Faith of God or man? Why does it matter?

Religion needs to claim to be inspired and guided and set up by God.  Otherwise it is just pseudo religion and superstition.  Man has no right to lay down religious laws for anybody.  Religion thrives best on the kind of people we have in our society - people who lack concern for whether a religion is true or not.  The Muslim and Catholic religions cannot both be from God or authorised by him. Or both might be preaching religions of man and man has no right to order anybody to do anything on religious grounds - only God can have that right and even that is debatable. If man has no right to dictate he has less right if he thinks he can dictate for God if God has no such right!  God has no needs and rights are based on needs so God has no right to judge us and is failing to love the sinner and hate the sin if he judges us.  He is just being arrogant and spiteful and hypocritical.

 

Man makes mistakes and can mistake immorality for morality. Mistakes mean you do not know you are wrong and may never know.  That is the bottom line - man-made religion by default has to cause moral problems.  This will not happen all the time but it will happen.  That is why there is no justification for deliberately colluding with man-made religion.  It is taking advantage of the mistakes of others and thus adding more problems to the problems.  What does it say about you?

 

Paul said no law can touch you if you are led by the spirit so he would have included Jewish law in this. See Galatians 5:16-25.  That by implication is enough to show he was against gay sex or the promotion of homosexuality.  The Jewish law like the Code of Hammurabi was severe against it.  

God alone is inherently good therefore his revelation of himself cannot be inherently good. The risk of idolatry is huge or preferring things about him to him.  There may be no risk - it may just be inevitable.  If God does not exist then the worship of God is inherently bad.  It is idolatry with the idea of God being worshipped as God.  If the revelation of God is false and God is real then the revelation is inherently bad.

Virtue is about your character – the kind of person you are, what you are as a person. If you are kind, you are kind as a person. Selfish virtue is when you are in a manmade or corrupt religion and work to be virtuous as if it does not matter what effect the religion or its faith has on other people. It is not virtue at all but a dangerous copy. With virtue it is easier to go from shameless vice to virtue than it is to go from fake virtue to true virtue. You end up not seeing how bad you are. If love the sinner and hate the sin is not possible or achievable, it is evil less possible and achievable if you are religiously and spiritually corrupt as you “flourish” in a religion made by man. If it is possible then it is never possible if you follow the religion of man. Only God has the right to create a religion. Indeed it is only a pseudo-religion if man makes it. Man has no authority to lay religious rules and doctrines and obligations on anyone unless God tells him.

 

Christianity says that God guides you to faith which is why it calls it a supernatural gift from God. This means God helps you see the light. Christianity recognises that there is such a thing as natural faith which is faith that is not directed or given to you by God.
 
So God can reveal stuff supernaturally. That does not mean anybody believes it or will believe it.
 
Then if you are open to believing, he must inspire you to accept what he has revealed.
 
So giving the information and giving you faith in it are two separate jobs. They are two graces or gifts.  They are two supernatural actions.
 
For faith to be good, it must be about the truths given by a totally loving God and must be a response to that God's grace. Any one of these being missing means that your faith because it is human can be harmful. It would be irresponsible to make such faith strong. It is irresponsible to say that believing is an obligation and growing in belief is an obligation. A man-made faith making obligations is saying you should suffer if you do not accept it or accept it enough. Such faith is already bad even if it never progresses into bloodshed.

 

Religion says God gives it revelation.  Revelation looks like the work of a bad spirit not God. It is bad in principle and the content is another bad thing. And the contradictions are another proof that it is bad.

 
Faith doesn't restrain

 

Faith and religion are glorified in the world because they allegedly do not cause people to kill. That is hardly a good way to endorse religion!  And as for murdering and killing, they do but some people ignore that fact. If your faith does not cause you to kill people of other religions that is hardly anything to boast about. If you go and kill them the problem then is how your faith did not restrain you. Your faith does not need to tell you to kill to be harmful. If your faith is human in origin it has no inherent power to keep you from doing evil.

The useless vaccine
 
The Bible boasts of wars and prosperity under Kings David and Solomon but that is just cynical political propaganda.  It is not appropriate material for a really good or holy book.  Even if the wars were necessary we have no way of being sure of that.  Even worse are the commands from God endorsing evil or violence.  Many of the things that God said are actually lies and lies lead to corruption and violence for they are the sea they swim in.  If the Bible does all that and is not from God then that is a disgrace and believers cannot be allowed to get away with saying it is the word of God.

