Unless, hear me out, god is a golden retriever and needs to be reminded how much of a good boy He is

IMO, if God exists it's nothing at all like what any religion says. If a god exists at all, there are only two possibilities I think it could be:

• Non-intelligent happenstance. The universe itself. The laws of physics. Whatever; it's a concept and not a literal entity.

• An intelligence that created humans and/or other life here or there, but is not really "God" in anyway described by man. They're just highly intelligent beings that bioengineered us long, long ago.

The existence of an afterlife though is more complicated. There's two possibilities, at least IMO:

• There is nothing after death. No soul that lives on or moves on. There is just the meat in our skull hallucinating things based on external stimuli from reality to make sense of it all until the electrical signals stop and we cease to exist.

• There is something beyond current understanding where consciousness comes from and it can exist in some form after death. Whatever it experiences after death would be something of an afterlife; though it is probably nothing at all like what any religion describes. It may not even be possible to describe it at all because it's just super weird.

It’s a lot easier to control and oppress people when they have the fear of god in them.

I find the argument for an afterlife humorous. Spend any time with a pet sleeping beside you and watch them dream. We are no different at the core. There is an abstract 'conscious' involved with dreaming. Do they have a god in their dreams. Is ours better than theirs, who is to say. I attribute such a thought to absurd human hubris.

Modern humans have existed in some form for only 100k years, while 99.9% of all life that has ever existed is extinct. What kind of omnipotent god is that shitty at dust, ribs, and apples that they failed at everything.

The real clincher for me was simply realizing the fundamental nature of stars and the processes that fuel them. That lead me to ask, if god really exists, why didn't they note a single scientific anomaly that is undisputable. Absolutely everything found in any religious writing is fundamentally human. There are clever observations, but every single thing mentioned could be observed or fabricated. There is no higher evidence whatsoever, no ontological knowledge of the universe.

The only people that speak in riddles are con artists. Religion is the highest level of achievement in the skills of con artistry. The best criminals are those you've never heard of, but the pinnacle of achievement is those that do it in plain sight.

I'm just going to drop this here:

https://whywontgodhealamputees.com/

"Give me your entire life and I'll give you rewards beyond your wildest dreams... that you can only see after you die."

One of the greatest grifts in all of history.

People universally agree that Jesus Himself is a great dude - despite (because!) He told the over-religious Karens to fuck off, and just plainly do such things as take care of widows & orphans. So wherever you may end up, maybe start with that and see where it takes you?

Religion is a way to avoid accountability.

Well I never thought that prayer ever made sense in the first place at least with the God I was raised to believe in. I was told God had a perfect plan which included all of us and he wasn't willing to deviate from that plan even to spare his own son from suffering. Given that, I stopped praying because it made no sense to me, there is already a plan, the plan won't be changed so there's no sense asking for anything.

That was my logic as a kid at least but now I don't pray because I no longer believe.

That made me conclude that religion is probably fake, no matter if there’s a god or not.

That's not it. All religions are real - regardless of whether the things any given religion worships is real or not.

Religion is as real as money, borders and race.

The idea of "the power of prayer" is stupid on the face of it. First, you're presupposing a omnipotent diety that can and does directly effect the universe, changing the outcomes of events based on it's desires, whims, plans, whatever. And you think THAT diety is taking requests? When "God answered my prayers", you think that had you not requested it, it wouldn't have happened. You think that God answers to your puny human concerns? That shit is arrogant as hell.

But furthermore, it also flies in the face of two other common beliefs about God, at least in Christianity. "God gave man Free Will" and "It's All Part of God's Plan(tm)" (don't get me started on how those are already two mutually exclusive ideas and hundreds of millions of believers just ignore that cognitive dissonance). Many of the things that one prays for, like "getting that job", "winning that award", "ending the war", etc. directly involve altering the decisions and actions of others, which means that God would be stripping them of free will. Also, the most classic call to prayer is to heal the sick, or preserve one's life. But surely if God has a plan for everyone's life, at minimum everyone's birth and death must also be planned. How can he answer your prayer to save your life if it's his plan for you to die, yet still have an plan he's always been following? The irony is that people like to pull the "all part of God's plan" platitude particularly when someone has died before their time.

The one that really makes me annoyed, or even angry, is when something terrible happens, people are hurt or killed, and someone who was supposed to or had almost been there says something like "God was watching out for me". It's so self-centered and arrogant to attribute your simple dumb luck to God's will in that situation. Because, not only does it assume you are God's most special little guy that he's constantly paying attention to and protecting, but also that God willfully condemned those others who did fall to this terrible fate that he supposedly saved you from. It's all arrogance. I can't stand it.

