The thing you find most incomprensible about religious people

[Draconis]

Okay, post up the one thing (if you can narrow it down to one!) that you find most incomprensible about religious people.

For me, I think it is the way they pray to God for something good to happen - if it happens, then hear the cries of "God is good", etc. But if it doesn't happen or something bad happens instead - they don't generally go around cursing God, shouting at the sky and telling him what a scoundrel he is. Instead they go back to church and tell him how great and wonderful he is.

I just don't get it.

 

[Keith&Co.]

The constant need to hold two standards in mind.
They love to compare God to a Father. But if a father either threw his kids into a furnace or, as they insist, let the kid throw himself into a furnace, they would be quick to judge him as criminal. God gets a pass. Each and every time, for each and every crime.
Either we're not worthy to judge God (which they do every time they say how good he is),
Or god can't be compared to humans (which they did when they explained 'hell' as being like having to ground willful teens),
Or some other weasel-wording. I can't understand it.
If it's a dick move, it's a dick move.

 

[Brian63]

How they can find out about all the other gazillions of other gods that people believed in throughout human history that are not actually real, and it never occurs to them to think "hey, maybe mine isn't either."

Brian

 

[Sarpedon]

The fact that it is SO OBVIOUSLY A SCAM TO TAKE 10% OF THEIR MONEY!

 

[braces_for_impact]

For me it's the excuses. I mean, they call it apologetics for a reason.

I have watched page after page after page of threads where excuse after excuse is made for the belief in question. Then they come back for another debate, and another, and another! I have watched theists literally use hundreds of excuses at a time. Doesn't it at some point make one examine things internally when you have to continually, constantly provide rationalization for a belief you hold? Especially when those rationalizations simply have no basis in fact, but in hoping that it's true? Isn't that a clear signal that something isn't right with your world view? What a stunning lack of self awareness.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

What I find most incomprehensible is when they speak with disdain about the stupidity of other religions' beliefs. I remember one guy I used to work with who was slagging the Norse creation myth for some reason and going on about how dumb it was that anyone could think it was true. A couple of weeks before that, he was conversation with another guy about how the Flood is historically accurate.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

For evangelical Christians, their a la carte attitude to the rules in the Old Testament. They'll fight to death over some of the rules, but ignore others as being not important any more.

 

[ideologyhunter]

Brian 63 hit it squarely, squarely, squarely on the head. I remember teaching about the Aztecs in 5th grade social studies (20 years ago) and finding myself describing their religion as one based heavily on blood sacrifice... and realizing how absurdly primitive that sounded... and realizing how drenched in blood sacrifice the Bible is. Blood sacrifice to a demanding god is actually the core tenet of Christianity. For god is love.

 

[Kharakov]

I find it incomprehensible that religious atheists don't understand their side of the dichotomy- it's like they have a blind spot centered on their own method of thought. Ok, I'm lying, I don't find it incomprehensible.

 

[Kharakov]

Brian 63 hit it squarely, squarely, squarely on the head. I remember teaching about the Aztecs in 5th grade social studies (20 years ago) and finding myself describing their religion as one based heavily on blood sacrifice... and realizing how absurdly primitive that sounded... and realizing how drenched in blood sacrifice the Bible is. Blood sacrifice to a demanding god is actually the core tenet of Christianity. For god is love.

What's wrong with blood sacrifice? Just do it with atheists so you're not wasting souls.

 

[Rhea]

The one that is incomprehensible to me is the description and set-up of "heaven" alongside of an earth. It just makes no fucking sense at all to me and it's incomprehensible to me that they accept it. A place of _no_suffering_ where you spend eternity, possibly while your kids burn in hell; And not only that, but a place that some arrive at having suffered on the earth, sometimes horribly, while some arrive at having just been conceived but failed to implant, yet somehow it's an important step to have had access to the possibility of suffering, or something. Meanwhile, how did they find out about all these features, anyway? And decide to believe them?

Just a major, monumental plot-hole.

 

[Brian63]

Another one---

Lifelong atheist here, generally in the closet about it and pretended to be Catholic with the rest of the family, just because it was not socially okay to not believe in God.

Then I went to college and saw some people my own age that were obviously devout Christians themselves, and not just outwardly pretending to be Christian like so many people do, but they really believed what they said, and it got me interested in learning about it more. So I read some apologetics, notably C.S. Lewis's "Mere Christianity" and started seeing how this Christian religion could actually be reasonable after all. Then I read the Bible for the first time, and that illusion ended. What a shitty book. The God in it was a self-centered, abhorrent, monstrous, revolting prick. I just wondered how many of the people that advocate for this deity and this book have actually read the damn thing. Very early on in the book, I also remember just thinking "wait, this thing is describing a TALKING SNAKE, and I am supposed to believe the things it says are true?" (obviously some theists will say it is not literal...maybe other key parts are not literal either though, like Jesus being a god incarnate, or a god existing at all...they just have not considered that possibility before). So I really wish more people that called themselves Christian and put this book on pedestals (figuratively and literally) and treated it as an object of worship and complete subservience would actually read the damn thing for themselves.

A common atheist phrasing---

"If more Christians in the world actually read the Bible, there would be a lot less Christians in the world."

Brian

 

[Atheos]

To me it's the disconnect between "Good vs Evil" and who ends up going to Heaven vs who ends up going to Hell. A person could be a serial killing child rapist and end up going to Heaven because he accepted Jesus and was forgiven while a really nice individual who never harmed anyone else would end up in eternal torment for no other crime than being unable to bring himself to believe the absurd stories in the Bible. The vast preponderance of Christianity places a high premium on what you think and very little on how you behave.

