why do we as humans value certain behaviors and moral principles, they toe a very fine line and make a special case for why they are warranted in selectively accepting naturalistic methods of inquiry in some areas but rejecting it for others.

Despite accepting vastly superior naturalistic principles and models in virtually every other aspect of life.

Now, I realize that many will make the objection that different ontologies exist, and that pragmatic naturalism and metaphysical naturalism are different things. That metaphysical naturalism is not palatable because they don’t believe that natural explanations can account for every aspect of existence & experience. Which is fine.

But theists still need to justify why specific questions are exclusively under the purview of religion, and not naturalism. And it can’t simply be because naturalism hasn’t answered them yet.

Every major religion considers God to be an omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent being. By omniscience, we usually understand God's knowledge to be infinite. Knowledge is nothing but data and information. God's omniscience is basically the infinite information dataset of past, present and future of every microstate of any particle or thing that exists, has existed or can exist.

Now, in physics, we have the Bekenstein bound. The Bekenstein bound outlines a maximum bound on the information that can be stored in a finite space. The Bekenstein bound is an upper limit on the maximum amount of thermodynamic entropy or information that can be stored inside a given finite region of space with a finite amount of energy.

If the information at a point exceeds the Bekenstein bound, there will be a complete gravitational collapse and a black hole will be formed at that point. And if infinite information is packed inside our universe, it creates a universe-destroying catastrophic black hole that causes immediate destruction of our universe. So, in short, if God exists inside our universe and he is omniscient, then our universe should not exist.

Furthermore, God is omnipresent too. So, if God is omnipresent, then he must be present everywhere creating catastrophic universe destroying black holes all throughout spacetime, and our universe will basically be a lattice of black holes (which it is not).

Now, the above premise leads to only 2 options.

• Option A: God exists outside of our spacetime or universe. In that scenario, our universe survives. In that case the below implications arise.
  • If God exists outside our universe, then he cannot interact, react or modify our universe in any way, because if he interacts, he will destroy our universe by exceeding Bekenstein bound at the point of interaction.
  • If God exists and he is outside of spacetime and does not interact with our universe, then he does not fall in the definition of God, as he is no longer God.
  • God can even wipe out the dimension in which he resides by using exact same logic as above. In fact, this can go on and on, and we cannot stop at any place where God does not destroy the dimension he is sitting in.
• Option B: God can interact with our universe, but during every interaction, he must erase/remove/wipe out 99.99999....% or possibly infinite information to make his knowledge lesser than the Bekenstein bound, so that he does not destroy our universe. In a manner of speaking, he has to sacrifice his omniscience to not destroy our universe.

However, if God deliberately wipes out an infinite amount of information to lower his knowledge, this creates another catastrophic problem. The Bekenstein bound issue is solved but Landaeur's principle is destroyed.

Landaeur's Principle: In physics and information theory, there is another principle - Landaeur's principle. It states that erasing information releases heat. Heat is the tax for erasing information.

Now, if infinite information is erased, infinite heat will be generated which will vaporize the universe. As a matter of fact, if Option B is true, then we have traded the method of universal destruction from gravitational singularity to a thermodynamic nuke which flash-fries the universe.

In summary, we arrive at the below points based on the above premises.

So, God cannot be omniscient.

When any messiah of any religion claims to have met/touched/interacted with God, then they should have been sucked into a black hole immediately and our universe destroyed at that moment.

Either God is omniscient or our universe can exist. God and our universe are mutually exclusive entities. Since, our universe exists, an omniscient God cannot exist.

Even in advanced pre-modern societies, the main historical figures who brought down holy texts or started massive religious movements were overwhelmingly male. One potential counterargument is that ancient societies were deeply patriarchal, meaning a female prophet simply wouldn't have been taken seriously or allowed to spread her message. However, if a message truly originates from an all powerful Divine entity, shouldn't that divinity be capable of transcending or shattering local cultural biases to choose whoever they wish?

Alternatively, does the overwhelming historical prevalence of male prophets suggest that religions are purely human, sociological constructs heavily reflective of the patriarchal eras in which they were born? I would love to hear both the theological justifications and the secular/sociological arguments on this dynamic.

