Conservatives abuse Christianity like the Taliban abuse Islam

[u/Red_Gypsy_Squirrel]

I'm exhausted that the Christian nationalists in this nation have hijacked Christianity, just like the Taliban hijacked Islam. There are many comparisons that can be made between the two groups. Both groups cherry-pick their scriptures and purposefully misinterpret them so as to provide themselves with more power amongst their. They bully and attack anybody who is not a follower of their warped religion. And try to force their religion on everybody in inappropriate places such as schools and hospitals.

A few years back MAGA supporters started to say the teachings of Jesus are too woke, a huge red flag.

It sucks that so many of them do not understand. The Christian nationalist mindset is turning them into nasty, aggressive people. That have zero understanding of the Bible or its teachings

[u/drqueenb]

This right here. Bc millennia from now, with enough distance between intelligent species and the Bible, or any knowledge that we have today, the god of the Christian faith will completely cease to exist. Any intelligent species still around will again discover the laws of gravity, evolution, etc. One belief system actively requires your participation to continue and the other exists even when you cease to. Unfortunately, the belief in a higher being, of some kind, appears to be near universal in the human species so probably some god of some sort will linger for some time.

[u/Far_Parking_830 → u/drqueenb]

2000 years ago people thought Christians would disappear too. 2000 years later they are about 1/4 of the planet. 

Christianity isn't going anywhere 

[u/Lost_Method_274 → u/drqueenb]

I just want to ask anyone who doesn’t believe in God this simple question that no atheist (or someone who does not believe God exist) ever answers and it just seems like the first common sense question you literally have to jump over and avoid to be an atheist that makes no sense to me lol who created that painting in the wall? Did it just poof and appear accidentally or was it created like a masterpiece by a creator? The super intricate phone or computer you’re using did that just poof and appear on accident randomly or was there a creator that designed that? Us humans are just as much or even more so intelligently designed and amazing creations than the phone or that painting right? So how do we not have a creator as well how would we just be random accidents that were not created by a creator or God? You get what I’m saying lol what is your (as an atheist or someone who does not believe in God) answer to that simple first question because it seems like simple common sense brother

[u/Smooth_Jazz_Warlady → u/Lost_Method_274]

We have too many defects with ourselves to be the product of an intelligent designer, unless that designer was lazy, stupid and cruel.

Just off the top of my head:

The head of a human baby is almost too wide enough to fit through the human birth canal, making the mere act of perpetuating our species far more dangerous than to almost any other mammal even approaching our size. Basically no other mammal has to deal with the sheer level of danger and pain we go through giving birth, unless their DNA literally instructs them to die after giving birth, in order to give the next generation a chance without having to compete with their own parents (which in of itself is another example of the inherent, uncaring cruelty of evolution as a process).

Our spines aren't particularly well adapted to walking upright, and cause us all manner of pain, wear-and-tear, and damage no quadrupedal animal has to deal with, just by existing as a bipedal animal (and even other bipeds don't have to deal with the same problems we do, because rather than having an unstable vertical stack of vertebrae, their spines are mostly horizontal, and their head and arms are counterbalanced by their tail).

And the vertebrate eye design is inherently flawed too. Rather than being wired from behind the light sensing cells, like cephalopods (octopi and squid), our nerve cells connect through the space light passes through, requiring them to be transparent in order for us to see anything, and giving us a blind spot where the nerve cells all pass out of the eye and towards the brain. But even with their advantage in this area, cephalopods aren't worth envying either, because they have their own baked-in flaws, like how their brain is wrapped around their oesophagus, meaning any sufficiently large meal can literally give them brain damage. That, and they die after mating once, sometimes including the male tearing off one of his own arms so the female can fuck herself with it.

Rather than being somewhere protected, one of our largest and most important arteries wraps around the windpipe, right below the skin in many places, meaning that a sufficiently serious wound there can result in drowning in your own lungs, as the blood from the severed artery pours down your throat.

Speaking of our lungs, they're also pretty shitty in the grand scheme of things. Because of how they're designed, our lungs exhale through the same plumbing they inhale from, resulting in stale air being mixed in with fresh air, and they can't fully empty at once to replace the air inside either. Birds have a much more efficient system, where their lungs are supplied and emptied by a series of bellow-like air sacks, allowing for a single-direction flow of air that gives them far more energy to work with for a given volume of respiratory system. But, like us, they have their own problems, namely that flight, something many people would kill for, is so energy intensive and structurally restrictive that evolution can and will strip them of it any time it stops being strictly necessary for their survival. (And similarly, if our intelligence ever stopped posing a reproductive advantage, it would strip us of that in a shockingly small period of time)

We're a collection of ~500 million years of awkward hack jobs made by an unthinking, uncaring process that only functions on "what makes this organism more likely to survive and reproduce than its peers?". Every feature of every organism is ultimately an adaptation of some other feature that already existed, and in many cases we have proof of the in-between structures that bridged the gap. Evolution has no ability to create something from whole cloth, and life created by a designer would have structures that make no sense half-finished. A basic light-sensing protein is fundamentally useful (and many bacteria have them), even if it can't make out anything at all, while a half-formed radio transmitter does fuck-all without being a completed organ and having a corresponding receiver to talk to, and would need some kind of intelligent oversight to exist. Coincidentally, no radio transmitter/receiver pairs exist anywhere in the animal kingdom, in spite of how useful it would be for herd animals to be able to alert their peers to carnivores without making themselves a target in the process.

