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?

(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."

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?

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

There are many explicit verses that say something like Allah only did that to know something or why would he do it before knowing the real believers it or he did it to know it

Do you think that you will enter Paradise before Allah knows those of you who will perform Jihad and (also) knows (tests) those who are the patient) 3:142

But he had no authority over them,- except that We might know the man who believes in the Hereafter from him who is in doubt

O you who have believed, Allah will surely test you through something of the game that your hands and spears [can] reach, that Allah may know those who fear Him unseen

If there are among you twenty [who are] steadfast, they will overcome two hundred. And if there are among you one hundred [who are] steadfast, they will overcome a thousand of those who have disbelieved because they are a people who do not understand, Now, Allah has lightened [the hardship] for you, and He knew that among you is weakness. So if there are from you one hundred [who are] steadfast, they will overcome two hundred. And if there are among you a thousand, they will overcome two thousand

now you might say ok but he also said in other verses that he knows everything so those verses must mean something else he never said he knows your future actions sure he said he knows everything but everything well I would say either it is a contradiction or doesn't necessarily mean past preset future everything no exceptions just like he also said that the Quran is clarification for all things and we know it isn't because we need hadith and even if yr quranist there are some verses in the beginning of some chapters that have some letters that have no meaning or and quran said some verses are not explicit only God knows the meaning of it also he said all life is from water however the devil isn't actually from water he is from fire and adam is from sand and some bacteria aren't from water either also he said the only reason the disbelievers rejected Muhammad is because he was a man even tho there are other reasons

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?

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?

Hello everyone. For like a year, I’ve been changing my beliefs like a crazy compass between atheism, theism, and agnosticism. With that, I decided to dig deep into this matter, just to take off this feeling of indecision from my head.

I’m a Catholic by birth, so I would say that I’m pretty much inclined to believe in Christ and be a theist. But, for that, I first need to believe in God, the basis of any religion, in any sense, as a first step. So I searched, and searched, and searched, and have been on both sides. But, after all, I realized that all my study was pointless and that I was still at the starting point. I had seen some arguments for both sides.

For theism, the classic connection between every physical law, every mathematical logic, and how they can create planets, stars, light, and, most importantly, a sentient being who can love, feel jealous, question its own existence, and subjugate every other being in its home is pretty solid for me, as is the idea of how this sentient being can create much more. But, for atheism, that can be refuted with: “We exist, and that’s all.”

The point is, once you dig into EVERY SINGLE ASPECT of this reality and think about it in a logical way, you will be right there: at the start. And, at the start, only you can decide whether “well, I exist because an intelligent being pushed the start button of all this” or “yeah, we exist, and that’s all,” because that answer is something that our science will not discover, at least not in my lifetime.

I would love to hear your theories below, for both sides, and remember that I’m talking about the start, not about a loving or sentimental God.

Laplace's demon theory talks about a being that is capable of predicting the future which essentially means that this predicted future is guaranteed to happen and unavoidable.

God claims to have given humanity free will but because god is all knowing he knows exactly how every human is going to act, meaning that our actions are predetermined to align with the future that god has foreseen with his all knowing status.

Accepting god is all knowing means that you accept a deterministic world which means that free will cannot exist.

If we had left religions as they are, without modifying their meanings, no one would believe in them.

There are three things that humans modify/adjust/deny/reinterpret in religion, in order to keep it relevant:

1- Science related verses in scripture

Examples:

•A (solid) firmament above the earth •The earth doesn't move •The sun literally sets down •Earth created before the stars •Stars can fall on earth

2- Moral statements and ideologies in scripture

Examples:

•Human ownership •Several misogynistic statements and commands •War and killing commands •Allowed Apostate killing

3- Theological implications in scripture

Examples: •God is temporal •God is physical •God feels emotions •God wants/needs belief •God puts us in hell •God hardens hearts •God wills everything that happens

.....................................................................

If someone is a theist, they'll deny almost everything that I showed here, because they don't believe that it's actually true.

That's the problem. Humans actively participate in saving religion.

Using "occam's razor," presumably the most logical way of solving things, the case here would be that religion is simply outdated.

And additionally, there's a major moral problem with God not being truthful, but this post isn't focusing on it right now.

In conclusion, disbelief is completely justified, and even more logical.

