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Basically, you follow a God who is vengeful and merciless..... yes your bible highlights that! You speak about forgiveness and truth, yet, you fail to exhibit any of those qualities by stating things which you believe are true about someone and are a negative in your world.
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Basically, you follow a God who is vengeful and merciless..... yes your bible highlights that! You speak about forgiveness and truth, yet, you fail to exhibit any of those qualities by stating things which you believe are true about someone and are a negative in your world.
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Perhaps God is neither vengeful nor merciless? The next time you read the holy text of your choice you may find something like this "the penalty for ____ is death". Try substituting the following "the penalty for ____ is (eventual self-destruction/cessation as the natural consequence of your bad choices)".
Why might God allow us think he is vengeful and judging? Because it may simply be necessary not for Gods sake but for ours.
How Religious Belief Shapes Action: Those Who Believe In A Punishing God Are More Likely To Play Fair
http://www.medicaldaily.com/religious-belief-all-knowing-god-play-fair-373278
Quote from: Susan Scutti
The daily news offers countless examples of the ways religion influences behavior, but the specific characteristics people attribute to their gods may be the most important factor in deciding their actions. Belief in an all-knowing, punishing god encourages cooperation with strangers, say researchers from the University of British Columbia. In fact, faith in such gods may have been necessary to the development of modern-day states.
Since the origins of agriculture, the scale of societal complexity has dramatically expanded while cooperation increased as well. According to the authors, communal agreement, most usually stimulated by genetic relatedness, reciprocity, and partner choice, should falter, not bloom as people increasingly deal in fleeting transactions with unrelated strangers in large anonymous groups.
So how did the large-scale cooperation we see today develop?
For that we can thank the belief in an all-knowing God who will punish us if we do not cooperate with and interact fairly within wider social circles, the authors hypothesize.
MINE OR YOURS?
To test this idea, they played a couple of games with people from far-flung locations around the world. Specifically, the research team enlisted the help of 591 people from Brazil, Fiji, Mauritius, Siberia, Tanzania, and Vanuatu; their religious beliefs included animism, ancestor worship, Buddhism, Christianity, and Hinduism. Led by Dr. Benjamin Purzycki, a research fellow at the Center for Human Evolution, Cognition, and Culture, the team conducted extensive interviews before the games began.
To play, an individual participant was given money and a two-color die. The researchers instructed the participant to roll the die and drop some coins in their own pot if one color came up. However, if the other color came up, the money was supposed to be placed in a pot for an unknown person who shared their religion in another community. In a second round, the participant was to drop coins into either the cup of a local co-religionist or a distant co-religionist. No one watched as each participant played the game.
Counting the coins in each pot, the researchers discovered participants in both games were more likely to play by the rules and dole out more coins to others if they believed in a god who knew about people’s thoughts and behavior, and punished for wrongdoing. By comparison, those who believed in a god who rewarded good behavior were not quite so equally inclined to play fair.
Based on these results, Purzycki and his colleagues say religious beliefs may have been a major contributing factor in the development of highly complex social organizations. Apparently, fear of supernatural punishment helps us remain on the earthly straight and narrow.
Since the origins of agriculture, the scale of societal complexity has dramatically expanded while cooperation increased as well. According to the authors, communal agreement, most usually stimulated by genetic relatedness, reciprocity, and partner choice, should falter, not bloom as people increasingly deal in fleeting transactions with unrelated strangers in large anonymous groups.
So how did the large-scale cooperation we see today develop?
For that we can thank the belief in an all-knowing God who will punish us if we do not cooperate with and interact fairly within wider social circles, the authors hypothesize.
MINE OR YOURS?
To test this idea, they played a couple of games with people from far-flung locations around the world. Specifically, the research team enlisted the help of 591 people from Brazil, Fiji, Mauritius, Siberia, Tanzania, and Vanuatu; their religious beliefs included animism, ancestor worship, Buddhism, Christianity, and Hinduism. Led by Dr. Benjamin Purzycki, a research fellow at the Center for Human Evolution, Cognition, and Culture, the team conducted extensive interviews before the games began.
To play, an individual participant was given money and a two-color die. The researchers instructed the participant to roll the die and drop some coins in their own pot if one color came up. However, if the other color came up, the money was supposed to be placed in a pot for an unknown person who shared their religion in another community. In a second round, the participant was to drop coins into either the cup of a local co-religionist or a distant co-religionist. No one watched as each participant played the game.
Counting the coins in each pot, the researchers discovered participants in both games were more likely to play by the rules and dole out more coins to others if they believed in a god who knew about people’s thoughts and behavior, and punished for wrongdoing. By comparison, those who believed in a god who rewarded good behavior were not quite so equally inclined to play fair.
Based on these results, Purzycki and his colleagues say religious beliefs may have been a major contributing factor in the development of highly complex social organizations. Apparently, fear of supernatural punishment helps us remain on the earthly straight and narrow.
The reality is that Mankind causes most of our own suffering by hurting each other. This point was very well conveyed in the following song which was the number one biggest selling single of 1995.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zICb-9m2dGA
The greatest obstacle to human progress is not a technological hurdle but the evil inherent in ourselves. Humans have knowledge of good and evil and with this knowledge we all to often choose evil. Ethical Monotheism and God offer us a framework for overcoming this evil.
Religions trail well behind in the development of ethical and moral frameworks. The secular thought is leading the pack. Always had.
Religions simply are forced to adapt and accept the reality. Some, like Islam, are centuries behind, others, like Christianity, are decades behind.
Accepting women or gays as church leaders/priests or performing abortions would get you killed everywhere on the planet just a few centuries ago.
Christianity did not stop people from burning other people (heretics) at the stake. They were doing it until late 18th century.
Legal, secular frameworks work quite well and are easy to change. Unlike the religious dogmas.
Of course, you neglected to mention the atheism religion... which has been around since people became able to hypnotise themselves out of believing in reality.
