Religious belief is inherently arrogant

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Free From Religion
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Religious belief is inherently arrogant

Post by Free From Religion »

Although most religious people I meet are not obviously arrogant, and often comport themselves with humility, the fundamental ideas behind the monotheistic religions are inherently arrogant. The belief seems to be as follows: There is one superior being who created the entire universe. Every one of the hundreds of billions of galaxies, each one of the trillions of stars. The immense distances, the incalculable numbers of events unfolding all the time; all are part of the creators plan. Billions of years pass. All of this extraordinary development is for us. One species of primate on a tiny rock in a random solar system of a random galaxy. All this happened so the creator can help you find your car keys while children are starving to death on the other side of the world. Not only is it extremely arrogant, it is immoral and completely uncalled for. I find it rather depressing that people don't stop to think of the implications of their beliefs. Anyway, I am up for a debate on any topic concerning science and religion, or the truth of a religion, or evolution. Things of that nature. If anyone would like to debate, let me know.
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thebestofenergy
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Re: Religious belief is inherently arrogant

Post by thebestofenergy »

One of the most arrogant and selfish thing, in my opinion, is the belief that God created us in his image. This gives people the excuse to think they're somewhat special and important in the universe.
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Re: Religious belief is inherently arrogant

Post by TheVeganAtheist »

ive spoken about this very topic in some of my videos. The theist believes they are the entire point of creation, and that everyone and everything (animals included) are here for our utility. I cringe anytime I hear a theist claim that atheists are arrogant to disbelieve in a god.
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Re: Religious belief is inherently arrogant

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I am glad (and not surprised) to see that you agree. People like Bill O'reilly go around claiming that scientists are arrogant because they claim to have all the answers. Poor dumb bill! The opposite is true! Scientists admit they don't know, while most religious people claim to have all the answers. This is one of the profound ironies in religious vs. atheist discourse. I've yet to meet a person who can rebut my original post successfully. Here's hoping haha
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Re: Religious belief is inherently arrogant

Post by Free From Religion »

thebestofenergy wrote:One of the most arrogant and selfish thing, in my opinion, is the belief that God created us in his image. This gives people the excuse to think they're somewhat special and important in the universe.
Yes I agree with this. It also reminds me of one of the first ideas that led me on my path to atheism. An understanding of evolution utterly destroys the belief that we are created in God's image. Why would god be a human, or even be humanoid? What use is a human body for a being which existed before matter (which doesn't make sense anyway). On top of that, the biblical god has human emotions! How can a thinking person believe this? To me it seems painfully obvious that these holy books were written by primitive people who didn't understand very much about the universe.
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brimstoneSalad
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Re: Religious belief is inherently arrogant

Post by brimstoneSalad »

That's all well and good, it is arrogant, but that's not really a strong argument against the validity of their beliefs.

A theist might say: "It's not arrogant, it's just true. I trust god's word, not my own opinions."

It has yet to get at the heart of a strong argument against theism; it's just a subjective impression of the practice.
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Re: Religious belief is inherently arrogant

Post by Neptual »

I've had conversations with theist that tell me that I should keep my "devils work" to myself. It's funny how theist tell atheist to not spread the word then afterwards ask people to attend church service, the hypocrisy is off the roof with most of them.
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Re: Religious belief is inherently arrogant

Post by brimstoneSalad »

dan1073 wrote:I've had conversations with theist that tell me that I should keep my "devils work" to myself. It's funny how theist tell atheist to not spread the word then afterwards ask people to attend church service, the hypocrisy is off the roof with most of them.
Their view is basically: "It's good to tell people about Jesus and God, it's bad to speak against Jesus or God"

So, they're being consistent with that view- not hypocritical, just very narrow minded and ignorant.

It is a social double standard, in the sense that they want to spread their opinions, but want to stop you from spreading yours, or judge you negatively for doing it.
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But a double standard is not in itself hypocritical- it's just a comparatively unfair treatment of a fundamentally similar (but not identical) class of ideas.

It would only tend to be hypocritical of them if they, themselves, spoke against "Jesus or God", with respect to their own standards and beliefs.
Or if they held something like: "all ideas should be equal and people should be free to share their opinions without judgement"
And then proceeded to contradict that by judging you for spreading your own ideas against Jesus or God.

Christians rarely do the former, but do occasionally do the latter.

However, if you ask them, they probably don't agree with that suggestion that all idea should be treated equally.
Most Christians don't actually believe in free speech, or think it is a good thing.

You may see their statements as hypocritical if you have assumed that they agree with the above sentiment about the equality of ideas and freedom of expression without judgement, but without demonstrating that inconsistency, the charge of hypocrisy may be unfair.


