Posted by:
lostinva
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Date: February 18, 2014 01:47PM
I'm sort of in the third category. I'm not an atheist, but I tend not to embrace any organized religion. I don't think you have to go to the cold and brutal route of saying that since Mormonism is false that there is nothing at all, but I think that everyone should put Christianity or any other religion to the test not based on feelings or spurious evidence but on looking at both sides of the issue. I take the option that there are many possibilities, but that religion is a contrived form of control.
I think most people aren't trying hard enough to look for the truth no matter how it manifests itself. If there are infinite planets in the universe and time is infinite, the idea that we have one finite life where we clearly don't know what is going on that ends in death with eternal damnation or eternal bliss is absurd to me. Few people here are willing to consider that the origin of man in regard to alien civilizations, the possibility of reincarnation, the possibility of truth found in Eastern religious philosophy, the possibility of having contact with the dead, etc. Christianity (as well as other Abrahamic faiths) and all its offshoots seem to be designed to keep people in the dark. They are threatened by people discovering that there is truth beyond what they are told in this broken planet but also lies, and it's not all just the devil or a creator. Maybe nobody is who it seems to be. Perhaps its because when we die, it's not so cut-and-dried. If people have choices of good and evil in life, then maybe the same mindset exists in death. The "war in heaven" never really ended if the human mindset also exists in the spirit. If we can't stand somebody in life, are we going to suddenly like them when we die just because we're dead or will we just not care anymore? By conditioning you to a line of thinking, you are less inclined to be a threat of stirring things up there as well.
My problem with religion is that it does a very poor job proving itself to be worthy of acceptance. Almost always it starts with some guy claiming that he has seen a vision or had one-on-one contact with one or many gods thus we are supposed to blindly accept everything he says to be absolutely, completely true. Mormonism started that way and so did Islam. Just because it was written in a book before we had modern technology or were able to meet the guy doesn't mean he was special. If someone did the same thing that Joseph Smith, Abraham or Mohammad did today he would have to put on quite a show of supernatural powers (or be really good at getting the crowd stoned) to be able to gain the following that they did then. We're supposed to accept the Bible as true, when all we have to go on unreliable historical evidence and tons of blatant errors in a book that it supposed to be viewed as divine. A divine book IMHO would be unbelievably easy to understand and contain not a single error either in its original form or in translation. It would be absolutely provable and following its teachings would transform the world. Also, its evidence would be so easy to prove that everyone in the world would follow it and all other religions would collapse.
The Jesus story is very difficult to believe when looked at objectively, and the evidence to support it ever happening is very weak aside from the believers who use only the Bible as proof that it ever happened. All history is contrived since all men have something to gain from making the story fit their own agenda. Why would the Bible be any less so? In fact, religious books have caused people to do bad things, because all of them followed literally advocate what is generally viewed as evil (murder, rape, incest, slavery, etc). I don't want faith. I want to know where we REALLY came from, why we are here and what the point of all of this is. I want to know what "they" are hiding from us and why we are being punished in the first place. What is the point of a world where 7 billion people are being jerked around by a few with a lot more money and power because we're too stupid to stop them? Obviously there is no clear plan to "rescue" us or the world would only have one religion since there would be absolute proof that it was true without a shadow of doubt. If, according to Christian reasoning, Satan wanted us all saved and Jehovah wanted us to be in the dark and many of us lose it all (damnation) as some sort of spiritual population control, then who really is the good guy? The fact that we don't seem to be allowed to know all of this is a strong grounds for atheism, but it also is possible evidence to me by putting it in Mormon language that this IS "spirit prison". You're trapped in a body with people that you don't like not knowing why you're here or what the point is. There is pain, misery, cruelty and sadness abounding. Your day is great and one day someone you're close to dies or hurts you badly or you end up in cell.
The moral of all of this is that we should be accepting both but still reasoning with the religious and atheists since it is impossible to know who is really right. As Mormons, we were conditioned to refuse to accept outside-the-box thinking. We were not allowed to explore other possible theories, so the safe route was to accept another Christian faith or to become an atheist. What we do have, though, is evidence when something is clearly made up, was an elaborate lie or has nothing to support it other than hearsay such as much of Mormonism. We should use that as much as possible to fight the people that once controlled us and still control our loved ones.