 

If Christianity had a history of violence and nothing in the Bible or Church doctrine can be read as endorsing or condoning any violence, it might seem to be okay for Christians to say, "The sinners are to be blamed not the Church or the Christian faith". The question then would be why the faith does not improve people. It could be said that the faith is untrue and as even well-meaning error has its dangers and leads to more error that this is why the faith accidentally paves the way for many of its members to become evil. It is like a vaccine that causes more problems than it tries to solve for it does not work.
 
Faith in Christianity stresses the power of divine grace and repentance and even the Bible has tales about evil people who became holy overnight and were like different people. The Christian faith then gives people hope that evil people can and do change suddenly. Christians stay in evil forms of the faith as if a miracle conversion is around the corner. They tell themselves it will happen. But this attitude in practice leads to enabling evil. The faith helps Christians to lie to themselves that change will happen in the right time and they say it to themselves in order to feel better about enabling. They use it lie to themselves that they are not enabling. If such magical conversions were common, they would be innocent of enabling. But they never happen much if at all! Also, if you are bad, it serves you well if you can get people to think you have changed overnight!
 
Faith is essentially the hope of better days. It is no wonder it is so easily used to encourage evil. Faith is needed but most kinds of faith are not. They cross a line. There is a difference in just feeling things will work out and in thinking that God will do a miracle soon and fix it all.
 
When religious people see horrendous suffering and death, they say God lets it happen. They hope there is a plan for it. But God never promised that the plan would be that wonderful because trying to make it incredibly rewarding might not be possible. The divine plan could be that making people slightly more moral than what they are now through the plan - it could be the only option. Many people undoubtedly don't mind God letting terrible things happen as long as others, especially people who are hated or disliked, are affected. They feel that it is okay when God does this and they are glad they are not doing it for they consider themselves too superior and righteous to do them. They are proud and smug and have condescending hearts. The part of us that likes it when somebody hurts our enemies or those who we hate so that we don't have to hurt them and dirty our hands is at work.

 

Freud said that all belief is anti-intellectual. It must have been Catholicism gave him that impression! Even if your belief is based on reasoning and evidence, you could still be anti-thinking. For example, if you decide that the evidence shows there is a God and you refuse to reconsider that evidence you are being anti-intellectual. To use the intellect a bit does not make you pro-intellectual. It is what you want to believe that matters to you not the evidence that got you to believe.  Belief even if not always anti-intellectual and anti-truth risks being those things which is why evidence and careful thought is necessary when forming beliefs.

 

If one person dies as a result of their brand of faith the brand of faith must take responsibility for this. The brand of faith can’t so it falls on those who are believers or who say they are. This responsibility entails agreeing that it is better for a type of faith not to exist than for somebody to die for it. This is not the same as saying faith should not exist.  We all have faith but not all have faith that cares about gods or religion.  Specific faith is our subject here.

A faith that kills anybody or leads to anybody's death that is from God is a problem but it is a little more of an excuse than a faith that is of human origin in source and/or content.

 

The Bible itself says that belief in God is only necessarily good if that belief involves faith as in not human belief but as in divinely inspired belief and a gift from God. James the apostle in his New Testament letter said that the demons believe in God and tremble and because they have belief but won’t have faith that is why they are demons. So belief in God is not necessarily good and can be evil.  If faith is evil then considering how evil masks itself it could be that even if God does give the gift of faith that nobody takes it but simulates it.  Maybe most or all in the Church are doing that.

 

The advice given by some that if you don’t believe then practice the religion and you will – act yourself into belief – is immoral. It is immoral in itself for you can do that with any religion and thus if your religion is true you are not in it because it is true but because you manipulated yourself into it. It is also immoral for what if the religion is wrong?  Do you want to believe in a false man-made faith?  Do you want to actively or indirectly be an inspiration to others to participate in this faith?

 

Liberals and politicians make out faith is a great thing but even the Bible says it is not always.  It has to be from God or there will be dangers.  It can get in the way of the gift of faith - a person can make do with a human Christian faith not a divine one or one that is gifted by God.   So faith and God are not necessarily friends.  People have a right to know if their religion is false and liberals and other liars only fog the issue.  In the light of how there are millions who want to deceive but zero who want to be deceived by them we cannot let ourselves be silenced.

 

Rejecting faith in God is really rejecting what man says about God and thus it is rejecting faith in man. It could also be rejecting faith in God but it does not have to be.