The Surreal Christian Theology

Do you think theology is difficult?

Imagine a parallel World where you are a tourist for a lifetime.

Many inhabitants worship parallel superheroes. They do everything they can to make other inhabitants worship the same superheroes.

The superheroes are more or less omnipotent, omnipresent, all knowing and eternal.

They deliberately hide themselves from every human attempt to establish any facts about them.

They use one single book to make themselves known. There are competing books and the followers have to decide which book they shall validate.

People have to decide on which book is true and which other books are false. The population are without objective clues to guide them. 

One superhero is "lust liar"  and do what he can to lead the population to a wrong decision.

The "good" superhero is a three-headed character.  It is called the Trinity Compound

One head is a human charity character.

Another head is a terrible force which will kill humans who see it's face, as well as all the people who don't see its face and fails to see it's great super character.  They can only be saved by praying to the human charity character.

The third head is an invisible ghost character which has done one single act once upon a time: It impregnated a woman with the genes of the terrible head to make the human charity head.


How would you resonate to make a decent choice?

An introduction to the faith market

An introduction to the faith market

You may have a pick from several gods.

Since god is about faith, different cultures and ages have or have had different faiths.

One god, many gods, false gods, ancient gods, false faith and right faith. Since none of them are definable or detectable it is correct to call them imaginary or illusory. But with no full definition available, and work still going on to sort facts and fiction, it is impossible to totally prove or disprove religion.

Some are seeking a truth in Allah, others in Jahve, which both are Abrahamic middle east religions. There is a more recent spin off religion of Jahve: The Trinity Compound of figures, or the Trinity God

But there are many more…..

Learning methods

Preaching and brainwashing

Many talk about god or gods, some talk to God

Some pray to God

God is mentioned on old scrolls

Some believe that the truth about God is in words, some that God is the word,

Religious rites

Confessions, baptism, confirmation, sacraments, promises and holly days and events

Juridical and political

Some states have a state religion and more or less slack when it comes to what is encouraged and discouraged

Religious Bonding methods

Social pressure and incitement

Family, congregation, society friends, commitments

Economy and workplaces

A market for religious pieces of art, artefacts, books, services, conferences, revival sermons, gifts, collections and tithing, social work and voluntary work

Deterrence and humiliation

Some groups keep files or registers on their members and apply antiquated internal justice like manipulation, expulsion and/or punishment as means for religious upbringing and education.

Threats and fear

Threats about perdition or burning, painful hell

Life threats and Terror against abortion clinics and their staff. Harassment and assaults on particular targets, like gays and transgender.

Some groups even sacrifice themselves in random attacks on public places to spread their message, to stop what they call evil, false, faithless, or whatever reason they use.

Positive reinforcement

Some actually preach peacefully, but seemingly get less attention.

Humanitarian work

Charity and missions

Education

Forgiveness and mercy

Why you should careful with faith:

Faith is usually based on antiquated logics, or no logic at all.

God never show up in personal to explain or excuse his acts, or absence of acts

God usually demands to be believed, worshipped and accepted for whatever whims he has. What makes it even more hard  is the absence of proof.

Gods usually keep a very totalitarian profile. They make the rules, judges and executes alone and without mercy. and the followers on earth tend to copy their god’s autocratic regime

God cannot be understood

Cannot be seen or sensed in any way

No definition exist

No generally accepted proof or counter proof

Effect of god

No observable acts of god

No verifiable miracles

Dubious claims of miracles

God's help

No visible response to prayer

No receipt message

No healing by prayer

No help in crises

No socio-economic effect from faith

People who hear god's messages receive psychiatric treatment

People who talk to god in public places are regarded as deviant and queer

Humiliation

Confession, atonement

Behavioural change requirements

Role models, work on being like somebody else

To sum it up: You cannot be good enough being yourself

Reliability

You cannot count on God as we can count on the laws of nature.

God cannot be used to anything practical like you can rely on your neighbour or your friend

Manipulation

Faith makes you vulnerable to manipulation, suppression and economic exploitation

Churches and religious leaders can make a fortune on their followers

Unpaid work

Petitions and collect

Tithing

Busting the God Illusion

Version in Norwegian

Busting the God Illusion

God is important to some people. But nobody has ever offered any of the three: A definition, a factual presentation, or a proof. Proving can have two implications: Making a formal proof and/or testing if it holds what is promised, or the opposite: Busting a myth. 

Because language is an inaccurate representation of both reality and logic, a formal proof seems a hard mission. But following the facts to see where they lead is not difficult at all. The real proof is in the real world. It is not in any of the words.