Lots of good discussion going on here, majority of folks have covered off on the pitfalls and deceitfulness that comes with religion so thought I'd give an alternative perspective.

I think in some ways religion is a very helpful tool. It provides people with guidelines to live a good life - 'as long as you do these things everything is gonna be alright'. It takes away uncertainty. It gives people purpose. Pretty sure they attribute a lot of humanity's early adoption of cleanliness and hygiene standards to religion. The whole 'invisible man in the sky is watching you' thing does wonders for keeping people accountable behind closed doors.

Whether or not it's fake is up to the individual. Personally I define religion as a 'way of living' (a pursuit or interest followed with great devotion). Do I subscribe to organised religion? No. Do I think that it's fake for those that do? Definitely not. Can different faiths be praying to the same god/s? Yes, I think it's possible, we are all connected.

What I'm getting at here is that even if you think it's fake, it's important to continue questioning and exploring the spiritual or religious aspects of the human condition and develop your own understanding for yourself.

Religion has typically been used as a tool for controlling the masses but to dismiss it solely as a manipulation tactic is an injustice. There is more there to be uncovered if you are willing to look.

The world needs more faith.

I’m 14 and this is deep.

As it turns out, you can believe whatever you want. Religion isn't something you can really solve with logic. It is called faith for a reason.

Have you ever played a game of telephone? Even if god did speak to people why would anyone ever trust a human messenger that is so prone to misunderstanding? Unless a god arranged the stars themselves in a way that communicates a presence there's no reason to trust human prophets about their distorted views of the divine filtered through a meager tube of experience.

-like praying and stuff never worked for most people I know,-

Like they wished for a car or a pony and didn't get it?

Praying works: "Thank God!111!"

Praying doesn't work: "God works in mysterious ways... 🤷‍♀️"

Like sure if you need that as a way to cope with a depressing reality. But that is the main function of religion: to keep folks complacent, governable and prevent systemic change

(dw am not some kind of "religion bad!! no, I never interacted with organized spirituality, why do you ask?"-person. That's just what growing up with ~~real /j~~ Orthodox Christianity and two hours of liturgy on most Sundays does to a critically inclined mf lol)

Do you shower in whiskey?

Religion has always been nothing more than a way to control people.
"I talked to God and he said that if you don't listen to the rules that I wrote in this book then he's going to torture you forever"

Goddamn, OP. I hope you were ready for walls of text splaying out people's entire opinions about everything on this topic.

A similar thought I had ages ago is that if God exists, they would either want us to know about them, or not. It doesn't seem reasonable for there to be this weird in-between where it's possible to believe they don't exist if they want to be known... Or for it to be possible to believe they exist if they don't want to be known!

If I were a god that wanted privacy, I'd simply wipe the concept of god from all mortal minds and prevent it from reappearing.

If god did want worship it would be even easier to get it than just making everyone know about them (certainly an option!) - just manifest physically much more often and perform true miracles, none of this silly water into wine (or walkway) business, I mean like Actually moving mountains or something.

I believe the only case that is consistent with some people believing in a god and some not (or different gods) is there just aren't any, or at least they don't care what we think at all, which is similar to not existing and it's unreasonable that we'd 'guess right' about them without their help.

Preface: I'm a Christian, so this will be about the Christian view on things. I can't really speak for other religions, since I don't really know enough about them.

On prayer: asking for miracles is not actually the main point of prayer, the main parts are listening to God, and God listening to you. Imagine a perfect parent/child relationship. Sure, there will be the occasional "hey dad, I need some money to make this month's rent. Can you help please?" or similar conversation, but most of the time it will be the child learning from the wisdom of the parent, or the parent helping the child vent. If you want to see an example of what Christianity says is the sort of things to pray, look at the book of Psalms in the bible.

On other religions: yes, of course at least most religions are fake. A false religion could be started by someone who believes they heard from God but got it wrong, or someone who wants to be the head of a religion for their own gain. Many religions warn about false prophets, so this is hardly a surprising thing.

I know this is just a showerthought, but what do you define as religion? The term religion doesn't necessarily need a God.

Or do you mean the 3 mainstream monotheistic religions? (Christianity, Judaism, Islam)

The more you think about it all, the less sense it makes. Congrats on discovering the tiny seed of free-will we all have inside us.

I agree, now how do I get my mom to quit telling me I'm going to hell?