I sometimes wonder: What if Satan actually won and threw Yahweh out of heaven and all of that information, healing and guidance that has come down since then was actually Satan's wods & deeds and not God's? How would anyone know?

What if God is actually being held by Lucifer in a celestial dungeon and the Big Red Guy is sending out pronouncements as God himself? What if Satan was the Lucky Dude that impregnated Mary ?????

All we really know is what "someone, something" is telling us !

@twill - We can play the 'what if' game all day long and the questions have as much validity of any other speculations. Something many people do (to screw themselves up, I've been guilty) is to look back at their lives and say "If only I had done something different." The truth of this game is that if we had made a different decision in our lives at some time in the past, while it may seem to have solved problems we have today from the path we took, we cannot honestly say that the ultimate outcome of a supposed path wouldn't have been far worse for us in the long run. We tend to see such scenarios in the best light without knowing what the pitfalls and downsides are. It would be like when we compare our worst selves (because we know what that might be more than anyone else) to our perception of someone else's best self. For my purposes, I think the real question is how do we discern which is true and which is a lie? It's a more difficult question to answer and shouldn't dissuade us from speculating about what could be. But what could be is infinite while what is has many fewer options.

@RussRAB I probably didn't make this clear but I'm not saying "what if"....I'm saying this is the truth and we just don't know it. Satan could be seated on the throne in heaven right at this moment!
All of the religious speak of his trickery. So .....yeah it's just Lucifer playing God up there and none of us are the wiser.

Reality is....NOBODY knows who is sitting on that throne at this moment. Not a "what if"

@twill - I agree, no one knows that there is any throne much less who sits on it. Speculating that Satan sits on a throne in heaven and speculating what that might mean is a "what if" question because no one knows. "What if" there is a heaven and God sits on a throne there, then certain conditions might be described different from "what if" Satan sits on that same throne in heaven. But Satan may be a figment of our imagination like the boogieman under our bed or hiding in the closet when we were 8 years old. Likewise, God may be part of our imagination, as well as heaven and all those things we were taught in Sunday School. What if only requires our imagination and is infinite vs. what is which has many fewer options - and the standards required for each of these two are also very different.

@FrankA People are friggin' nuts Frank. What suits them, is what suits THEM. Almost everything "they" (includes me!) do is for their own benefit.

In a way, we all mass marketers looking for a defined demographic

@FrankA That may be because much of religious views are based on irrational ideas.

@FrankA This is my take on why: Atheism is the lack of belief in any gods--nothing more. It is not a claim about knowledge. If a person does not actively believe that some sort of god exists, they are an atheist.

If a person states "there might be a god, or there might not be one, we simply cannot know for sure" they still lack the belief that there actually IS one (or more) which is the definition of atheism.

And, atheists, even though "some" deny it, are also agnostic in that, if we are being intellectually honest, we must accept that it simply cannot be "known" whether or not some being or universal consciousness, we would call a god, exists.

We can only say that, as it stands, we see no evidence for such a being and our science shows us that no god/consciousness is necessary for the universe to behave as it does; so there is no reason to insert one.

This said, I think it can be successfully argued that specific gods cannot exist. The god of the bible, for instance, is not only too human, but too contradictory to exist. It cancels itself out.

@maturin1919 If a human calls a Leprechaun a "god", then that Leprechaun is a "GOD". The same if a human calls a fish or a Wallaby a "god".
In this regard Frank is correct about gods existing....because some people have said so!

@maturin1919 noooo. Who the hell's Fred?

Thank you. A recent reply I made said the same thing. I got that from a report on the differences between the two and actually agnosticism is a subset of atheism.

Good answer.

I spent most of my life in that position. Finally.... It felt right to just claim Atheism for me and be done with it. it was fence sitting. For me anyway.

Anyone who describes “no belief in god” as opposed to, ‘no belief in a god’ is an Agnostic … not an Atheist.. Explaining such a contradiction as an “agnostic atheist” must be exhausting ..as it would never add up

@Varn Whatever.

Another fulfillment for my curious mind. A comparison to my own history. ....nothing?

it took me like "forever". But, I'm kind of oldish

Change is normal

@twill
Yes. Never-ending.

@maturin1919
The collective human experiences and behavior we refer to today as religion.

@maturin1919
There’s a popular misunderstanding that religious literalism is all there is to religion. If that were the case, we wouldn’t have the term, religious literalism.

“Wishful thinking at best. Stupidity at worst” applies well enough to religious literalism, but it doesn’t encompass the rest of religious experience or practice.

@maturin1919
Religion is defined in many different ways and there is no scholarly consensus on a precise definition, let alone some central authority that has the power to say, for all people, what religion can and can’t be. There are distinguished scholars who claim there is no such thing as religion, and their justifications are sane and plausible if you listen to them. You get to say what the word means to you. That’s all. We’ve had this conversation before. It’s not about who’s right and who’s wrong. The word means something different to me, and it’s not just something I made up after a night of bad tacos. It’s based on a lifetime of study, and observation. There have been notable non-literalists throughout history. Go look at brentan’s recent post of a video with two scholarly gentlemen, one a pastor, who are discussing religious ideas without reference to literalism. They are not stupid people.

@maturin1919
I’m not at all averse to dictionaries. I have many, refer to them often, and compare their differences (they don’t all say the same thing). But I don’t think they are the last word on complex issues. They are a starting point, not a final destination, and they are constantly changing.

I’m not making a word mean anything I want it to mean; I’m seeing in a word, meanings that are well established in academia, but are simply beyond the scope and duty of dictionaries.

@maturin1919
Here’s a link to brentan’s video if you’re interested...

Tom Holland on Christianity as Blasphemous Parody of the Worship of Caesar Dominion - YouTube

@skado So the starting point to any discussion like this is to share your personal definition of religion. How do you personally define religion so anyone can begin conversing with you on the topic?

@demifeministgal
Great suggestion. I’ll work on that when I’m less sleepy. Thanks.

@demifeministgal
For the purposes of this discussion, all I’d ask is that people don’t limit their idea of religion to just religious literalism and take their impressions of religion from its worst examples. Religious figuratism and good examples exist as well.

There are some magnificent humans in this world who are deeply religious, and full of love and tolerance and authenticity, who understand the religious stories to be just that - stories. Fictional stories that illustrate human truths.

Why on earth are we determined to let the abusers define religion, and ignore or deny the people who exemplify its highest ideals? God is love. Are we so jaded that the idea of putting love on a pedestal has become intolerable?

Why do the people who reject religion demand so adamantly that we only define it literally? Why would they even care? I know plenty of religious people who don’t make that demand of it.

My definition of religion is religion; not religious fundamentalism.

Wikipedia’s definition is:
“Religion is a social-cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, ethics, or organizations, that relates humanity to supernatural, transcendent, or spiritual elements. However, there is no scholarly consensus over what precisely constitutes a religion.”

Notice that they don’t say supernatural, transcendental, and spiritual. They say or. Transcendental and spiritual can just refer to attitude, mood, or disposition. There is nothing about the greater concept of “religion” that requires a belief in a literal, supernatural being. Thousands of practitioners and theologians the world over, throughout history have understood this and have written volumes about it and have practiced it.

Religion is a social art-form whose authentic intent is to bind communities in a sense of relatedness, promote compassion, teach moral values, comfort the disheartened, and train practitioners in the obscure arts of transcending the worst of our base animal instincts, for the betterment of all concerned. It’s not an easy goal to achieve. It’s up against four billion years of evolution. Most of us will fall short of such a lofty goal... naturally.

People say, we don’t need religion for that. I say, if you’re doing that, it is religion. That’s how I define religion.