Religion is a Mental Illness

If your god was real, wouldn't human discoveries advance closer and closer to it? So why are we further away from it than we've ever been, and why is it more vague, imperceptible and allegorical than it's ever been?

Not metaphorical. Immaterial. It’s very concerning that the two can be mistaken for each other. Also, human discoveries do advance closer to god, you just have to look a little harder. The pursuit of the truth is telling enough. For what purpose do people pursue knowledge of truth other than to reach for truth itself? Why dedicate yourself to true things while denying truth, the very reason why you’ve concerned yourself with the true in the first place? Can we really call an advance in knowledge such without reaching for truth when knowledge is so intimately and inherently linked to truth? You can’t know a lie, there isn’t anything to know. Therefore knowledge must only be concerned with truth.

This begs the question, what is truth? By truth, things are knowable, truth is the process by which something is understood, the equation of thought (the idea of something) and thing. Knowledge is carrying out this process. The ability to know necessarily comes from an intellect, because the senses do not perceive ideas, only things.

Since we make discoveries, we can therefore determine that these things, which existed before and had to be true before, must have been known before, since the relation of a thought and a thing is necessary for something to exist. Nothing can exist without an idea, and an idea is a product of an intellect. For example, a house does not exist unless an architect has thought of the idea of a house and then built it. Therefore there must be an intellect from which natural things come from, like a rock. God, if you will. Since God carries out his own existence, he thought of his own idea and applies it to himself via truth, he is his own act of understanding, so he must be truth.

Humans have come plenty close to a god. Socrates. Plato. Aristotle. Augustine. Aquinas. Many, many others. We are further away from a god because of a lack of study of god rather than a lack of god. Society being far from truth doesn’t make truth any less true (or relevant for that matter). The roar of the crowd cannot change reality.

Is God vague? Not if you view it from the right angle.

Is God imperceptible? Not if you don’t limit yourself to the world of the senses.

Is God allegorical? This doesn’t mean anything. What would God stand in place of? Plus, humans learn best when it is first introduced to them by allegory. Aesop’s fables to understand facts of human nature or morals. Counting on your fingers to familiarize yourself with the concept of numbers. Plato’s ‘city’ as a way to see big justice in order to understand small justice.

Why would the nature of something be reliant on our own perspective on it?

This is such empty nonsense. It sounds profound but doesn't say anything.

No, believers themselves tell us that "it's a metaphor." It's one of the key apologetics for the obviously false tales of Genesis that contradict known reality. When they tell us that the creation is a metaphor because the human species and other animals arose through evolution; that Adam and Eve is a metaphor because talking snakes and a deity so stupid that it punishes humans for not having the knowledge of right and wrong that it denied them; that the Noahic Flood, the Tower of Babel, and the Exodus are metaphors because we know that they never happened... that comes from believers.

That is, believers themselves tell us that the bible isn't actually true.

More devastatingly, they've told us that Jesus either was a metaphor or died for a metaphor. Because if the Adam and Eve tale isn't literally true, then Jesus serves no purpose. Especially given the (contradictory) stated genealogies given in the scripture which claim Jesus to be of direct, traceable descent from Adam. The descendants of a metaphor are themselves metaphorical.

So, you're arguing against a strawman from the get-go.

More importantly, saying your god is "immaterial" is the same as saying it's metaphorical. If your god can't be detected, measured or the footprints it leaves on this universe can't be detected or examined, you have no basis for asserting it exists at all. If it's some kind of "other" substance, then you need to justify that. You don't just get to rename "nonexistent" to "immaterial" and sail on through.

You're forgetting: you are the one asserting that you can know it's there. You have certainty. You claim to know the existence of what you assert as "immaterial." So, show your work. How did you detect the "immaterial"? Throwing up smoke and mirrors to hide the bogus nature of your method doesn't protect you. It's reason to be suspicious of you.

That's for you to prove, not to pretend that it's the flaw of others to not accept what you have refused to justify.

It's up to you to prove the truth of your claim, not to simply assert it because it makes you feel good to assert it.

Truth is whatever statements can be shown to be true, that is, in accordance with reality. The truth of a statement is adjudicated by evidence. Evidence is a series of facts that are either positively indicative of or exclusively concordant with one hypothesis over any other.

