Christianity and the Omnipresent God

Christianity is a sophisticated religion which is about 2000 years old with wide ranging diversity on thought and doctrine on God. Yea God, it has been monopolized by the Christians. It comes with an urgent message of salvation and redemption from "Sin" which is a strange subject on its own. However one is surprised that it took over a million years for the Good News to reach humanity, the homo erectus and other ancestors were left out and it took another thousand years to reach Africa and other parts of the world, still there are places which are not informed/touched by this "News" Given that Christianity is the one and only true religion through access to "God" is made. If we are to follow the attributes of God, one that stands out against a true religion is his omnipresent nature. That is God's presence is felt everywhere, at all times and in all minds. It follows that different contexts/religions/media is valid and competent to comprehend such a being. Also by his nature necessarily infuses an idea of his being to every human culture, religion (any concept of worship), thought/philosophy. That all through time, our ancestors, us and future generation always have from collective memory or individual search, known who God is. Christian doctrines are firm that Jesus is the only way to understand God, consequently Christianity is as a "true" religion worshipping an omnipresent God is certainly on a path of self contradiction and falsehood. Christianity having made claims to comprehend and worship the True God, serves upon itself a note of self invalidation! That's it is a false or confused religion.

A Reply to Jesusfan2009 on the Resurrection of Jesus

I saw your long tweet on the resurrection of Jesus as being the only means by which the accounts of the Gospel and Christianity could make sense. IF the Gospels were right about Jesus life, messages and resurrection, and the apostles were ruthlessly persecuted. The only way Christianity could still spring off, was if the Resurrection was true.

At first sight, one would be puzzled by the blatant violation of the laws of nature. If a man has being confirmed to be death, what reason is there to believe that he would come back to life?? Why should we expect gravity to quit or animals to talk or man to sprout wings and fly or an apple tree produce yam?? NO REASON because that is in the realm of MAGIC! And magic is unjustifiable.

Ancient documents do not shy from such magical tales such as the lIiad. Rather it was a literal device. One simply needs to flesh out the natural story from the mystical mumbojumbo. Given the fact that its a religious book does not help matters. Its not unusual for "holy books" including the Vedas and the Quran to give accounts of the most unusual things, such as splitting the moon or a sea or literally move mountains. These don't correspond with any natural principle. And its unfortunate most religions rely on these books as their foundation.

The testimonies of the Gospel writers is unfortunately based on hearsay. None of them happened to have been one of the disciples of Jesus, it would be pure conjecture to conclude that they were part of the numerous followers with Jesus. Their accounts were written in Greek not in the native Jewish language. Substantial period of time had lapsed between his purported death and the writing of the first Gospel (Mark at about AD60).

Therefore, coupled with heightened religious fervour; the resultant effect is an ineffective historical account. This could count for the "supernatural" occurrences; the miracles, virgin birth, resurrection of the dead. Also an harmonisation of all the Gospel accounts is impossible. There are numerous contradictions between the Gospels as to the events leading to his crucifixion, at his tomb, at his birth.. The Gospels are not effective as a result.

Prior to the Council of Nicaea, there were numerous Christian movements with very different doctrines and beliefs among themselves, backed up various different religious texts. Some gulfs go as far as Jesus being a regular man and creation of God. Many didn't believe in Resurrection. Some engaged in cannibalism under literal understanding of communion.

The Council of Nicaea established a universal Christian doctrine with established religious texts such as the Gospels, banishing and persecuting divergent views such as the Arians. By the arbitrary will of Law, Christianity as we know it was created. The Gospels were selected arbitrarily since it favoured the present Universal Church.

The implications include the loss of the true teachings of Jesus/Yeshua, the Flood of Greek civilization and culture might have destroyed the true understanding of the Jesus/Yeshua's teachings. Just like today, we in a modern context have a different understanding of the bible. At the end of the day, Jesus might have been beheaded rather than crucified. He might not have died at all.

To fully understand Jesus, all the books ever written about him should be pooled together and understood. That includes gnostic texts.

The Unbelievable

Most people upon discovering I'm atheist often exclaim "you don't believe in anything?" Of course I do have beliefs; I believe there is evil, love, music, loyalty, reciprocity, knowledge. It's not that as an atheist, one has a blank, empty mind. I'm always willing to listen to reasonable explanation that necessitates the existence of grand uncaused Cause whether matter or not. The belief system of some religions; (i will mention those i'm familiar with) Christianity and Islam, is to a point that goes beyond belief towards fantasy. Their beliefs on the sources and contents of their Holy Books is surprising, like the Quran is believed to delivered by an angel of God, which is a strange and extraordinary demonstration for an extraordinary book contains all the fundamental truths of existence. To an outsider, such contention is impossible to accept.

