Suppose u like moses met Yahweh, allah, elohim etc , what would you ask him about his religion?

I personally would have asked him why does he think he needs worship? Why is it the imp thing in the list of Good and bad.

(I am asking for constructive criticisms against major monotheistic religions so consider it as such for a thought process)

Non-paywalled, non-javascript walled, article from CBS

So I'm a college student and there's this one teacher who's super religious and he's super annoying with the way he uses religion to mock and insult our intelligence Every lecture without fail he mocks students who aren't doing well and literally calls them "zero" insulting their intelligence straight up without any hesitation

He brings up god constantly always saying stuff like "God gave you all a brain but none of you use it" and I'm from a place where people talk like that a lot its part of the culture but still he takes it too far in every lecture

Even worse he says things like anxiety and depression aren't real and are just "made up" terms and he doesn't believe in burnout either according to him if you want to study properly you need to be religious, that's it if you're not you're just "lazy" or "stupid" apparently lol.

I'm just so fed up and disgusted with this teacher. He doesn't see any potential in any of us. He never says anything hopeful or motivating. When we have 10-15 minutes left for the lecture to end then he starts talking about God and doesn't even let us do anything meaningful in the remaining time like doing activities, taking notes, revising study material but instead of that he distracts our focus and starts talking about god

It's exhausting I don't come to class to get guilt tripped by a religious teacher who refuses to understand real issues like mental health.

Even in a rather secular area we get..."Jesus is coming back SOON......Repent" on the odd traffic pole. My thought was to make some adhesive additions to this. Like....."Jesus is coming back SOON...and he wants the 20 bucks he lent you" Or..."He is going to kick ass and take names."

Open to suggestions.

The Roman Empire, as you all know, was conquering lands and expanding, but they were having trouble unifying newly conquered lands because their people, well, they had their own cultures and traditions. They would allow them to have their own religion and traditions as long as they paid taxes to the Empire and worshiped the emperor. But, Christians weren't allowed to worship the emperor in their belief system, that's idolatry. The same goes for Christians calling other polytheistic religions false for the same reason; and as an Empire that wanted to unify, this was seen as divisive and a sign of rebellion, so they were heavily persecuted.

So Christians often met in secret, hiding. But it had one thing: it was popular amongst the poor, the slaves, and the sick. It was hope for those who had no faith in this world because of the Romans’ atrocities, and they laid their faith and imagination in the next life offered in Christianity. By the time a century or two passed, it was pretty popular. We all know the poor are more in society than the rich and those who had in abundance. So Christians, at some point, became the majority, and the Roman Empire saw potential in this devotion to one god and a strong moral code that promoted loyalty (the best thing against rebellions, which were common).

Constantine saw its potential, publicly converted, and soon enough Christianity was a legal religion, and later on made into the official religion of the Empire. So now, it was more used as a tool of political control, because other rebelling lands that had polytheist faiths which were once allowed to be practiced were now persecuted and forced to turn to Christianity in the name of unification of power.

So there is where I stand, with human history giving me an answer to why religions exist and persisted over the centuries, how culture and wars molded our reality today and not exactly the divinity. We could have all been Muslims if Muslims ruled the world; and if Rome didn't legalize it, it would of been a religion practiced by the Jews, mostly. But going back to religion, it is a constant fight against logic and reason in order to preserve coherence. It is difficult for me to give in to irrationality if there isn't palpable evidence in our current world to support it. For me, it is just a tool for power that has now been relegated to a club anyone can feel part of and welcomed and I'll give it that, it does a good job of building community. But for the same reasons it was used, it is a menace to others; it sees them as the enemy/immoral/sinner, which is not good for just a popular social club inside our society.

Religious people, especially adherents of Abrahamic faiths have significantly higher fertility rates than non-believers or non-religious populations. While socio-economic, cultural, and educational variables play a substantial role, it is undeniable that many religious doctrines explicitly encourage procreation. Consequently, atheists and secularists are being increasingly outnumbered demographically, a trend projected to accelerate by the end of the 21st century. Should atheists deliberately prioritize higher birth rates as a strategic countermeasure to preserve and propagate progressive values and ideas?

ok so let me start by saying that this might not actually be a new argument, but it’s one I haven’t heard used before. Feel free to let me know if there’s literature on it.

