MY STORY
I'd like to start off my 'religious' story by telling you I am currently 18 years old, I live in and have lived in Dubai all my life. I was brought up a Muslim, I followed it blindly till a day came along that changed my life forever. I am not very proud of what I have done in the past mind you, but I started (edited by staff).
True to tradition, I was, as a child, indoctrinated with the ideology that Israel was the root of all evil. I lived by this fact for almost 14 years of my life. When I was 13, a number of shark attacks terrorized the coastal haven of Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt. My grandmother promptly concluded that Israeli soldiers had exposed this shark to a hormone that clouded its judgment. The Arabic media, uneager to refute this line of thinking, dissected all the perceived ethical violations committed by Israel with the aid of the United States. One day, however, I came across graffiti etched onto a roundabout on my way to school; it read, “Hate breeds hate,” the three words that forever changed my view of world politics. I hurried home that day and accessed the CNN website. Scrolling to the US politics section, I was baffled. It immediately became clear to me that no one was truly innocent: we were the reagents of a potentially volatile reaction. As a result, I refused to accept media portrayals as fact, deciding that unjustified hate was the bane of world peace. There is no better way to start than by changing my own ideology.
When I sobered up I began to think to myself: So what about this God? Why create people that disgust the opposite sex and send them to hell for it, does he enjoy torturing us? I thought he loved us! I am not gay, but this is one of the many things that didn't click for me. What if my parents never had sex? Isn't that better? Does he encourage people to procreate so he can send them to 'Hell'? And what about those Atheists and Christians that do so much good for the world? What about Einstein, Fritz Haber, Steven Hawkings, Mother Teresa, and so many others, is he going to send them straight to hell because they just could not believe? Is he going to send Hindu's to hell because they were born into Hinduism? If he is all understanding, then he would understand that people don't chose what they truly believe, is that really their fault? If a human understands that is unfair treatment, shouldn't a higher power such as himself already know that? And what about stem cell research and abortion, if in his case a person would go straight to heaven if its still a baby, isn't the mother just being utilitarian? Is is right to encourage the suffering of fully developed individuals to save a couple of undeveloped cells that could potentially be born, and even then probably go to hell? Its all such ********, I am Agnostic, I think that there probably isn't, but if there is a God, he won't put people in Hell.
MY NEW PHILOSOPHY
99% of the Saudi Arabian population is muslim, 80% of india's population is Hindu, and more often than not, the religion of the persons parents will be the same as the person himself. So to evaluate the theory that God exists would be to assume God is all knowing. If God is all knowing then he knows what family he is putting you in, he also knows what religion you will be, what pain you will cause, and what religion you will choose to be. For argument's sake, I'm going to stick with the Judaic-Christian God. There are 2 billion Christians in the world, 1.6 billion muslims, and 1.5 million Jews. Now this means that at best, God created 1.75 billion individuals to punish, at worst, 3.6 billion people. This, by the way, is not taking into consideration the rest of the human population. People might also say that God will punish people who commit evil, I truly flinch and stutter when I hear or see people who say this. People have this tendency to forget that other humans are souls with lives, pasts, emotions, and conciseness just like ourselves. We are disgusted by murder and rape (I hope), yet other individuals might be able to justify it to themselves. Just like us, no human wants to truly be evil, there is always a context to every behavior. A pedophile was most likely molested at a young age, we can cringe and stutter all we want, but we will never understand what they go through. It is easy to sit here and judge, but there is a reason as to why we are so obsessed with the concept of 'fair'. A criminal will say its not 'fair' that he watched his family crash and burn in poverty while others would live in sublime wealth, so he robs a grocery or a 7/11. What do we see? We see a bad man who can't get a job, maybe he was too busy looking after his crack-head mom to get a job, maybe the "God" that you all love so dearly never gave him the intelligence he needed to legally break free from the circle of poverty and hunger. We sit in our comfortable chairs and beds, discuss intellectual topics on forums, and judge everyone because we are the all high and mighty, yet what is not understood is that just like we would not do anything for the sake of pure evil, others wouldn't either.
I think that the reason religion exists is because of this obsession we have with 'fairness'. It is part of our human nature, we want everything to be fair. People believe in God because they believe it will provide the ultimate judgement, the ultimate decision of who deprived us of what is fair. What we don't understand is all the things people do are things that we would also probably do under the same situational factors.
EVOLUTION
I'd like to end with a little talk about evolution, because it makes me angry when people say "There is not enough evidence". Fossiles, although substantial, are not the only piece of evidence of evolution. If you visit the natural history museum, you will see that there are mountains of bones and statures of animals that show a clear transition from one phase to another. The theory of evolution by natural selection does not debunk creationism, it is creationism that debunks evolution. The difference is, one has stockpiles of scientific evidence, while the other has an imaginary friend who sent you here to determine whether you are naughty or nice. Have you ever heard of the term "Carbon-14 dating"? Carbon-14 is an isotope of carbon that has an extraordinarily long lifespan (50,000 years ±5,000), it is found in organic corpses and bones that are to be dated back. Scientists determine the "half-life" of the carbon-14 to see exactly how old an organic corpse is. This is just one of the many things that tell us the earth is much older than the bible says it is. From carbon dating, we can also see that the existence of very similar species were often living in much different timeframes from one another. With much further research, it was deduced that many of the physical changes that we can now see resulted from environmental changes in the time-frame the species lived in. This is just the tip of the iceberg, scientists have tons and tons of evidence to show that the world is about 6.4 billion years old. Radiometric age dating of meteorites (a processes similar to carbon-14 dating) also points to this evidence.