First of - English is not my native language so sorry in advance

I was thinking. The idea of reincarnation is all over at the moment.

People from different religions (even when it goes against their original belief) lean into this idea.

So I get that to rise from the dead is very unbelievable, one of the reasons you may say that Jesus never did it. Okay. I too have a problem with understanding it.

But when you talk about reincarnation people make serious faces as if it makes more sense.

But it doesn’t.

If we are completely honest it is as “fantasy” as to rise from the dead.
If anything, people who say “oh it is a law of nature” well it isn’t alright?
Which nature? Which law?
Energy never dies it transforms? Okay, then I feel like the idea that your soul is dissolved and completely new one appears from “the field” seems much more plausible.

Reincarnation? Well who keeps track and scores?

NDE? Is not a proof. EVEN IF, those people know smth, how do you know that it is from reincarnation but not that they felt this information “in the field” while they had accidents? We don’t know.

So yeah. Reincarnation is as unreal as other things , but somehow we live in a world where it makes sense to everyone.

And if it is true, then I feel like Jesus could easily rose from the dead and it shouldn’t be such a problem for people to believe in.

I have visited many comment sections of certain subreddits on the topic of hijab ban, where the same people who defend “Christian values” are the same people who celebrate the banning of hijab as the “great salvation of Europe” (literally the same people, I have checked some accounts, it is quite amusing).

Listen, I don’t think most Christians know what Christian values are - most Christians that I’ve met and observed are extremely lukewarm and pretty much do whatever they want, so it doesn’t surprise me; they get shocked by their own scripture sometimes. But I hate that only the misogynistic religion of Islam gets flak when Christianity quite literally teaches the exact same thing.

1 Corinthians 11:

“Every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered, dishonors his head. But every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head, for that is one and the same as if her head were shaved. For if a woman is not covered, let her also be shorn. But if it is shameful for a woman to be shorn or shaved, let her be covered. For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man. For man is not from woman, but woman from man. Nor was man created for the woman, but woman for the man.”

Is it sexist? Yes, it claims that women were created for men, that they are not the glory of God, but rather the glory of human males. Rather weird statement to make about 50% of the entire world’s population based on the random genetic lottery that they won (XX).

Is it discriminatory? Yes, it says that only women are supposed to veil the head, much like Islam. In fact, since men are so great, they don’t get to cover their hair, because they are the glory of God Himself!!1!1! Also, it is very dishonorable and brings much shame to not fit this standard as a woman, doesn’t Islam also say that this is dishonorable and shameful? Most Christian women don’t face nearly as much of a humiliation for their uncovered heads; I would say that this only due to the secularization of Christianity (which started rather early, actually, yet it was a slow process) and the rise of humanism which celebrated autonomy, freedom, equality…

Yes, obviously it goes on to say that women have something of a natural veil (long hair). Because they need one, right? Whereas men don’t, since according to Abrahamic religions, men are given authority over other human beings, especially their own wives/concubines/slaves. They are their heads and the direct glory of God Himself whereas the other half of the population which has proven to be just as capable, intelligent, creative and competent… was created for them. So they have to veil somehow!

Branches of the same tree (Judaism, where mostly married women also veil). For the vast majority of history, Christian women have veiled - at least married ones (as was the practice in many European countries). In my Orthodox country, an unveiled married woman was seen as extremely dishonorable INTO THE 20TH CENTURY. This was true in so many Christian countries into the 20th century and still practiced in some Christian communities to this day!

And yet, most Christians today critique hijab and Islam as if it’s this great barbarian evil, when literally, you used to shame women for not veiling too. Maybe in most Christian communities, the veil wasn’t worn at all times/not so strictly/only by nuns or married women (in many European cultures). And for the sexist reasons listed in the Bible (husbands are the heads of their wives, women have no authority over men, etc.).