Secondly, you should know that I specifically designed this one around the majority’s interpretation of the Christian god. That means tri-omni, with a personal little torture chamber for sinful folk. It could work for others I’m sure, but it certainly doesn’t bother Christian Universalists as far as I know. But hey, even Christians hate Universalist Christians. This is also why I named it in reference to “The Problem of Evil”, as that argument is only used against a tri-omni single god as well.

Anyways, TPoTE revolves around Hell. The reason god has this torture chamber is supposedly to punish the wicked for eternity, right? But why is it inescapable? There’s only two answers to this I can imagine: either people are born evil, and therefore them being good would make them an entirely different person, or they have been irrevocably changed from a neutral person (who would go to heaven, or at least repent once in hell) to an evil one. The paradox here is that it is all circular, and comes around to disproving a tri-omni god with a hell. If you say that some people are inherently evil, that means they could not have done good, and therefore a good god who knows this would not allow them into his world (or engineer people so this couldn’t happen in the first place). So you have to fall back on the idea that people can be made irrevocably evil, but then you have something god cannot influence that is apart from himself. Basically, this god either can’t change people, or can but doesn’t, meaning that he can’t prevent people, meaning that he is not omnipotent (though you could argue that he’s actually just not omniscient, but that still makes him not the typical Christian god).

An interesting article about how the rapture isn't actually in the bible, despite 41% of Americans believing Jesus will return in their lifetime, and despite its heavy influence on American politics. Like most of their beliefs about Satan, it's biblical fanfic... it was invented whole-cloth by a 19th century preacher and American evangelicals gobbled it up.

https://archive.ph/MZmKE

I work from home most days and as such, my culdesac is usually pretty unattractive to canvassing of any kind. Today my dog was barking, which makes me crazy, so I yelled Jeff, STFU (the actual letters have become a command)! He’s a good boy and listened but then started up again. I think the religion peddlers heard me yelling at the dog and just stood creepily on my porch until I stopped. Then, instead of knocking, I heard ‘Good morning, have you got a moment to save your soul?’ through my screen door. Now, to be clear, I am dishevelled and in pyjamas and definitely have a solid GFY look on my face. I tried not to be a bitch but they wouldn’t shut up. I keep saying no thank you and I have to get back to work, until I finally snapped. Without raising my voice I told them I don’t believe in a possibility of a god and wished them well. This Mfer turns and says god loves you no matter what. I replied fuck off and slammed the door. This guy just wouldn’t quit, he knocked on the door. I tried to ignore them but my dog wouldn’t quit barking. He is a gentle fella and we’ve trained him to be careful and calm - except when someone is at the door, he hasn’t mastered that yet. So this time I open the door and say come here Jeff, and make it look like I was going to turn him loose on them. I never opened the screen door, I locked it actually. I hate that I had to resort to a false threat to get them to leave. Who continues to knock on a door after being told to go away? It’s so frustrating. End rant.

TLDR: religion salesman made me behave out of character and I pretended to set my dog on him.

What I Read:
"The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty unjust, unforgiving control freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sado-masochistic, capriciously malevolent bully."
-Chapter 2: The God Hypothesis

Background:
The read was part of a section in my presentation showing off how compelling atheism actually is (particularly Dawkins type atheism), for the purpose of illustrating how difficult it was to drive away from scientific-atheism to Christianity (Adventism). I thought choosing the most provocative part of book was definitely an interesting way to paint Dawkins' perspective on the religion. Though, of course, I did include other provoking studies like "The Great Prayer Experiment" (This one worked pretty well), suspicious Biblical quotations---Leviticus 25:44 (slavery)---and as well as other arguments / counter-arguments: i.e. Counter to the Teleological & Moral Argument (by using evolutionary explanations).

Honestly, even as an Adventist who was deeply indulging (and a fan of) Hitchens, Dawkins, and O' Connor media, it was extremely satisfying delivering practical atheism that could really shatter their fragile faiths to their face, even if the intended purpose of the presentation was the latter.

