Just look at the symptoms.
What is the one thing that Religion wants to spread the most? They want us all to know that we are all sinners, the world is ending, God is all powerful, our lives will be terrible without him, and that in order to be saved we must submit to the will of God.
We are people who will exclaim to the world how much we love God. We love that in his infinite benevolence He has granted us reprieve from the torture of the Devil. We identify with Jesus and his plight to forgive sin through his own sacrifice. We find favor with God in order to be saved from sin. We are willing to do ANYTHING to promote God and his plan for eternal happiness. We become martyrs, we devote our lives to religious service, we give Him 10% of our earnings, and we sometimes circumvent laws in order to serve God and spread his message. In extreme cases we will kill our own family members, wage holy wars, and commit divine suicide. All in the name of God.
Allah Akbar! God is Great! Shahad Shahid! I will become a martyr for God! Praise the Lord! May angels surround you! Only God is worthy of such praise. God is perfect! I wouldn’t want to live in a world without God!
The upstart ‘Gods’
Yes it is a combination of Stockholm Syndrome and the Batter Wife/Husband Syndrome where you/’slave’ ‘forgive’ your sadistic ‘master’. This is why in its extremes the followers of these absurd belief systems can become incredibly sadistic. Think the ‘Holy Inquisition’ and Zionist, Muslim terrorists blowing people up, And cutting their heads off! But we must look as to WHY this sorry system continues hooking millions through generations. I personally have chosen to explore the answers via exploring comparative mythology. I have found hat these toxic myths have anciently sup-PRESS-ed more ancient connective mythologies which saw and felt nature to be spiritual. What the ‘God’ myths do is abstract spirit from nature and then there’s constant need for blood sacrifice and renunciation. And do not forget the mechanistic myth of modern times. This myth totally dispenses with any notion of spirit, And de-grades all, Including you and me to being machines. Its central social-controlling myth is the myth of mental illness!
Save Your Soul…
…Is a loaded statement. First it implies we have a soul. Then it implies a threat and a reward. “We’re born sinners”. Right from the start the hostages are being blamed for their situation. The only way out is to love the hostage taker. The hostage taker can do no wrong in the eyes of its hostages. Classic stockholme syndrom
God–the ultimate captor????
Definition of Stockholm Syndrome: “feelings of trust or affection felt in certain cases of kidnapping or hostage-taking by a victim toward a captor.
Argument: Religion teaches all things come from God, in the beginning there was only God, etc. This means everything wonderful comes from God, But so does everything horrible. If you glorify and praise God for saving you from the horrors he has created, you are totally a victim of Stockholm Syndrome.
When you praise God for delivering you from the devastation of a tornado or hurricane, you should be cursing him for sending it in the first place.
Stockholm Syndrome or sociopath. Pick your poison.
All mainsream religions have a God that condones rape, slavery and genocide. The ideology is morally bankrupt. Their holy books have explicit passages defining rules for slavery and women are treated as property. EVERY type of theist that I’ve debated has flatly refused to admit that their god condones it despite the clear passages in their holy book (Torah, Bible, Qur’an). Try leaving the Islamic faith. You’ll be killed. What is a fundamentalist? Someone that follows their holy book to the letter. So what does that say about the book? About the ideology? Apologists that are not extremists generally live under secular laws. So they can’t rape, enslave or kill according to their holy book. These people are the problem. They are the ones promoting a batshit crazy ideology that clearly endorses immoral behaviour yet behave as though they have the moral high ground because they are religious. Despite the fact they follow secular laws not biblical. For an intelligent human being (which there are plenty that believe in a religion) to conclude God is good, they must have some form of Stockholm syndrome. Otherwise they are somewhere on the sociopath spectrum. We are currently going through a phase of even atheists apologising for Muslims? Tough questions need to be asked. If you subscribe to an ideology that condones rape, slavery and genocide you have to be held accountable. That doesn’t mean Muslims, Christians etc should be attacked, but we have to be honest and stop being complicit in terrible ideologies
The Cosmic Tony Soprano
A god who eternally condemns imperfect humans (imperfect through no fault of their own) to eternal torture for being theologically in err is certainly not a loving, forgiving god that I would want to know, let alone grovel before. And this eternal torture is for a life that only lasts for 60 or 70 years, more or less. The punishment seems a tad extreme – quite the overkill.
Christianity is tantamount to a celestial protection racket. What’s worse, according to the Bible, god allows us to be born into this life of automatic condemnation KNOWING THAT MOST PEOPLE WILL GO TO HELL ANYWAY (Matthew 7: 13-14).
At any rate, the god of the Bible endorses misogyny, slavery, infanticide and genocide. That anyone in this day and age (or ever) would want to worship this barbaric, Iron Age god is a testament to the fact that all people desperately need comfort and order in an often harsh and chaotic world and life, and that some will do or believe ANYTHING to mitigate that harshness and chaos.
To conclude, the vast majority of Earthly parents accept and love their imperfect children without resorting to threats of torture if they do something wrong (or telling their children that everything they do, even the good things, are worthless). Apparently, most of us are more moral than the god of the Bible.