 

[Brian63]

To me it's the disconnect between "Good vs Evil" and who ends up going to Heaven vs who ends up going to Hell. A person could be a serial killing child rapist and end up going to Heaven because he accepted Jesus and was forgiven while a really nice individual who never harmed anyone else would end up in eternal torment for no other crime than being unable to bring himself to believe the absurd stories in the Bible. The vast preponderance of Christianity places a high premium on what you think and very little on how you behave.

Yes. On top of that we are not judged by just what we think and believe as a general stance throughout our life as a whole, but rather what we think and believe in that last nanosecond of our life on earth. Whatever you believed and did in the 99.999999999% of your life before that is irrelevant, it is only in the moment of your death that counts towards where you end up for the rest of eternity.

Brian

 

[Unbeatable]

Religion, as far as I can tell, is merely a particularly visible institutionalization of the same collection of cognitive biases that pervade humanity in general. Although I am generally unable to empathize with the behavior of its adherents, I wouldn't say I find it incomprehensible.

 

[bigfield]

What I find most incomprehensible is when they speak with disdain about the stupidity of other religions' beliefs. I remember one guy I used to work with who was slagging the Norse creation myth for some reason and going on about how dumb it was that anyone could think it was true. A couple of weeks before that, he was conversation with another guy about how the Flood is historically accurate.

Ditto.

This is exactly the reason why I was atheist even in as a kid: I read about Greek, Egyptian and Germanic mythologies and folklore alongside Christian mythology and I just lumped them all into the same category of 'made-up stories'. So I have always felt that the mythological nature of Christianity should be blatantly obvious.

In retrospect I realise that my upbringing was entirely irreligious: I never went to church, never had anyone in my family try to tell me any of that bullshit was real. Secularism for the fucking Win.

 

[Brian63]

Like a lot of young kids, I was into comic book characters and super-powered beings at the time and thought how cool that all was, particularly the X-Men, and Justice League, and Avengers, etc. They were fun stories to read and watch on Saturday mornings, though obviously fictional. These supernatural and miraculous stories involving God and Jesus that I heard about on Sunday mornings were just as obviously fictional as the comics were, but for some reason we were supposed to believe they were real.

Also, I thought the superpowers of the various X-Men characters were very cool (along with other comic book characters, and even the villains in those stories), but never for a moment thought I should be worshiping those characters even if they were real beings. They are just creatures with physical powers that others of us do not have, and some beings used their powers for good and some for evil, and some were more "grayish." Why should I worship a god and Jesus though, because of the physical power it has over nature, and its power to create beings and other life? If some comic book character had those same powers, I would not automatically think I should worship such a creature. Why are we supposed to do so with God though?

Brian

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

To me it's the disconnect between "Good vs Evil" and who ends up going to Heaven vs who ends up going to Hell. A person could be a serial killing child rapist and end up going to Heaven because he accepted Jesus and was forgiven while a really nice individual who never harmed anyone else would end up in eternal torment for no other crime than being unable to bring himself to believe the absurd stories in the Bible. The vast preponderance of Christianity places a high premium on what you think and very little on how you behave.

I wonder whether this was developed as an apologetical fix. It solves the issue regarding the scales of good and evil, where you have your deeds judged and you can go to hell because of a hairline infraction that just put you over the top on the bad side.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Why should I worship a god and Jesus though, because of the physical power it has over nature, and its power to create beings and other life? If some comic book character had those same powers, I would not automatically think I should worship such a creature. Why are we supposed to do so with God though?

Brian

Because he is the alleged creator, the father of all things. Kind of like a parent, there is a higher bar in which one judges such a relationship poorly.

But certainly, in the Torah, God is most certainly an old school vengeance god. His actions are often not defensible. So these days, you have a hard time looking the other way. But back then, you needed an uber bad god to be your banner. These days, the God of Moses isn't valued by most, except religious extremists.

 

[Underseer]

I find it incomprehensible that religious atheists don't understand their side of the dichotomy- it's like they have a blind spot centered on their own method of thought. Ok, I'm lying, I don't find it incomprehensible.

Our own method of thought?

We're just using logic and philosophy. All from the same tradition that started with the ancient Greeks and was contributed to significantly by many Christians. "Our" method of thought should not be alien to you at all. You just don't like the fact that properly applied, these tools do not support any of your truth claims.

Rather than admit that your truth claims are poorly supported, it's easier to claim there is something wrong with our reasoning. After all, if we had good reason, we would arrive at the same conclusions you do, right? So something must be wrong with the way we arrive at conclusions.

After all, you don't understand how the universe came to be, therefore magic.

You don't understand how consciousness came to be, therefore magic.

Math is an absolute truth, you don't understand how absolute truths can exist, therefore God.

Except math isn't an absolute truth, and even if it was, that wouldn't prove god. The teleological arguments are just argument from ignorance fallacies. The cosmological argument is wrong at pretty much every step of the way. The ontological argument is the most desperate sort of wishful thinking. Your holy book doesn't prove anything anymore than any of the other holy books from other religions prove anything. Your special feelings and "special relationship" don't prove anything anymore than the special feelings and special relationships of other religions prove anything.

Every argument that has been tried fails in profound ways, but it's easier to just declare us to be wrong than to try to be the first theist to come up with a good argument.