Problems With Religion

I have been in a running conversation with an old friend who has recently found “God” and it got me to thinking.  He thought I was being very hostile and angry, but I was actually holding back out of politeness.  Now, I am hostile to religion, because people who believe are incredibly annoying and bigoted.  It is a club of special people who believe they are better than everyone else, and who will have paradise while the rest of us suffer for eternity.  That, in and of itself, is un-American .  Sure, you can belong to this group if you just profess your belief into the very illogical and obviously false idea that some archaic text is factual.  It reminds me of struggle session from Mao’s China where you had to confess to imaginary crimes.  While Christianity is a milder form of torture and humiliation, it is still torture and humiliation on some level.  That is why I believe that Christianity (as well as many other religions) is evil.

Allow me to delve into the insanity of Christianity itself.  First, there is the hilarious idea that Christ died for our sins.  Why did he have to do this?  He is supposed to be God in human form.  God created the rules, so he should be able to change them without the sadism of crucifixion.  Then again, God is supposed to be perfect, so he would never have made rules he would need to later change.  That shows imperfection.  

Second, humans are sinful by nature, but God is perfect and without sin.  I am going to assume that God wanted us to be with sin, because if he didn’t, then God isn’t perfect.  So the question becomes, is God without sin because God is above even his own rules?  Let’s face it, God has violated the Ten Commandments many times.  He is especially good at murder.  That whole Biblical flood thing was genocidal.   Then there are the times when God told others to kill.  By our law, telling people to kill (and them doing it) is murder as well.  Then there is knocking up Mary, which is adultery.  So if the idea is that God hasn’t sinned as we have sinned, then it is clearly false.

Then there is Pascal’s Wager.  The idea that if you believe in God, and he doesn’t exist, then you are no worse off than if you didn’t.  But, if you don’t, and God does exist than you are much worse off.  The problem there is the fact that there have been thousands if not millions of gods in the course of human history.  Add to that the incredibly unlikeliness that Christianity is true (based on the lack of historical and scientific proof), then you are making a fools wager on par with buying a lottery ticket.  Just like buying a lottery ticket is a waste of money, following Christianity is a waste of time.  You could justify it by gaining pleasure from the act of worship, just like you can get pleasure from buying a lottery ticket and imagining what you would do with the winnings, however, you would be better off if you learned to gain pleasure from something else instead.