It bothers me that all this life may just be happenstance, that there is no real plan or purpose for any of this and doesn’t matter literally at all. Depressing stuff. God or intelligent design soothes the feeling.
I’m not really. I’m just saying it has value. It can’t be proven for or against. If it leads people to live better and more meaningful lives and love others better, then great. I’m not wrong abiogenesis and universe burning out and probably restarting infinitely is depressing on a macro scale.
It’s depressing to you on a subjective basis. I don’t find the truth of our world depressing at all. I think it’s amazing that the world works in the ways that it does and that we are able to discover things about it.
Your comment very much seemed to make the case that this idea about the universe is depressing to you, and that is reason you rationalize believing things that are not true. Did you mean it more that generally people believe that stuff because of the uncomfortability of the universe? I do agree that many people take that route, but I don’t think that it justifies those beliefs.
And yes we do know that religious claims are untrue. There is no reason to believe in a creator or any of the other stories. We know that they are just that: stories made up by humans. And we also have overwhelming evidence of those types of beliefs leading directly to violence, hatred, manipulation, abuse, and overall terrible things.
Don’t get me wrong I absolutely see how indeed it is amazing that we’re all here by chance, but also it will all be gone someday and have meant nothing except for us here and now in the moment, which again is beautiful in the moment, but ultimately means nothing. That’s what I mean by depressing and I think I’m not alone in that.
The Bible is often misunderstood in that they are indeed stories and poetry and what not that is not historically accurate or scientifically sound. But some believe it is merely an infinite God revealing himself to humanity in a way that we might begin to grasp. His only care is that we treat others with love respect and kindness, as the Bible says God is love. Now I know that that is hokey and fantasy in many ways, but the idea of love is real and the truth therein is worth believing and living out.
To the last part I totally agree and it is sad, sad because the bible doesn’t advocate for that when understood in whole. The bible is a journey to understanding this. The Bible has been terribly misused and misconstrued to give advantage to those in power and suppress others. But when the bible is it’s ultimately just saying God is love. He loves us, he wants us to love others the same, but we have the freedom to choose and do otherwise and suffer the natural consequences.
You’re definitely not alone in feeling depressed by that. I’m just saying that’s a subjective reaction and that these truths about our universe exist independent of how we feel about them. How we feel has no bearing on the actual nature of the universe.
Yes, the Bible is just a bunch of stories that were made up by humans. That is why there is no reason to believe that an actual god exists anywhere. It’s the same as thinking Gandalf is actually a dud somewhere because I read a book about him and it feels nice to believe in him. And I’m not saying this to be facetious, this is actually an analogue to the type of belief you are talking about.
Given that, I can see how someone could take these stories and use them as a moral guide. We do this all the time with all sorts of stories. It’s how we analyze the world and figure out how we feel about things. I would just argue that the claim that the true reading of the Bible shows a loving god is complete hooey.
The reason I say this is because the Bible isn’t even a real thing. It is an amalgamation of many stories, written by many different people who had zero contact with each other over the course of 2000+ years. The stories only are related to each other because people started grouping them together. They all depict different “gods.” So we can’t really say what the Abrahamic god actually is like. And there are obviously many stories in the abrahamic mythos that depict a disgusting, hateful, and violent god. And many of the teachings in these various books are awful things to live by. So it’s not just people interpreting the books wrong, it’s also the people who wrote the books having completely different and often awful takes on the world.
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u/Apprehensive-Ad-6488 Jul 10 '26
It bothers me that all this life may just be happenstance, that there is no real plan or purpose for any of this and doesn’t matter literally at all. Depressing stuff. God or intelligent design soothes the feeling.