I don't even agree that: "all ideas should be equal and people should be free to share their opinions without judgement"

When people say stupid and evil stuff in public (like a lot of Christians do), I'm inclined to tell them to STFU and not share their bad opinions, while I continue to speak mine. I don't think they should go to jail, but I do think ridiculous beliefs should be ridiculed- they should pay an immediate social price for sharing those beliefs.

My evaluation of what's stupid or not just happens to be a bit more informed (while of course not perfect) than that of those Christians.

I treat bad ideas with contempt, and good ideas with praise, discouraging and encouraging the speaking of them respectively. Is that a double standard? In some sense, yes, because they're both ideas; in another sense, no, because they're radically and demonstrably different kinds of ideas. Either way, I don't have a problem with that.
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Re: Religious belief is inherently arrogant

Post by revankatal »

meh... I tend to be more NON VERBATIM of the bible when it says things, to believe in God also means to believe you can never understand Him. Whatever is in his head will never fit in yours not by a long shot.

ANALOGY: my 3 year old son, no matter how I try will never understand that the milk hes drinking came from a store, and I bought it with money, which I earned from working at my job, a job I only have because I studied it. and that milk comes from a cow, that was processed in a factory, then canned, then advertised on tv. hence convincing me to buy it and feed it to him. -- you want to understand God? LOL -- which is what most religious leaders tend to do, and i despise this completely, I'm a firm believer of God I'm not a firm believer of the MANY (nut not all) retards that say they represent the God I believe in.

SO.. what do I think? #1 evolution TOTALLY TRUE: the ability of God's creatures to adapt to environments, to change randomly due to random changes in genes - I'm pretty sure He put that there for a reason. to continue. the earth is 6000 (or something less than 100,000) years old coz the bible says so... WHEN DID IT SAY THAT? the earth and the universe is BILLIONS UPON BILLIONS of years old. and yes were new. God made the heavens and the earth in 7 days, YOU THINK THAT'S HUMAN 24 HOUR DAYS? really? come on, a second to God must be like 100,000 years to us.

Now how does it come together, lets start... in the beginning there was only God, then He said LET THERE BE LIGHT sound like the big bang theory to me....

IF YOU CAN THINK, THEN THINK. IF NOT THEN I WAS WRONG ABOUT THIS PLACE AND I SHOULD SERIOUSLY LEAVE, DEBATING IS ABOUT PROVING YOU ARE RIGHT NOT ABOUT PROVING THE OTHER PERSON IS WRONG - i am eager to hear your thoughts
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Re: Religious belief is inherently arrogant

Post by Neptual »

revankatal wrote:meh... I tend to be more NON VERBATIM of the bible when it says things, to believe in God also means to believe you can never understand Him. Whatever is in his head will never fit in yours not by a long shot.

ANALOGY: my 3 year old son, no matter how I try will never understand that the milk hes drinking came from a store, and I bought it with money, which I earned from working at my job, a job I only have because I studied it. and that milk comes from a cow, that was processed in a factory, then canned, then advertised on tv. hence convincing me to buy it and feed it to him. -- you want to understand God? LOL -- which is what most religious leaders tend to do, and i despise this completely, I'm a firm believer of God I'm not a firm believer of the MANY (nut not all) retards that say they represent the God I believe in.

SO.. what do I think? #1 evolution TOTALLY TRUE: the ability of God's creatures to adapt to environments, to change randomly due to random changes in genes - I'm pretty sure He put that there for a reason. to continue. the earth is 6000 (or something less than 100,000) years old coz the bible says so... WHEN DID IT SAY THAT? the earth and the universe is BILLIONS UPON BILLIONS of years old. and yes were new. God made the heavens and the earth in 7 days, YOU THINK THAT'S HUMAN 24 HOUR DAYS? really? come on, a second to God must be like 100,000 years to us.

Now how does it come together, lets start... in the beginning there was only God, then He said LET THERE BE LIGHT sound like the big bang theory to me....

IF YOU CAN THINK, THEN THINK. IF NOT THEN I WAS WRONG ABOUT THIS PLACE AND I SHOULD SERIOUSLY LEAVE, DEBATING IS ABOUT PROVING YOU ARE RIGHT NOT ABOUT PROVING THE OTHER PERSON IS WRONG - i am eager to hear your thoughts
First of all your argument for saying that one second to god is around 100,000 years to us just isn't correct. We know know that days are counted by the Earth's rotation around the sun, this means that even if god made the earth it would still have to evolve around the sun thus creating a single day as we know it. And if god really wanted us to be sure about how long it took for him to create this Earth why not say the exact number of years it took if your theory is correct. It's pointless to try to interpret something that can be interpreted into anything. The Bible is one example of this.
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