PROOF THAT BELIEF IN GOD HARMS

 

RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD

 

Belief in a loving God you can have a relationship with is harmful.

 

It seems to have some benefits. These are not enough to justify encouraging it. And the benefits might be triggered by the person's own attitude to God rather than God himself. And if a person's life was vastly improved just because they thought they were getting strength from talking to their teddy bear and worshipping it we would look on that person with pity and as unwell. We would not take joy in their joy. So why discriminate and approve when it is God they have instead of the teddy bear?

 

The relationship is a delusion. As God has all power, nothing is really able to defy him - it may only seem he is defied. It follows that we sin because of him and not against him. That total dependency on God means a relationship just cannot happen. A true relationship happens between equals and beings who have an adequate measure of independence from each other.

A mature relationship only exists between a person who communicates with you properly. Christians think that God manipulates their feelings and thoughts to communicate with them. Some imagine that he does signs for them. For example, if the Bible falls open on a page about marriage they take it that God approves of their impending marriage and advises it. Such communication from God is fallible. The Christians only take it seriously when it suits them. It is a case of them deciding what God says rather than letting God speak for himself. That is not communication.
 
PUTTING GOD FIRST IS BAD

It is said that it doesn't matter what you believe as long as you are a good person.

That has its limits. If you refuse to examine your beliefs and grow in knowledge you are not the good person you seem to be. Your beliefs do have an effect on your emotions and actions.

 

Strive for the best truths.

 

Loving God first and foremost is not justified. Yet religion makes it law that we must put God first. Religion finds the fact that the rule isn't justified very offensive. It does not want to hear it. It will respond that if there is a God then he deserves to be put first for he is good in himself and good to us. The implication is that the less we are interested in God the worse we are inside even if outwardly we do a lot of good. The implication is that we must love God even if it destroys us. Religion usually denies that it will destroy us but that is it trying to evade the force of the implication. It still thinks we should adore God if it hurts us.

 

A truly good person does not infer such a thing as putting God first because the evidence for such a great God is insufficient.

Believers say that God has the right to punish sin. So it is possible that when you suffer that you are being punished for sin. An atheist never has the slightest suspicion that a sufferer is being punished. A believer may say to person x, "You suffer it is true. But I know God is not punishing you." That is quite frankly a lie. The believer cannot know it and in so far as he doesn't know it he suspects it. To tell such a lie is to say, "God, you may be punishing. But I intend to stop this person realising that. I don't care that if punishment is to be fair, the person must be helped to see that it is punishment." It is not about the believer helping the person but about helping himself come across as sweet. It is not about respecting God so it is disrespecting him. To fail to respect him who deserves all respect is always disrespect.

The Handbook of Atheist Spirituality mentions the proverb, “The opposite of faith is despair”. It amends it to, "The opposite of faith is cheerful despair". This refers to the capacity to be happy even when death and awful suffering is around the corner. You know you have to face them. There is no hope of avoiding them. But you don't let that absence of hope make you sad. You can be like the person who enjoys today for they know they will die a horrible death tomorrow. The person who does that is manifesting the strength of their mental health. Religion and God urge people to keep hoping. They block that strength.

 

God necessarily comes first. As he has all power, he cannot be hurt by mere creatures. God coming first makes it follow that it is more important to confess your sins and apologise to him for your sins against another person than to confess and apologise to the person. Your sins cannot hurt him for he is almighty. A system that makes it imperative or more imperative to repent sin for a God that cannot be hurt is evil. It is a slap against the offended person. It implies that if you have no time to apologise to both then apologise to God.

 

Christianity seeks to induce an addiction to God for it says we must love him with our whole heart and being. Happiness is being able to control your needs and avoiding enslavement to those needs. The doctrine of God endeavours to cause an addiction. It reduces freedom.

God is an infinitely good and infinitely attractive personal entity. God and the concept of God should produce an addiction to God. To promote the concept is to try and make people addicted to God. If people are addicted to one thing they can stop this addiction only by finding another one. For example, alcoholics may find God and become religious extremists. Or it could go the other way. A God-addict can give it up as long as a new addiction such as alcohol or drugs is found.

 

To think that it's good to be addicted to something like God rather than drink is a hideous thing. It is saying, "I don't care what addictions you have as long as they are not antisocial ones or as long as it is a religious one." God people want you to be a slave to their God addiction and hope to guarantee that you will become one.

 

Belief in God implies that we do not exist to be happy but to be righteous. The Church says it is better to be righteous for all eternity rather than happy for all eternity. Those who try to enjoy God and hope to enjoy him forever are really deniers of this teaching.

 

The atheist who does good while believing there is no heavenly reward or no God to reward is a far more noble person than the one who believes there is a God who will reward.

 

People mostly believe that love is a choice. Surely then if that is true the choice matters most. It matters more than love or God. God then cannot be that important. It would be evil to say he is. No wonder Christianity and God-based religion are such failures.
 
GOD AND ARROGANCE

All life’s happiness comes from the thought that great evil will not happen to me. This is arrogance. I can’t be happy without being arrogant. I can’t be happy unless I renounce God and put myself in his place.

 

The atheist and the believer alike have the arrogance. The believer makes the arrogance a gift from God. He says God assures him that he is all he needs and there is nothing he shall want. "Goodness and mercy all my life, shall surely follow me" so the hymn says. But at least the atheist cannot be suspected of pretending to honour God by attributing his arrogance to God's agency.
 