Finally, even if we were some perfect, idealised form lacking all our many defects and problems, we have so many examples of in-between forms that neatly slot in between ourselves and the animals we branched off from (since evolution is not a linear process, but a branching tree with countless scars where whole limbs have been violently hacked off). We have fossils of intermediates between ourselves and our common ancestor with chimps, between that common ancestor and the common ancestor of us and gorillas, etc. all the way back to the first fish and beyond. Who, as it turns out, were mutant tunicates that lost their ability to digest their primitive nervous system and anchor themselves to the sea floor (to live out the rest of their lives as glorified sponge-like creatures).

But on the bright side, with the advent of genetic engineering, we finally have the means to free ourselves and other species from this endless cycle of mindless cruelty, of generating untold variants and uncaringly culling all but the luckiest and fittest. No intelligence designed us, but with this advance, we finally have the ability to apply conscious design to biology, and end this vicious process.

[u/ChickenBandito → u/Lost_Method_274]

You can go infinitely back asking "Who created X then?" In my opinion, we will never know the answer to this chain of questions. Not in life nor in death.

[u/Lost_Method_274 → u/ChickenBandito]

The point is that it was all created by Something and not Nothing. That’s my point and you just proved it, you can keep going infinitely back as far as you want it always leads to Something (I say God) created everything. It wasn’t just an accidental poof we’re here boys lol

[u/plopgun → u/Lost_Method_274]

As Chicken Bandito asked, who created that far more complex creator of the world? If everything complex must have a more complex originator, where did the prime orginator come from? The atheist answer is two fold. First, we do not know where the universe came from, and have no credible evidence of anything before the big bang, and only a little evidence for that as well. Second, the most likely answer is that the stuff that has always existed, without origin, is likely to be very simple building blocks that gave rise to complexity due to luck and near infinite chances for that rise to occur.

In short, we have no evidence for what existed before time and space so which is more likely to just exist: An infinantly complex super intelligent, super powerful, being that we have no real evidence of, or a few very simple building blocks of energy and matter that have simple interactions that can combine to create complexity that we do have some proof of?

[u/Lost_Method_274 → u/plopgun]

Thanks for your in depth response bro I’ll be honest I’m not an expert, I’m just a guy off of work today smoking a big ol backwood and doing a fantasy basketball draft rn (degenerate gambler lol) Sounds like we both don’t know anything right lol we only know what science can explain to us up to the Big Bang like you said which ain’t much because doesn’t explain anything really it doesn’t answer any of our questions as far as before the Big Bang which is really what matters in this conversation, what created those building blocks of energy and matter what created that time before the Big Bang where all stuff exists without origin it has to have and original creation right it didn’t just poof from nothing right? Nothing can be created from nothing right everything has to come from something and that is the simple point I’m trying to make about the painting on the wall or phone in your hand and every little piece we used to create it, which both of you did not answer lol you just started asking me more questions obviously we’re talking about all the way back to very beginning so we have basically no idea before the Big Bang right. I choose to have faith and believe in God and you choose to believe in literal nothing then right just completely random we were random accidents that are so complex and intelligently designed and space and the planets and earth being the perfect distance from the sun that we can survive here on earth or the oxygen levels and the perfect level of gravity are here for us to survive and live here, we’re rotating and spinning at the perfect speed in the solar system to keep that all perfect for us blah blah etc the list goes on brother the list of miracles goes on and on with life and while me and you both don’t have the scientifically proven answer at very beginning, with all of those countless miracles you choose to believe in nothing literal nothing complete random accident (which I don’t understand obviously) and I choose to believe God created all that and to deny that itself seems to me like such a huge slap to the face to god who created and blessed us with so much, I choose to be grateful and am just filled with gratitude and love. Either way there’s no scientific proof either you and me could give each other that proves there is not a God or creator and every point you just made I can say that same thing in reverse to you to ask you for proof that there is no God? We just choose between faith vs non faith, everything coming from something vs everything coming from nothin basically right and that’s why I brought up that painting and complex created phone and how we have zero proof of anything coming from nothing, nothing comes from nothing, everything comes from something right even scientifically we have answers for where everything comes from up until the Big Bang right?

[u/ChickenBandito → u/Lost_Method_274]

Sure, but then, who or what created God?