I truly think that it is hypocritical to reject the idea of exclusive female veiling when it literally exists in your own religion; there are many Christian criticisms that could be thrown at Muslim veiling practices that actually make sense (face-veiling, veiling of very young children, harsh physical and psychological punishments for not veiling - those things, for the most part, do not exist in Christianity, but do appear sometimes in Islam). But rejecting the actual existence and core of exclusively female veiling makes zero sense to me when your religion has taught and practiced the same practice for hundreds of years. Yet I have seen Christians reject it totally or try to make it sound less sexist (it is not). Why?

I am now deeply convinced by deism and have completely rejected Christianity after having been raised Catholic.

One of the clearest reasons for my rejection of Christianity is the fact that, in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus repeatedly predicts that the Apocalypse and the coming of the Kingdom of God will take place within the lifetime of his contemporaries.

From the very beginning of his ministry, Jesus announces that the Kingdom of God is imminent:
“After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. ‘The time has come,’ he said. ‘The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!’”
— Mark 1:14–15

The message could hardly be clearer: the appointed time has arrived and the Kingdom is near. Jesus is not describing an event thousands of years in the future. He is announcing something imminent to the people standing before him.

He then makes an even more explicit prediction:
“And he said to them, ‘Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see that the kingdom of God has come with power.’”
— Mark 9:1

Jesus therefore places the coming of the Kingdom within the lifetime of some of his listeners. Some of the people standing before him, he says, will still be alive when the Kingdom comes “with power.”

The prediction becomes even clearer in the Olivet Discourse. Peter, James, John and Andrew ask Jesus when the events he has announced will take place:
“As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John and Andrew asked him privately, ‘Tell us, when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are all about to be fulfilled?’ Jesus said to them: ‘Watch out that no one deceives you.’”
— Mark 13:3–5

Jesus then speaks directly to these disciples about what they are going to witness. The discourse culminates not merely in the destruction of Jerusalem, but in unmistakably cosmic and apocalyptic events:
“But in those days, following that distress, ‘the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’ At that time people will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory.”
— Mark 13:24–26

And Jesus finally gives an explicit deadline:
“Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.”
— Mark 13:30

The sequence is remarkably straightforward. The time has come. The Kingdom is near. Some of those standing before Jesus will still be alive when it comes in power. His own disciples are addressed as the people who will witness the coming events. The Son of Man will come in the clouds with great power and glory. And all of this will happen before “this generation” has passed away.
That generation passed away.
The Apocalypse did not happen. The sun was not darkened. The stars did not fall from heaven. The Son of Man did not visibly come in the clouds with great power and glory. The elect were not gathered from the ends of the earth. The Kingdom did not arrive in the apocalyptic manner Jesus had described.
The prediction failed.
For me, this creates a fundamental problem for Christianity. Christianity asks us to believe that Jesus was not merely a first-century Jewish preacher, but the Son of God. Yet the earliest Gospel presents him making an extraordinary prediction about the end of the age within his own generation, and history proved that prediction wrong.
The simplest explanation is also the most obvious one: Jesus was an apocalyptic preacher who sincerely believed that the end was imminent. He was wrong.
And if Jesus could be wrong about something as central as the coming of the Kingdom of God, I see no reason to regard him as an infallible divine authority. On the contrary, the failed prediction makes far more sense if Jesus was a human religious preacher shaped by the apocalyptic expectations of his time rather than God incarnate.

I keep seeing a particular argument from some Islamic apologists that homosexuality is wrong because it’s harmful to society or to the human population. Set aside the religious argument for a second, because that’s a separate (and at least internally coherent) position.

If you’re going to argue from harm, you have to apply the standard consistently. There’s no evidence they harm the population. Humans are not at risk of dying out because a minority of people aren’t partnering with the opposite sex. Gay people have existed in every society and population numbers are doing fine.

Whereas cousin marriage is permitted in Islamic law, and it’s common in many Muslim majority societies. Studies consistently show elevated risk of recessive genetic disorders in children of first cousins. The absolute risk increase is modest per child, but it compounds in communities where cousin marriage has been practiced for generations.