Facts are points of data that are either not in dispute or are indisputable in that they are objectively verifiable. They can of course be denied by someone who wishes to be disingenuous but that would not affect the fact that they are independently verifiable facts

The repeatedly and independently verifiable nature of facts demonstrates that they are not a matter of personal opinion but of objective physical reality external to the individual.

This is utter nonsense.

Truth is a conclusion. You just using the word "truth" repeatedly doesn't make something true. That's a fallacy called "argument by assertion."

Saying "by truth, things are knowable" means that you start with what you assume to be the "truth" and then "know" things as a result. you start at the conclusion and you work your way backwards. This is intellectually and morally dishonest. It means you can never discover an error or that you could be wrong. And given the number of god-claims out there, chances are that you are.

You don't get to call your thing "truth" without laying out the evidence and justifying why it singularly and uniquely points to your conclusion and your conclusion alone. You don't get to assert it and then insist it's up to us to find the evidence. Especially when you start from the presupposition of your god, and it's your claim and your burden.

By your own admission, "truth" means the presupposition you started with, it's not something you reasonably concluded. We can therefore begin with the premise that it's not true and ignore you until you do the work of justifying your claim.

More empty gibberish.

Please consult a dictionary before firing off this kind of weapons-grade blather.

This is a common mistake and I would normally skim over it, but you've been so obnoxiously pretentious that I'm going to point it out to demonstrate what an intellectual fraud you are. "Begging the question" does not mean "makes me wonder this next thing."

https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Begging-the-Question

So, you pretending to lecture me in this vacuous pseudo-profound way, when you can't even get this right, is kind of hilarious.

Truth must be shown, not asserted.

But then you even admit that it can't be regarded as factual, because it's not verifiable. And is immaterial. And you still wonder why we don't believe your claims.

Translation: You can't find my god unless you already believe in it.

Translation: My god is perceptible if you ignore reality.

This is where you've rejected the notion of the existence of your god as a fact. It shouldn't require a believer to find your god. Indeed, you later go on to assert that the decline in god belief is essentially a moral failing. That means isn't verifiable by anyone, only by those of the in-group. Which shows where the problem lies, and refutes any claims to factual status.

All you have is your senses. But that's not the limit of human ability to find and gain knowledge, and yet there is no scientific endeavour that has found any "god" or any sign nor requirement of such a thing, and yet you want to insist that your perceptions are somehow even further and more reliably attuned than the most finely calibrated instruments humanity has ever built, which are discovering black holes and even planets being swallowed up by the destruction of their stars.

But you won't share it. You won't give this new form of detection to the scientific community, explain how it works and let them test, validate and implement it. It just seems like you don't want to have your process actually checked. We just have to trust you and your completely unbiased, reliable perceptions. Con artists take the same approach, by the way.

So, what, are you detecting your god's aura? It's thetans? What substance, what effect, undetectable by anyone but you, are you using to validate the existence of the same god that your parents told you about?

(I thought you guys say you're sinners; doesn't seem like we should blindly trust someone whose identity is wrapped around being unreliable, incomplete and prone to malfunction. You seem to be suggesting that you're the one believer who is not.)

The cosmological arrogance and dishonesty here is remarkable. But what you're saying is that, despite your previous regurgitation of empty prose, your god can't be regarded as knowledge (see definition above). Because it's not repeatably, reliably discoverable. Only believers can find it. Which is not knowledge. And not truth.

With this in mind, why are you being so rampantly and blatantly dishonest? Your entire approach is illicit.

Hindus will tell me similar things, by the way. And Deepak Chopra has created an entire career on blathering about things existing that don't make sense. Quantum this, energy that. As immaterial as your god.

None of them proved any god hypothesis. But let me throw some more names in there, just to flesh it out because you seem to have forgotten some. The Prophet Muhammad, Siddhartha Gautama, Shoko Asahara, Charles Manson, Marshall Applewhite.

https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Cherry-Picking

It's weird you would deliberately exclude some of the most influential and consequential people in the world who claim to have experienced divine revelations, some of them direct first-hand exposure to your own god.