HATING SIN

 

People with low self-esteem will hate themselves if they hate sin. If they are not religious, they will rise from low to higher more easily. That is because they do not worry about what God thinks about them. God gives people something extra to worry about as if they do not have enough. It is bad enough to feel guilty say about hitting your child than to get the added burden of feeling guilty for offending God by hitting your child.

We tend to berate and hurt ourselves and let others hurt us because we feel we are imperfect. This is a human trait. Believing in a perfect God who we must obey can only make this worse.
If you believe people hurt God by being sinners you will find it harder to like them. It is easier to like somebody who hurts a person who has loads of faults than it is to like a person who hurts somebody wonderful - and God is supposed to be wonderful.

 

Psychologists say that religion can be dangerous if the person fears that God will hate them if they do wrong or sin. In fact, many people love being hated. They treat their enemies badly because they enjoy making them hate them more. They love the frustration and anger that torments those who hate them.

 

If somebody is upset by others hating them, it speaks of their own insecurity and vulnerability. They are afraid of being hurt.
 
THE GIFT OF LIFE

 

God owns us and our children. Christians reason that he has the right to kill us and our children because we are his. If so then our life is not his gift to us but his gift to himself. God cannot give you the gift of life for you and take it back for a gift will be yours not his. What pleasure is there then in the doctrine of God?

GOD-OREXEIA

 

Today, we live in an age where young girls see airbrushed images of perfect actresses and models in magazines who seem to have been starved almost to death. The young girls feel inadequate and unattractive as a result. There have been many instances of holy women, female saints and beati who have felt like nothing in the face of God and treated themselves accordingly. They fasted until starvation, they deprived themselves of sleep until they saw visions, they beat themselves and rolled in nettles etc. They were worse off than modern girls. Modern girls forget that the images are often airbrushed and the models waists are digitally slimmed down. But for a girl who believes in God there is no mistake. She really is nothing compared to him and yet he demands great things of her. Imagine what that can do to her if she has the predisposition to hurt herself like girls who feel inferior to the airbrushed beauties can have.
 
TRUST IN GOD IS REALLY TRUST IN YOU NOT HIM

 

To trust that God helps you and your loved ones is really to trust yourself. You trust in your own perception of God as trustworthy and this perception and belief is your own creation. Trust in anybody is indirect trust in yourself. Since God is supposedly perfect, it follows we are to trust him and not ourselves. This nasty doctrine prevents you seeing how much you trust yourself. It is not healthy trust. It is an attempt to rid yourself of trust in yourself.

 

You make your God. Therefore you believe that at some level that it is you who answer prayers and who sends protective power to your loved ones. That can have bad consequences when your loved ones suffer and die. You will think you made it happen or let it happen.
 
FAITH IN GOD ROBS YOU OF REAL SELF-CONFIDENCE

 

It is said that if you believe that God is your friend and is using his unbelievable power to help you and protect you this will aid your self-confidence. But that is you making yourself feel safe not because of some power outside of you but because you believe in this power. The trust is based on deceit and lies have a habit of being uncovered. It's not healthy confidence. It is a crutch.

 

Believers have to teach that God has to let you be hurt so that it may benefit others. He could ruin your self-confidence for that. Believing in God means you believe you are at the mercy of this being to have self-confidence. It's up to him if you get it or not or if you keep it or lose it. The end result is not confidence in yourself at all. Would it be real confidence if you needed a pill to make yourself see yourself as confident? No.

 

The notion that God gives confidence is delusional.

 

Real self-confidence comes from you and not from dependence on some crutch or outside power. True self-confidence will not be shattered by rejection from God or others. It will still be there because it is your own creation.

 

The clergy manipulate the people into imagining they need God. They do not. The clergy are doing a vile thing in trying to fool the most vulnerable among the people. Their doctrines about God and other things merely make it harder for people to win the self-confidence they are entitled to.

Religion claims that we need God for he keeps us alive and in existence. If he really is a good parent, he will not destroy us ultimately just as a good parent lets their child live no matter how evil he or she may be. So us needing God to exist does not necessarily mean that we need to be chummy with him or that we can be. If we do, then this is an emotional need he has put in us. That however would be extraordinarily manipulative. He would be using us not loving us by doing that.

Faith in you alone is the cause of the love you bring into the lives of those who meet you and who share your life. Faith in God is a block. It is to blame for all the evil done by his followers. As for the good, they were going to be good anyway. Religion or faith cannot take the credit.

It is a fact that life can be wonderful. There are millions of facts that would make us feel wonderful if we only knew of them. But there is something more important than facts. If we have the wrong attitude to good facts then they will do us little or no good. So the attitude is what comes first.

For an atheist, what you are like inside is your own business. As long as you don’t let it cause you to do harm to others. God religion is stricter than that and wants the heart changed. This violates the rule that religion must never be put before people.

 

Catholicism claims that everybody has a God. For some its money. For others it is sex. For others it is fame. And so on. Catholicism says these gods are false gods and substitutes for the real God. Such a declaration presupposes that everybody seeks God. Everybody in other words seeks the God of Catholicism. He is supposed to be love because he is three persons who love each other so much that they are one God. This means he is not the God of Islam which sees God as a unitary individual. To the allegation that we all seek God, we answer that it is intolerant and condescending to say that others are not their true selves and have not got the chance to reach their true potential if they are not worshippers of God or not Catholics. Being condescending is a symptom of intolerance in itself.