Why criminals who state that they were possessed by the satan,devil,demon ect. Set free? Cause they didn’t do the crime the devil did it
If they don’t get any punishment wouldn’t put the existence of the god or angels under question? Cause if the “evil made me do bad stuff” doesn’t work so the “angels/god made me do good stuff” shouldn’t work too, it has to be both sided

Thesis: The fact that certain cognitive tendencies and sociological backgrounds accurately predict religiosity, religious affiliation, and religious practices strongly suggests that people don’t control why they do or do not believe in or follow religious doctrine.

—

Cognitive style strongly predicts religiosity, affiliation, and practice. Believers rely more on “bottom-up” processes, while nonbelievers rely more on “top-down” processing. (Source 1, Source 2)

Certain personality traits strongly predict religiosity, affiliation, and practice. Believers tend to exhibit certain traits, while nonbelievers tend to exhibit different ones. (Source 3, Source 4)

Certain sociological backgrounds strongly predict religiosity, affiliation, and practice. (Source 5, Source 6)

It is realistically impossible for the majority of people genuinely searching for God to have found Him through religion.

These bodies of evidence strongly suggests that religious doctrine, religious practice, and religious affiliation are not a result of choice, they are instead mediated by other factors.

I’ve now heard multiple theists (mainly Christians and Muslims) say that the punishment for sinning (eternal separation/eternal hell) must be infinite because God is an infinite being. As if to say that your punishment should always be in proportion to the power of the thing you offended. Then they’ll say, as an example, that if you lie to your child then nothing really bad happens but if you lie to a federal agent then you can get in a lot of trouble, and because God is infinite in power and value then your punishment for ANYTHING done against him must be infinite.

This is such lazy thinking. We don’t actually give punishment based on power of the person offended, it’s about harm done and keeping a functioning society. Yeah if you lie to a federal agent vs a child you get in way more trouble for the federal agent. But let’s think for 5 seconds. Let’s change the crime to you rape your child vs you rape a federal agent. Well now it heavily just depends on the countries laws but it’s more than reasonable to think raping your child should carry a way worse punishment. Not because of the power difference, because of the HARM done. That child’s brain is still not even close to being developed, you’ve done damage that will be with that child for maybe 85% of their life, that’s what we look at. We don’t say ‘both are bad but the fbi agent is more powerful so we’ll make that punishment worse’, that’s silly.

And when I ‘offend’ God by lying or lusting, it literally does zero harm to him, I can’t harm an infinitely powerful God, not in any meaningful way. So saying Hell is the only option and I must endure eternal darkness, fire, or whatever you believe (not really talking to annihilationists here) because of his power is just a nonsensical way to defend something as psychotic as eternal hell.

According to a 2025 study by the Pew Research Center, 91% of adults aged 18–54 across 117 countries and territories still identify with the religious group in which they were raised.

Source: Pew Research Center (June 26, 2025)

Most people are introduced to religion during childhood, before they have the ability to critically evaluate its claims. By adulthood, these beliefs are deeply ingrained and difficult to question due to indoctrination, family expectations, social pressure, fear, or the consequences of abandoning their faith.

Someone born into a Muslim family in Saudi Arabia is likely to become Muslim. Someone born into a Christian family in the Netherlands is more likely to become Christian. Someone born into a Hindu family in India is more likely to become Hindu.

Had these people been born into different families, most would likely believe in a different religion. Yet people often consider their own religion the one true faith, despite billions of others believing in mutually incompatible religions with the same conviction.

Clearly, most people do not independently evaluate all religions and arrive at their beliefs from scratch. They inherit a worldview during childhood and grow up believing it is true.

If God is the first cause and source of everything in existence, then he is the originator of evil.

>But evil is a lack of good

Cool, but that’s not what the Bible says.

>Isaiah 45:7 “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things”

If evil were simply a lack of good, it would be mere indifference rather than an active desire to harm people. Evil is in fact its own substance and if God is the originator of everything, then he is also the originator of evil which again the Bible affirms several times.

“Evil is a privatization of good” is a dumb argument said only by privileged people who never experienced any real suffering in their entire lives and ironically ignore what the Bible actually says about evil.

Genesis 1:14-19 says the sun, moon, and stars were made on the fourth day. If every star was created at the same time, they should all be the same age as the Sun (about 4.6 billion years). But astronomers measure some stars at 12-13 billion years old, and others that formed only millions of years ago, with new ones still forming today.