We can't study what you haven't substantiated, what you've refused to justify, what can't be regarded as either truth or knowledge, based on the definitions of the words. We don't have classes in alchemy or phrenology, either. Because why would we?

And you just got done saying that you must "view it from the right angle" and "don’t limit yourself to the world of the senses." Well, which is it? You can't have it both ways. Do you find it to study it, or do you study it to find it? You don't seem to be able to get your story straight.

What's worse, is that your entire premise is unfalsifiable. You start with the conclusion - that your god exists - and then find ways to assign it to natural phenomena that we do undertand, and then blame humans for the fact it can't be found.

Intellectual honesty - and not being a blatant liar - demands that you study facts and evidence and form conclusions only on the basis of those facts and evidence. We don't study "god" because we can't - you've as much said so, because you can't and won't provide a reliable, repeatable method - we study the natural world. Because that's where the evidence comes from. And you yourself said that it's immaterial anyway, as a way of carefully hiding it away in an obvious attempt to justify why it isn't there.

When done intellectually honestly, we find no god is required. Just as no god is required for thunder, lightning, rain, earthquakes, stars, the sunrise, the moon, births, crops or birds flying. Everywhere we look, we don't find a god. It's only the intellectually dishonest who add on "therefore god" like a Tourette's tic. But that doesn't make it true, and the reliability of this level of dishonesty makes it even more suspicious that such sophistry is required to sustain their beliefs. Why would you need to be so dishonest if your god is real?

Studying the bible, the tanakh and the quran are not studying "god," any more than studying Harry Potter is studying magic. It's studying the human claims of gods. Which is one of the most reliable ways of abandoning the entire notion.

We know where the scriptures came from, we know that they're unreliable, fraudulent, use stolen myths and legends, are inaccurate, and have been changed and manipulated throughout history. And we know that the believers of each scripture won't accept the authority of the other scriptures for the same reasons non-believers won't accept yours.

If studying the scripture is your idea of "studying god" then you're admitting - bringing us full circle back to the beginning - that your god exists only in your book. And that everything you ranted about perception and senses was nonsense. That is, your "faith" is in a book, not in a god - the god only follows from, and is contingent upon, the book.

That's complete idiocy. Earthquakes are caused by tectonic shifts. People didn't know that before. That doesn't mean it wasn't true before. And because it was always true doesn't mean that someone knew that the whole time. That's deranged.

The entire point of truth and knowledge is discovery. Things we don't know. Your model is insane and based on literally nothing.

You claim your god exists. It's therefore inescapable that it can only exist due to an idea that it should exist. Your god must have originated as an idea and been created as a product of the intellect of SuperGod. Otherwise you're lying.

(Psst... you're looking for the Special Pleading fallacy.)

https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Special-Pleading

At bottom, however, you have literally no basis for asserting this, other than your need for presupposition. Do caves exist because of an idea, or because of a natural process called erosion? So, cancer and AIDS began with ideas? What about defecation? We only defecate because someone came up with the idea? You see how stupid this is?

Fortunately, humanity is not fettered by your deficiencies, limitations or incuriosity. Your inability to comprehend the natural world is not a justification for inventing creatures to explain it. It wasn't god when we figured out earthquakes or thunder, and yet you're committed to betting on the same lame horse that primitive people of 2000 years ago bet on. One that has never paid off. At some point you need to contemplate your compulsion to devote yourself to something that has a demonstrated 0% success rate throughout all history.

The idea that everything is the idea of a deity is the death of curiosity. You need never ask any questions or learn anything, because you already know the answer: "bEcAuSe gOd!" I can't think of anything more anti-humanity and anti-intellectual.

The underlying mentality of this baseless assertion is that the universe exists only for us. That for billions of years, an infinitely expansive universe was being filled with the physical manifestations of ideas, but with nobody to notice, observe or impress, until we came along. Or, perhaps, this god was just playing with its toys by itself. How insecure is your god that it needed to come up with and then create us in order to observe its activities?

The idea that things can only exist as a result of intent and that someone, somewhere was inspired to create you, designed exactly as you are, is arrogant in the extreme. In all this infiniteness, someone, somewhere has you on its mind. You were necessary. I can't even imagine being that monumentally conceited.