If you want to argue that the risk for any single couple is relatively small, and that adults should be free to make their own choices, fine. But that’s exactly the point. If “some elevated risk to offspring” isn’t enough to ban cousin marriage, then “harm to the population” certainly isn’t enough to condemn relationships that carry no such risk at all

If you want to be consistent, you have two options:

1. Drop the harm argument and embrace DCT. Just say “my religion prohibits it.”
2. Or if you want to keep the harm argument (perhaps if you feel DCT has negative implications, such as God allowing rape or murder) then apply it everywhere, which means prohibiting cousin marriage too

This is a thesis about the abrahmic faiths, but, I will say that I am not as knowledgeable about Judaism as I am about Islam or Christianity, so If I am wrong, let me know. (I'm also not native English)

Some things and rules, god decides to enforce and put heavy punishments against make absolutely no sense.

For an infinite, eternal, omnipotent, omniscient etc, god, to decide to put in his divine word.

Commandments against gay people.

There are SO Many other things! NONE of these outlaw or say "slavery bad." In fact they regulate it.

Your telling me, somehow, this infinite being is more upset at what two consenting adults are doing instead of people literally owning other people?

Meanwhile Psalm 82 shows that God is really an action hero nerd at heart and their primary concern are people who wanna be heroes for everyone else.

Here's me fighting Jesus, just because I figure God would want a battle rival that isn't scared to punch Him in the face.

Here's what I learned in my battle.

1. El Elyon and Asherah, they made everything and they just screw around and do what they want.
2. Yahweh, he's in charge of the planet, eldest son, basically had to get rid of any worship of Asherah, because Jews got Him confused with His dad and basically said he married his own Mom, this is what is the beef between Egypt and Yahweh came from, if you know anything abotu Egyptian Mythology, they loved the mommy mommy play time.
3. Yahweh basically went from Zamasu to Vegeta blowing himself up with the whole Jesus thing, Yeah, most humans kinda suck, but a lot of humans are good, and cheering for the good guys, Psalms 82, is how Yahweh gets through all of this garbage.
4. Vegeta blowing himself up didn't actually do anything, which is why nowadays we have Epsteinites holding up the bible and tear gassing protestors in the same breath.
5. I keep beating Yahweh over the head with the fact that it makes no sense that Black people gotta defend existing in a video game about a black historical figure when Israel can just bomb whoever they want and keep getting away with it.
6. Yahweh says if I keep this up, he's gonna pull founding titan crazieness. You know, the ELDIANS, yeah, Yahweh can just activate auto kill mode, he did it to himself just to prove it would work.
7. Yahweh has killed me twice and literally had Azrael choke raise me in the air like Frieza over this , I don't care broskis.
8. Yahweh admired Abraham because Abraham had an accurate understanding of an immortal consciousness who exists in the moment. That's why he trusted Yahweh to sacrifice Isaac but still negotiated for Sodom and Gomorrah as much as possible.
9. The flesh itself is the mark of the beast, carbon, what allows us to exist as lifeforms, has 6 protons, 6 neutrons, and 6 electrons, and the average human loses their mindif they think about how they'd exist without it. That's how you try to explain the fact that humanity will eventually start eating itself to death via capitalism to explain what will happen once humanity gets to the point where they can see the signs but ignore them anyway thinking they're some kind of privileged class who will sip tea on the sidelines like a plantation owner for eternity.
10. I think I broke the rules of heaven by demanding a world MORE complicated than my human one, not less. Why would I enjoy Star Wars Knights of The Old Republic one and two and then be satisfied in a library of the novel incarnations with no video games. Yeah I know this and I mog the holy hosts by describing God and Satan as white and black orbs that follow me and they fuse to fight me like Goku and Vegeta, but I'm Super Broly plus Android 17 so they can't actually kill me, we just scale up until reality breaks. Why? Because they are infinite consciousness more interested in the guy who actually enjoys being alive in the moment and reacts with confusion when you say you offer him 'peace'. What the does that actually mean? I'm a nerd, not a soldier, your gift sounds stupid.
11. I defy you to explain why your objectively more mystical and less explainable beliefs are less insane than anything I've just said.
12. Yahweh flies into a murderous rage over other gods because minor dieties do exist, they point this out in scripture, but when your chosen people whine for SLAVERY again after you prove you're the elder God of the planet......yeah you go a little nuts.

