IF GOD DOES NOT CORRUPT THEN BELIEF IN GOD CORRUPTS

God represents the view that you must trust he exists and what he allegedly reveals. This goes with him being the only origin of all things and being honest and perfectly loving. He has countless secrets and secrets are a danger to truth. The argument then that we do not know all truth so we can believe that a revelation is from God is invalid. There are more likely to be false revelations than true ones. Man is more likely to pretend that God has said x y and z than God is to really reveal.

Most followers of God if not all are only pleasing God because it pleases them. It would be a stupid god who would be happy with that! The doctrine that all are sinners hints at how people tend to use God or their idea of God to serve themselves. So no loving God would give revelation through man or hearsay. No loving God would send his son to talk to us directly and then leave us having to go to men to learn what he talked about.

Deism assumes that God creates all things but is uncaring and thus does not communicate. But what if he does? If he does, then he could truly have founded say Christianity though it is a pack of lies. Even if a revelation comes from a higher power it does not mean it is really telling us the truth. It could still be untrue.

Arguments just from authority are useless and the worst of all. Nobody uses them in good faith. To say that concentration camps are good because Hitler says so is not different in kind from saying that dairy is bad for you for some teacher says so. The content and the consequences differ but both are equally deference to authority. You cannot say it is irrational to listen to Hitler if you are listening to some authority too be it benign or sinister or stupid. The argument from authority is about power and manipulation. In its worst form, it is men pointing to God as authority rather than themselves. And of course they are the ones telling you what God wants!

If there is no God then the authority of clergy, popes, prophets, religious terrorist leaders and Messiahs is illegitimate. They do not have the authority to give you God's word or to channel God's blessings to you and give you orders in the name of religion. They do not have the authority to sell you books and services and to take your stipends.

It is interesting that God's word is revealed practically speaking to clerics. Messiahs and prophets are clerics in their own way. The people have to go to the clerics for them to discern what God has revealed.

Man tells you what to think of God. You take man's word for it that he really got revelations from God. Man always judges morals and doctrines to see if they came from God. Religion is human opinion pretending it is not. It pretends to be God's work. In that sense, God is what man wants to think he is.

In 1973, a Stanford University experiment showed how moral people soon abandon the morals when they are given power and authority. Religions leaders get spiritual power and influence and will lie and hurt people to protect this power. That is why you can show a theologian his core teaching is wrong and he will seem immune to the truth. He will not change for he is lying to himself.

Man says God revealed himself to man. Man must be wiser than God when man is able to decide if God is talking to him and if others are able to decide the man is right. There is no real humility in a prophet no matter how well humility is simulated. If you want power over people and the feeling of power, there is no greater ego buzz than getting people to think you are God's spokesperson. The atheist does not think that God sent him and the believer does. Such arrogance!

Nothing needs divine inspiration unless it is a mistake or it is a lie or unless it wishes to force or pressure you to believe. You are expected to accept doctrines not because they are believable but because God says so. True respect for you means you will be given the tools to decide for yourself.

We have only a prophet’s word for it that God revealed to him or her what he or she says. The whole thing rests on faith in the prophet. That is bad enough when it without evidence, but worse when it is against all the evidence which is available. And religion makes the prophet untestable for it says that sometimes outlandish testimonies can be true and this is the testimony of God. Nobody can ever prove that a prophet did not in fact hear something that claimed to be the voice of God. Religion takes advantage of that fact too. It even argues that God is in a position to give commands that seem harsh and mad for he alone knows why they are needed.

Religion tells people that if its members and leaders let you down then not to give up for the religion is about God and not them. Now you know that is not true! A man-made religion would say that anyway. It is horrendous how the Catholic Church in particular manipulated people to keep using the Church for sacraments and worship and give it money in the wake of the universal clerical sex abuse cover-up in the Church. It told them the Church is about God. If the Church is man-made then the Church was fooling those people. If they intended to worship God, they failed. They worshipped God as created by man.

God and religion are simply masks. Man cannot claim to be God so man does the next best thing - claim to be inspired to speak for God. Though we are not to condemn something just because it can be abused, we can condemn religion for the harm it has done because religion is an abuse. Let me explain.

Hearing a voice does not mean it is God’s and only God can know if he is really speaking. Even the person who hears cannot be sure but can only guess. If anyone claims to be hearing the voice of God and giving his message to others he is a liar. To think that you don’t know where the voice comes from means it is not from you is arrogant. It is, “I don’t know where this inspiration comes from so it comes from God.” It makes no sense. By spreading your message you inspire a worse arrogance in others. X has a voice in his heart or head and doesn’t know where it comes from therefore it is from God. The more your faith in a prophet is based on hearsay the worse the problem gets.

In the light of man's involvement in alleged communications from God - they are only ever alleged - it is man who tries to come up with explanations for God allowing evil. It is man's word we take for it. That is so repulsive and is repulsive because of the magnitude of human suffering.

God supposedly asks for us to be virtuous. A being that asks for virtue from us is not necessarily virtuous itself. It may not be a good being. Believers forget that if God is not violent he might still be bad. It may be that violence is not his thing and his tricking you to have a relationship with him based on lies about what he is really like is his thing. Are believers guilty of believing God too easily? Yes. That impacts on believing what man says about God. The word of a God who may not be trustworthy is a problem and if he speaks to man it should make you trust the message even less. So being a revelation does not make it right to believe it. Also, if the message does not come from God but from some other power it follows that something being a revelation does not make it reliable.

The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 14, "Now, brothers and sisters, if I come to you and speak in tongues, what good will I be to you, unless I bring you some revelation or knowledge or prophecy or word of instruction? Even in the case of lifeless things that make sounds, such as the pipe or harp, how will anyone know what tune is being played unless there is a distinction in the notes? Again, if the trumpet does not sound a clear call, who will get ready for battle? So it is with you. Unless you speak intelligible words with your tongue, how will anyone know what you are saying? You will just be speaking into the air." Yet why is all claimed divine revelation so hard to interpret and engage so much controversy and even bitter division that leads to blood being spilled? Because an unclear revelation is a human scam and not a revelation never mind a divine revelation. Simple.

1 Thessalonians 2:13 says that the word of the apostles is really the word of God and is not to be accepted as a human message. This is pretty clear that liberal Christians who water down the Bible's teaching into something vague and open to too wide of an interpretation are frauds.

If absolute freedom corrupts even the best then we can be sure that those who claim to tell others what God says and thus declare their word reliable as if they were God are being exploitative. It will get worse. They get into the most private thing that many people claim to have an inner spiritual life. It is about the ego of the preacher. They see how bad things can happen after prayer so they will surely try to use prayer to kill and maim their enemies.