But what it betrays is that your god only exists in the sense that it's a human idea.

This is the stupidest poetry I've ever read.

We know a house is created because we create them. They stand out from the natural world, because they're created. This is the Watchmaker Fallacy. You should read about it.

You're trying to claim that the natural is in fact supernatural. That the natural world is evidence of the supernatural (outside nature). This is idiotic. You have to justify the supernatural first before you get to attribute anything to it. Otherwise you're just making an argument from ignorance: "wHaT eLsE cOuLd iT bEeEe??"

Your assertion refutes itself. To claim something is created, you must compare it to something. We can compare a house to no-house. Or to the materials used to build a house. You have nothing to compare "everything" to in order to claim it's created. Saying that "everything" is proof of creation is the same as saying that nothing is proof of creation. You can't determine created from not-created because they look the same. Which makes your entire assertion incoherent. It's not even wrong.

My fingerprints on a gun are evidence for my guilt because my fingerprints not on a gun are not evidence for my guilt. If every gun in the universe has my fingerprints already on them, then my fingerprints on a gun is not evidence of my guilt. Evidence stands in contrast to falsification.

By using lies and sophistry to try and fallaciously incorporate the entire universe into supporting your delusions, you've made your entire assertion unfalsifiable.

Evidence for your god can only exist in contrast to what is not evidence for your god. And you just said there is none. Ergo, no evidence.

These words - "applies it to himself via truth" and "carries out his own existence" - literally don't mean anything. Here's some more of the same calibre:

They come from the Wisdom of Chopra quote generator. Like your thing, they sound profound, but they're not. They're just words strung together by an automaton.

If things that exist must be created, then your god must have been created. If your god can exist without being created, so can the universe. Since the universe can exist without being created, the universe carries out its own existence. If your god can do that, so can the universe.

The arguments from design and first cause are particularly fallacious. You should read up about them before embarrassing yourself by using them again.

You haven't proven anything, you just asserted what you already assume.

Sure it does. "Are the Tortoise and the Hare allegorical? This doesn't mean anything." See how that sounds?

Believers describe the events of their scripture as allegorical, metaphorical, not to be taken literally. It's necessary then to conclude that the characters cannot be concluded to literally exist.

https://www.atheistalliance.org/thinking-out-loud/the-bibles-final-metaphor/

Your god is allegorical because believers tell us that the book that describe it is allegory. Don't blame us.

Yes, like this. Believers keep describing their bible scripture as "allegorical" (i.e. Aesop-like fables). Therefore, the god of the bible can be no more real than Aesop's Tortoise and Hare. It's kind of obvious.

Who stars in fictitious stories? Fictitious characters. Why is this hard to grasp? The more your bible becomes metaphorical, the smaller your god gets. The more trapped inside its book it becomes. More and more of what you can claim to "know" (i.e. believe) about it is eroded.

It isn't. Its nature - including its existence - is discovered through facts and evidence. But you said that it is:

That is, you can know its nature if you look at it from the right (i.e. your) angle. Are you making yourself the default, "correct" person in the universe?

You also said that the nature of something is reliant upon an idea, that to exist, it must start with an idea.

Which is it? What are you even rambling on about?

Your entire post is one long Kettle Logic. That is, it's not just that each step along the way is mired in the worst fallacies of all, but stringing them together makes the problem worse.

https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Kettle-Logic

You've said variously, that we can only find it if we have a particular view or perception, that we must study it or we can't see it, that the universe itself proves it, we get closer to it because we keep finding it, and that we're getting further away from it because we don't study it.

It really just seems like even you don't have the foggiest idea what you're talking about. You just seem to be throwing nonsense out there hoping something will stick, or it will be so incomprehensible and contradictory that people will just assume it's so profound it must be true.

It isn't.

What I will say though is that if this is the best case for a god that you can come up with, I am cured of any quanta of concern about the existence of such a nonsensical beast.

My only advice to you is to re-read all your ramble, but replacing "God" with "Allah" or "Eric, the Magic God-Eating Penguin." Perhaps then you'll spot how intellectually septic everything you said is.

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If you ever want to know if a god or religion is false, all you have to do is listen to believers describe it. They'll tell you themselves it isn't true.