I'd like to start off my 'religious' story by telling you I am currently 18 years old, I live in and have lived in Dubai all my life. I was brought up a Muslim, I followed it blindly till a day came along that changed my life forever. I am not very proud of what I have done in the past mind you, but I started (edited by staff).
True to tradition, I was, as a child, indoctrinated with the ideology that Israel was the root of all evil. I lived by this fact for almost 14 years of my life. When I was 13, a number of shark attacks terrorized the coastal haven of Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt. My grandmother promptly concluded that Israeli soldiers had exposed this shark to a hormone that clouded its judgment. The Arabic media, uneager to refute this line of thinking, dissected all the perceived ethical violations committed by Israel with the aid of the United States. One day, however, I came across graffiti etched onto a roundabout on my way to school; it read, “Hate breeds hate,” the three words that forever changed my view of world politics. I hurried home that day and accessed the CNN website. Scrolling to the US politics section, I was baffled. It immediately became clear to me that no one was truly innocent: we were the reagents of a potentially volatile reaction. As a result, I refused to accept media portrayals as fact, deciding that unjustified hate was the bane of world peace. There is no better way to start than by changing my own ideology.
When I sobered up I began to think to myself: So what about this God? Why create people that disgust the opposite sex and send them to hell for it, does he enjoy torturing us? I thought he loved us! I am not gay, but this is one of the many things that didn't click for me. What if my parents never had sex? Isn't that better? Does he encourage people to procreate so he can send them to 'Hell'? And what about those Atheists and Christians that do so much good for the world? What about Einstein, Fritz Haber, Steven Hawkings, Mother Teresa, and so many others, is he going to send them straight to hell because they just could not believe? Is he going to send Hindu's to hell because they were born into Hinduism? If he is all understanding, then he would understand that people don't chose what they truly believe, is that really their fault? If a human understands that is unfair treatment, shouldn't a higher power such as himself already know that? And what about stem cell research and abortion, if in his case a person would go straight to heaven if its still a baby, isn't the mother just being utilitarian? Is is right to encourage the suffering of fully developed individuals to save a couple of undeveloped cells that could potentially be born, and even then probably go to hell? Its all such ********, I am Agnostic, I think that there probably isn't, but if there is a God, he won't put people in Hell.
MY NEW PHILOSOPHY
99% of the Saudi Arabian population is muslim, 80% of india's population is Hindu, and more often than not, the religion of the persons parents will be the same as the person himself. So to evaluate the theory that God exists would be to assume God is all knowing. If God is all knowing then he knows what family he is putting you in, he also knows what religion you will be, what pain you will cause, and what religion you will choose to be. For argument's sake, I'm going to stick with the Judaic-Christian God. There are 2 billion Christians in the world, 1.6 billion muslims, and 1.5 million Jews. Now this means that at best, God created 1.75 billion individuals to punish, at worst, 3.6 billion people. This, by the way, is not taking into consideration the rest of the human population. People might also say that God will punish people who commit evil, I truly flinch and stutter when I hear or see people who say this. People have this tendency to forget that other humans are souls with lives, pasts, emotions, and conciseness just like ourselves. We are disgusted by murder and rape (I hope), yet other individuals might be able to justify it to themselves. Just like us, no human wants to truly be evil, there is always a context to every behavior. A pedophile was most likely molested at a young age, we can cringe and stutter all we want, but we will never understand what they go through. It is easy to sit here and judge, but there is a reason as to why we are so obsessed with the concept of 'fair'. A criminal will say its not 'fair' that he watched his family crash and burn in poverty while others would live in sublime wealth, so he robs a grocery or a 7/11. What do we see? We see a bad man who can't get a job, maybe he was too busy looking after his crack-head mom to get a job, maybe the "God" that you all love so dearly never gave him the intelligence he needed to legally break free from the circle of poverty and hunger. We sit in our comfortable chairs and beds, discuss intellectual topics on forums, and judge everyone because we are the all high and mighty, yet what is not understood is that just like we would not do anything for the sake of pure evil, others wouldn't either.
I think that the reason religion exists is because of this obsession we have with 'fairness'. It is part of our human nature, we want everything to be fair. People believe in God because they believe it will provide the ultimate judgement, the ultimate decision of who deprived us of what is fair. What we don't understand is all the things people do are things that we would also probably do under the same situational factors.
EVOLUTION
I'd like to end with a little talk about evolution, because it makes me angry when people say "There is not enough evidence". Fossiles, although substantial, are not the only piece of evidence of evolution. If you visit the natural history museum, you will see that there are mountains of bones and statures of animals that show a clear transition from one phase to another. The theory of evolution by natural selection does not debunk creationism, it is creationism that debunks evolution. The difference is, one has stockpiles of scientific evidence, while the other has an imaginary friend who sent you here to determine whether you are naughty or nice. Have you ever heard of the term "Carbon-14 dating"? Carbon-14 is an isotope of carbon that has an extraordinarily long lifespan (50,000 years ±5,000), it is found in organic corpses and bones that are to be dated back. Scientists determine the "half-life" of the carbon-14 to see exactly how old an organic corpse is. This is just one of the many things that tell us the earth is much older than the bible says it is. From carbon dating, we can also see that the existence of very similar species were often living in much different timeframes from one another. With much further research, it was deduced that many of the physical changes that we can now see resulted from environmental changes in the time-frame the species lived in. This is just the tip of the iceberg, scientists have tons and tons of evidence to show that the world is about 6.4 billion years old. Radiometric age dating of meteorites (a processes similar to carbon-14 dating) also points to this evidence.
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