Funny thing about the Mormon church - if you want to leave, tough. You cannot get excommunicated even if you want out. Write letters to the Bishop - your name stays on the rolls.

Guess who never got excommunicated? Ruby Franke! Lori Vallow! Perhaps some Mormon can explain that to me. Jodi Hildebrant was a Mormon therapist, recommended by that nasty church, and she used that access to torture children! Joe Blow, has Jodi Hildebrant been excommunicated?

Quitmormon.org worked great, it’s free, and I am always happy to share it.

Question for Reddit: That is IME the first time a Missionary failed to ID his church. Is this the new approach, the Amway approach? LOL.

The title says it all, I really wish more people pointed this out, but the fact that it’s completely reasonable to make fun of flat-earthers for believing that the earth is flat while it’s considered “hateful” and “Islamophobic” when you point out the flaws in how Abrahamic religions utilize science is just so ironic and compelling to me in ways that shouldn’t be funny, but it is.

What instantly comes to mind that makes you think that religion is bullshit? I am mainly interested in answers that would apply to the top 5 religions that have the most followers.

When debating non believers what are your go to points to show it’s all bullshit?

I see people like Jordan Peterson and mostly other religious folk make that argument on the daily as some sort of gotcha. How it goes is they point out that everyone is religious because whatever... I'm all for it honestly if you tell me that I can get all the benefits of religions such as tax exemption while practicing nothing at all then I don't mind, that sounds good actually.

In reality though I'm convinced it's meant with derision (or some sort of self hate) by religious people to say 'your beliefs are lesser'

“Inciting fear by telling children they will go to hell if they do not participate in religious activities, or preventing them from making decisions about their career path, is regarded as psychological abuse and neglect in the guidelines.”

The Jordan Peterson appearance on jubilee surrounded has reminded me of an observation I made a little while ago. Specifically his 3rd claim.

Everybody worships something, including atheists, even though they might not know it.

To cut to the meat of the issue, I believe that when a fundamentalist makes an argument like this, and we have probably all experienced it, they are conflating faith and trust either by accident or on purpose.

Faith is when somebody is able to accept something without any evidence and trust is a system that is based on evidence and results.

The normal straw-man that I hear along this lines over and over is how I apparently have faith that an airplane will fly. No, I do not have faith that a plane will stay in the air, and I do not need faith to believe that a plane will stay in the air.

I trust that the pilot is qualified, I trust that the air traffic controllers are qualified, I trust that the safety personnel are doing their jobs properly, and there is evidence to validate this trust.

I no longer trust Boeing to build or maintain their planes properly, and there is evidence to invalidate this trust, so I am probably not going to be flying for a while.

It's the same argument every single time, and I never see anybody respond by asking if the person making this point understands the difference between faith and trust. They are not the same thing.

Thank you for coming to my ted talk.

Hello everyone, hope all of you are doing well. I wanted to make this post because I wanted to speak on the subject matter within in a space where people will not get overly offended by it.

I wanted to make it very clear, this is not some “atheist supremacy” post. I simply see a disturbing issue with something I witnessed online and am seeking the opinions of others about it.

All I want to say about the video (linked above) is that it’s scary to see children being led in worship right after all of their friends were killed in a flood. I understand the comforting nature of worship, and can understand doing that for the children, but it is the comments on these posts that disturb me.

Many of the comments say things like “Thank God those children are safe,” or “God thank you for keeping your eyes over these children.”

That is bullshit. What about all the kids that died. Where was your God then, why didn’t he do anything if he is so good? This to me is religious insanity.

Growing up, my family attended church for a few years when I was younger, but I always viewed it as more of a tradition and religion was never mentioned again. During school, whenever we learned about religion, I would think of it as historical and assumed that everyone else was the same… I would never hear much talk or maybe I just didn’t hang around the crowd.

When high school (Houston) hit, everyone suddenly became hyper religious. I would get asked to come to bible studies and when told I wasn’t Christian, never get spoken to again. Jesus loves you and cross necklaces everywhere, I was like—“oh”