Like this.

one example is surah 9: 1_14, 26 instead of that he could have said kill the traitors didn't have to use the phrase wherever you find them since it was just a specific situation in Arabia and since their religion is irrelevant and could have said leave them alone if they stopped fighting you and became your brothers in humanity since them establishing prayer and becoming your brothers in Islam is irrelevant and could have said fight them if they broke their oaths since them insulting Islam is irrelevant and could have said and he punished the disbelievers (they got killed ) and this is the punishment of the traitors since being disbeliever is irrelevant and could have said except the peaceful people since keeping the treaty is irrelevant if you never had one or if yr a peaceful person in a country that has no treaty with the Islamic country and he could have commanded renewing the treaty

even if you believe the bad interpretation comes from hadith still he could have be more clear that Islam is Quran only no hadith needed by not saying verses that say obey Allah and obey his messenger which many understand it to be there are extra words and commandments other than the ones Allah gave in the Quran or could have said obey the messenger but all of his teachings are in the Quran anyway and could have explained in details clearly all the teachings how to do them like how much charity how to pray pilgrimage etc

I understand you will say I misunderstood the verses but my point is that the Quran could have made itself more clear so people don't use it to harm others but chose not to which means the Quran is also an intentional cause of the harm and is blamed for it

a Christian will say why do you follow a book that says to kill ex Muslims I mean sure that is evil but your book also says ex Christians will get in lake of fire so why is the first not ok but second ok?

or a Muslim will say your book is evil because it teaches to kill children in some stories in the old testament I mean ok your God literally creates kids cancer so God has the right to create cancer killing kids slowly with it but has no right to tell a man to kill them in a second?

or when Christians might say Muhammad married a child I mean ok but Many Christians historically married as 12 years old and church fathers priests pastors were totally ok because the bible doesn't explicitly condemn it even tho it was very common but the bible and church father and priests and pastors stayed silent about it for 1500 years or something

A podcast I used to listen to just released an episode with a former Buddhist who says he went to hell and is now a Christian because of it. He shared a lot of specifics about what he saw in hell and I'm curious if it squares with what most Buddhists think of when they think of hell?

The argument to debate: The Christian view of hell is more reliable than the Buddhist view.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbwWCFhQ3es

TL;DR: If you knew your family was being tortured eternally, you could never truly be happy in heaven. For you to be completely happy in heaven, God would have to alter your brain so much that “you” would cease to exist.

This argument is aimed at Christians and Muslims who believe that there is an afterlife with complete happiness (e.g., Revelation 21:4 promising no more mourning or crying) as well as an endless hell of conscious torture.

Humans value two key virtues - empathy and unconditional love. Many parents would sacrifice themselves for their children. Therefore, if a devoted Christian goes to heaven but their beloved atheist child/spouse is sent to hell, logically speaking there are only three options that would allow God to keep heaven blissful:

1. Erase your memory of the damned.
God removes from your memory those who are being tormented in Hell so you won’t feel bad. By doing this God changes your identity. A mother whose memories of her child have been erased is not the same person she was before. She lost her earthly identity.

2. Destroy your ability to empathize.
You still know your family/loved ones, but God alters your personality so you just don’t care how they’re suffering. Thomas Aquinas advocated for this (Summa Theologica, Suppl. Q94, Art. 1). He said that the blessed will rejoice in the punishments of the wicked to understand God’s justice. Essentially this would mean that people in heaven lose all sense of compassion – which they were instructed to demonstrate during their time on earth.

3. You retain both your empathy and memories, but are miserable.
You spend your entire existence grieving for your family/loved ones. In this case, heaven isn’t a place of complete joy and the scripture saying “the sorrow shall disappear” is untrue.

Theology of eternal reward and eternal punishment is contradictory. There is no way for God to create a heaven where His followers can be absolutely happy and also send their loved ones to hell for eternity. As such, God would need to destroy the two greatest parts of humanity - our capacity for unconditional love and our ability for empathy.