Unfortunately, their entire idea of God is founded in the extraordinary testimonies of ancient writers whose identity or message is ‘believed’ to be without question or validation. The religious leaders also include their testimonies and celebrate the phenomenon of miracle. A famous pastor once spoke of his one of miraculous experience whereby he drove a car with fuel tank filled with water for over 400km! Surprisingly, he has a personal plane which hasn’t filled yet with water. How am I supposed to believe that? Is that reasonable?

Huge portions of the Bible is devoted to such unbelievable stories,

That a donkey spoke in human language,

That a man with simple words parted a sea

That a man can offer himself as a ritualistic sacrifice for salvation,  does sacrificing a goat make me a better person?

That a man not just rose he up from the dead, but an ENTIRE cemetery?!

That a man can ascend into the sky without any physical support?

On this pile of the unbelievable sits God, whose nature, identity is above our natural universe, above our scrutiny. It could have as well been an error passed the generations, through the influence of culture and habit. At the end, God is said to be the sum total of the unbelievable, thus there is more justification in disbelieving than believing!

Nevertheless my position on religion is first and foremost my opinion which I earnestly try to lend it a rational complexion, which I’m entitled to. Also I must for my good, keep my sanity.

The Character of Rhology's God

I’m always interested in the mind of religious people, what they conceive as thoughts and perceive reality. On top this hierarchy of divinity stands God, as the ultimate reality and authority. However, the term God has drawn numerous meanings and definitions, which have different reasons for existing. The deist’s God, the Muslim’s God and the Mormon’s God are identifiably different from one another, which makes definition more necessary. My particular focus will be the Christian God that too will be difficult to define as the thousands of denominations under Christianity have found on different ideas and images of God. However Rhology has provided an impressive list of attributes which God possesses (his God).

Omnipotence, Omniscience, Omnipresent, Living, Omnibenevolence, Incomprehensible, Almighty, Infinite.. just to mention a few. First, God is assumed to be a Being, therefore making the question of his existence relevant, he can not exist without substance or essence or else he is a void abstraction. His attributes must correspond with themselves to radiate a consistent coherent image.

God is said to be almighty and infinite, isn’t he bound first by his attributes? His powers and abilities cannot extend beyond what he has. He is confided by his nature and the limitations of it. Thus the term ‘AlMighty’ and ‘infinite’ is meaningless. By understanding the specific and particular characteristics of God, a picture of the limitations appear, casting light on the negatives of his character. For example, if he is absolutely good, then he can’t be bad.

In simple words, being omnipotent is to do anything and everything including the logical impossible. Also that one is a functioning being, capable of being part of a causal system. As far as the impossible goes, God can draw a square circle however that looks like, create something out of nothing, create a married bachelor, bring into existence meaningless; thus one can conclude that God if capable of the above, then he himself is logically impossible and meaningless.

The biggest argument for the necessity of God’s existence is the design the universe takes. For God as an omnipotent being to takes steps to carefully assemble the delicate universe with resulting complexity as a necessity and evidence for a hardworking designer, when a simple wish would have sufficed. Simply incoherent logic. An omnipotent being would not require a design, when he can transform chaos to act as order, or bend any means to whatever end,

God is living! Isn’t he just another life form! A dead matter or an abstract cannot hold inherent knowledge; both lack consciousness, awareness which is a prerequisite for being capable of having knowledge. A conscious being is necessarily life. Maybe, God is an example of life that is not threatened by nonexistence, however if he is omniscient, that puts predestination over the freewill doctrine. However that’s another topic for later. God is then a form of MATTER!

God is omnibenevolent that is he is all good. A creation is a mirror that reflects the creator, if God is all good, the universe will be all good with no space for evil. However, the natural disasters, genocides, wars, poverty, sufferings well indicate that our world is not at all good. Evil is the biggest problem that threatens Rhology’s God.

God is incomprehensible is the most  baffling attribute, that God is beyond understanding and capture of knowledge. In other words, he is unknowable! Where did the knowledge of the aforementioned attributes got from? An unknowable being will be unknown and not known to be unknownable! This is an outrageous contradiction. A deeper examination of  the character Rhology’s God reveals a void, a blank, nothing; best an aggregate of contradictions, inconsistencies and the illogical. The single supposed attribute betrays the fact that the prior attributes are unreal and not logically possible.

Rhology has this fascinating ‘worldview’ which gives him the licence to redefine reality, possibly accept voids, contradictions at least what other function can faith play?!