The understanding of concepts are not always clear and may have subtones and connotations. Words are only hinting about the reality they refer to. So keep focused on the truth beyond the point words can ever represent reality.

Abstract

You choose to believe God true, instead of displaying true facts on God. That is called faith without proof.

The god you chose was just one of several.

Your certainty that your god is true, it is hardly more than a wish.

The word faith implies personal conviction and unverified information. Making a claim of knowing a truth based on faith is a self contradiction.

Yet faith is an essence in religion.

Formalising a theology, a structure for teaching of others, accepting confessions, testimonies, offerings as well as building formal societies and churches offers faith an inflated value.

As a consequence your faith appears being a self deception, and your God a myth. Possibly, there are several other words available to describe both faith and god. But words along the lane of truth and reality are not appropriately applied here.

Validity and limits:

The following reasoning is valid if there is an objective reality. That is an assumption which I don't need to prove first, because if that is incorrect it logically opens a fasttrack to the conclusion that there is no objective or real God. It also requires that we locate ourselves to this reality we call real world. I don't prove anything for parallel universes.

However, it seems to apply whichever known God you invest your life in.

The premises:

1 You chose one book, one truth, one God over any other option. The chosen truth is dubious of several reasons.

You may have taken the wrong choice, however, because:

2 There are always at least two other options:

a) another book/God is true. b) there is no God is true.

3 Even the no God option, which you also didn't choose may be an error. We don't need any of the alternatives to be true to make a conclusion on god.

The no god option is based on the absence of available god facts. The god option makes up some unavailable god facts. Making up facts is kind of cheating.

Summing up available facts on god:

-No means to perceive god.
-Acts of god cannot be discerned from acts of nature.
-No conclusive evidence to support the existence of god.
-Only verbal descriptions and testimonies available.
-Most reliability checks on the testimonies conclude with a rather low credibility. They cannot be confirmed and they cannot be followed up with contemporary studies and examples.

One of the most important services a god is meant to deliver is blessing in this life, maybe even a little bit of good luck, good health, long life. But none of such are found to be real facts

But, yet, a lot of people believe in such.


Building a conclusion:

I don't need to prove that there is no good reason for your faith. Both the words faith and belief refer to a reality without available facts.

But people in religious cults all over the world worship their God, serve their God, pay offerings to God. Educate their children in their faith. Take political action based on faith. There is a whole business economy based on religion. Some people are willing to commit crimes to follow the laws of their god.

So definitely, without any apparent reason, some people take God as a fact of life.

No real world manifestation, but a strong distortion of the perception of truth. So faith is about fake truth!

But don't let the words distract you from seeing the obvious. The words are just abstract symbols for reality and there are many other words available where they come from.

But there is a reality which is not really changed by the words. Even other words cannot fix the discrepancy between facts and fiction here.

I shall discuss other available words under the header "Consequences" below.

Discussion and conclusion:

Belief in god is unsupported by facts. It is so much taken out of thin air that we can call it illusory. Why people willingly flock behind an illusions can just be guessed.


But we are close at drawing a conclusion on what god is. No reason to believe that God is real, but it could be wrong to call god unreal.

He is kind of made "real" by faith, he is a spiritual state of mind, he is a motivating factor in politics and several political regimes. so god has some indirect effect.


But the true essence of god is an ability to notoriously escape verification. No facts proves god real, but still he is imagined and praised. He has the character of a phantom, something mythical but without substance.

For the moment that seems to be the closest we can get to catch the essence of god. And the true essence appears as hollow emptiness. It is a theory without real hold.

Consequences:

I have used words as phantom and illusion as well as some other words for your deviation from the confirmable reality.

Other fitting words I could have used will all imply a departure from facts and reality. Consequently descriptions with words like honest, omnipotent, great, powerful, loving true or real will definitely be rather unfit to describe the reality this is about.

But omni present is probably not ruled out.

All the appropriate words on faith in god will probably reveal a dishonesty to yourself and the ones you teach your faith.

If you teach god to your children we could say that you misguide them. That is an evil thing to do with children. But again, other words may be just as appropriate. But you cannot pick words which make it appear sensible and honourable because there is a reality the words need to apply on.

So don't take my words for it. Let the facts guide you to the proper words.

Closing

I have used the personal pronoun l and you.
I am a self-proclaimed atheist. You are an imagined opponent representing any other real person who believe in any of the existing gods.

Faith in god is not about just one god. Geography and culture are rather decisive for god preference, and multi cultural societies have very often a god preference which follows subcultures and families. Early learning and a massive influence in favour of one particular god could be a reason for disturbed reality perception. It can have a similar effect as brainwashing.

A free and liberal pursuit of facts and truths may not be an available option for everybody.