You’ve been given the opportunity to live, free of charge too cause what can you do to repay the Creator… and yet you’re still so ungrateful. Why are you so upset at God? Is your life so terrible? You should be consistent at the very least and just rope, then, right? Let’s hope you’re young and immature and not old, cause then you’d be double ungrateful and silly.
An invitation to kill myself. That is, if nothing else, in perfect keeping with the morality that vexes me about Abrahamic theology.
Firstly, I don’t hate God. I’d have to believe in one to hate him and, without hesitation or qualification, I do not. I do take issue with the way these faiths weaponize fear in self-serving ways — by first amplifying our natural anxiety of death and then selling comfort.
No, I have no intention of killing myself and losing this precious, but finite commodity of time. I have maybe 80 years in which to experience as much of life as I am able, and when it is spent, I will still be racing against that clock to do more.
That is the key. We end. Faith often — specifically including Abrahamic faiths — tries to sell people on the idea that we don’t have to. It’s wrong to convince them to chase eternity when what they really need is to find peace with the necessity of ending.
Mortality is what gives life scope and meaning. It is the race against oblivion from which all human accomplishment must derive. It represents the passing of outdated views and ushering in a generation free from the biases that no longer serve them.
My children are my eternal existence. The ripples of my passing on the lives of those around me — creating further ripples which reach further into the future — are my eternal existence. But my consciousness, my soul if that’s what you want to call it, it will end, and that makes my time here precious.
In 10,000 years all I have accomplished, all I have wanted, all I have loved, all I have dreaded — all of it would be as nothing. And then I have more tens of thousands of years. Millions of years. Billions. Trillions. What meaning would this brief speck of time have against all eternity? I treasure my existence all the more for being so brief.
God has no carrot to tempt me with. I reject that eternal life is any sort of gift, in fact it would be a curse.
Now let me address gratitude. I have a pretty good life. And I am thankful for the people and good fortune that make it so. But if I didn’t exist, I would know no deprivation or loss. An unasked gift carries no obligation, so I am not indebted for an existence I did not choose.
And so God, stripped of eternal reward and the obligation of birth, is a deity who tolerates evil that would be unimaginable were it not so commonplace. A being complicit in such evil is not worthy of love or worship, but would deserve only contempt — if he existed.
God doesn’t have to “tempt you” with eternal life, that’s just a bonus… your existence is enough of a gift (that you’ve enjoyed at least long enough to have children, else you would’ve done the intellectually honest thing if you’re really speaking truthfully and ended it a long time ago), and enough proof of God as well. I think you had a really bad experience with a Western religion (yes, Trinitarian faiths are here, they’re of Roman origin)/approaches to belief (understandably so, I’ve seen what American megachurches are like, and also the disconnect between belief and action) and think that has something to do with God. And the “problem of evil” seems to be doing your head in as well, as if a little difficulty (cause most evils are caused by people, the rest is illnesses, accidents and natural disasters) would take away from the gift that is life. Again, you can always just have nothing.
You’ve been given the opportunity to live, free of charge too cause what can you do to repay the Creator… and yet you’re still so ungrateful. Why are you so upset at God? Is your life so terrible? You should be consistent at the very least and just rope, then, right? Let’s hope you’re young and immature and not old, cause then you’d be double ungrateful and silly.
An invitation to kill myself. That is, if nothing else, in perfect keeping with the morality that vexes me about Abrahamic theology.
Firstly, I don’t hate God. I’d have to believe in one to hate him and, without hesitation or qualification, I do not. I do take issue with the way these faiths weaponize fear in self-serving ways — by first amplifying our natural anxiety of death and then selling comfort.
No, I have no intention of killing myself and losing this precious, but finite commodity of time. I have maybe 80 years in which to experience as much of life as I am able, and when it is spent, I will still be racing against that clock to do more.
That is the key. We end. Faith often — specifically including Abrahamic faiths — tries to sell people on the idea that we don’t have to. It’s wrong to convince them to chase eternity when what they really need is to find peace with the necessity of ending.
Mortality is what gives life scope and meaning. It is the race against oblivion from which all human accomplishment must derive. It represents the passing of outdated views and ushering in a generation free from the biases that no longer serve them.
My children are my eternal existence. The ripples of my passing on the lives of those around me — creating further ripples which reach further into the future — are my eternal existence. But my consciousness, my soul if that’s what you want to call it, it will end, and that makes my time here precious.
In 10,000 years all I have accomplished, all I have wanted, all I have loved, all I have dreaded — all of it would be as nothing. And then I have more tens of thousands of years. Millions of years. Billions. Trillions. What meaning would this brief speck of time have against all eternity? I treasure my existence all the more for being so brief.
God has no carrot to tempt me with. I reject that eternal life is any sort of gift, in fact it would be a curse.
Now let me address gratitude. I have a pretty good life. And I am thankful for the people and good fortune that make it so. But if I didn’t exist, I would know no deprivation or loss. An unasked gift carries no obligation, so I am not indebted for an existence I did not choose.
And so God, stripped of eternal reward and the obligation of birth, is a deity who tolerates evil that would be unimaginable were it not so commonplace. A being complicit in such evil is not worthy of love or worship, but would deserve only contempt — if he existed.
God doesn’t have to “tempt you” with eternal life, that’s just a bonus… your existence is enough of a gift (that you’ve enjoyed at least long enough to have children, else you would’ve done the intellectually honest thing if you’re really speaking truthfully and ended it a long time ago), and enough proof of God as well. I think you had a really bad experience with a Western religion (yes, Trinitarian faiths are here, they’re of Roman origin)/approaches to belief (understandably so, I’ve seen what American megachurches are like, and also the disconnect between belief and action) and think that has something to do with God. And the “problem of evil” seems to be doing your head in as well, as if a little difficulty (cause most evils are caused by people, the rest is illnesses, accidents and natural disasters) would take away from the gift that is life. Again, you can always just have nothing.