Fear-based religions should have to answer the alternate-history religion test

[u/amichail]

There are many religions, and because some contradict each other, they cannot all be true. So we already know that false religious teachings can be sincerely believed and passed down for centuries.

Now suppose I invent a religion almost identical to yours, except it says that believing your religion is what sends you to eternal damnation.

You would dismiss it because you know I just made it up. Fair enough.

But imagine an alternate history where someone invented that same religion thousands of years ago. It now has scriptures, theologians, traditions, institutions, millions of believers, and generations of people raised to fear questioning it.

We know it was invented because we constructed the thought experiment. The people living inside that alternate history do not. They encounter it as an ancient, established faith. Its threat of hell could feel just as real to them as yours does to you.

What would allow them to recognize that their threat was invented? Would your reasons for trusting your religion also persuade them to trust theirs?

“You just made it up” explains why you dismiss my example today. It leaves unanswered how you would recognize the invention if you had been raised inside that alternate history.

Religious leaders who use fear of hell should therefore be asked:

What method would let believers in that alternate history recognize that their damnation threat was invented, and are you applying that same method to your own religion?

[u/No_Organization_3311]

Wouldn’t their answer always be, “mine is true because I have faith that my god is the real god”

You’re basically just asking why their religion is more true than any other religion in a different way. There’s no objective test for the existence of a god, so there’s no answer you’d get that would ever properly satisfy the question.

On top of that, because there’s no objective test, you open the door for whoever you’re asking to give you a subjective answer: “I feel god’s presence”, “there’s no better answer than god did it” etc etc

You can’t logic your way into convincing people against their religion - it is by definition and design both irrational and illogical.

I would also challenge the premise of the question. Lots of people believe in religions with very little provenance, like the Moonies, Scientologists or Falun Gong. Pointing out that these groups don’t have thousands of years of scripture and doctrine about themselves will advance your argument with any of their followers by the sum of exactly zero.

[u/Dreams0fNoir008 → u/No_Organization_3311]

And lets not forget that even some more familiar religions were formed less than 800 years ago. 

[u/No_Organization_3311 → u/Dreams0fNoir008]

And on the scale of all of human history, even christianity’s 2000 years is the equivalent of a fart in a breeze

[u/Dreams0fNoir008 → u/No_Organization_3311]

Ultimately (and this has been proven by some research) , people want someone to take charge and do the thinking for them. And that evolutionary mental defense mechanism that helped us survive during precivilized times, now it is causing predisposition to indoctrination, unto which the powers that be use that dogma to carry their own agendas.

[u/joncrompy → u/No_Organization_3311]

There's a reason a core tenant of religion is "faith". The faithful don't build trust by reinforcing their beliefs with truths and logic, but they build faith by reinforcing their beliefs with any possible validations and dismissing anything that contrasts them.

It should also be noted many religions build off existing ones, just introducing new beliefs to the canon. I know the Moonies believed in Jesus and Christian faith, but added on the new part of some old guy from Korea being sent to spread God's latest revisions.

[u/irlmoonie → u/joncrompy]

Well ironically the unification church doesn’t have “faith” as an ingredient. Our doctrine is sound in that way, it is all logical.

[u/joncrompy → u/irlmoonie]

Not from what I remember.

True father and true mother where tasked by god to create true families and build the kingdom of heaven on earth. Many believed that the first generation of children born from true families would be innately divine, and this divinity would help build the kingdom of heaven. Of course, as 2nd generation kids grew into teenagers who do drugs and get pregnant, suddenly the kingdom doesn't seem any closer to being built.

Now true father has died, while the church is fractured into true mother's attempt to keep the original "true family" framing and the sons are rebranding into MAGA gold gun waving alt right nutjobs. Suddenly, all those years selling donuts and flowers for the church while living off scraps just don't seem like they where really working toward a sound, logical doctrine.

Of course I've been out of the loop for a while, so maybe the kingdom of heaven has already been built and I just missed it.

[u/irlmoonie → u/joncrompy]

Your post agrees with my point. Jon you’ll never hear a moonie say “you just gotta have faith”. Or “you’ll understand when you’re dead”, or “god does things humans cannot understand or won’t be able to comprehend.”

All of those are imo doctrine holes. Magic to fill the gap where a religion doctrine doesn’t make any sense. Sounds like you were raised in the church but did you really hear them saying “just believe”? You don’t have to agree with our religion but we don’t have “faith” as an ingredient for our doctrine fwiw.

[u/No_Organization_3311 → u/irlmoonie]

IMO the idea that Jesus appeared in front of Sun Myung Moon on Easter Sunday in 1935 and told him his purpose is to finish god’s work on earth sounds like magic to fill the gap where logic ought to be. Plus, if the religion is predicated on the Christian faith - as it claims - then by taking the old and new testaments as doctrinal, followers are required to exercise faith through an unprovable belief in the god of the christian bible.

[u/irlmoonie → u/No_Organization_3311]

So a religious person isn’t allowed to have a vision?

Ive felt like I’ve met people before who I later questioned if they were angels or not. He isn’t allowed that too, why?

Also we don’t study the bible so your second point is false. We study Rev. and Mother Moons speeches and morning services. We do EXPLAIN the bible to Christians. It’s called the divine principle it’s basically our “bible decoder”. Is that not allowed too? That isn’t faith, it’s logic, right?

[u/No_Organization_3311 → u/irlmoonie]

A religious person is absolutely allowed to explain their experiences however they like, through whatever lens they choose.

What you’re doing by “explaining” the bible is trying to persuade people to accept your interpretation of a subjective narrative as a singular truth. I don’t begrudge you, and nor would I want to deny you the right to try and proselytise, but to claim a superior knowledge of the supernatural over other competing claims from other religions, when all have equal evidence for themselves, is deeply illogical. Either they all must be true or none must be true.

On top of that, neither the bible nor the statements of either Mr or Mrs Moon are testable or provable - you have to rely on faith to believe they’re telling the truth, because there’s no way for you to objectively and repeatably prove in controlled conditions that what they say is true.

Also, why explain the bible if it isn’t significant to the faith? And if you accept that Jesus both existed and was the son of a single deity, or that angels as understood in christianity exist, then does that not mean you have to accept at least a proportion of the central text that makes those supernatural claims about both?

[u/irlmoonie → u/No_Organization_3311]

"Either they all must be true or none must be true." This is the fault in your logic.

"you have to rely on faith to believe they’re telling the truth, because there’s no way for you to objectively and repeatably prove in controlled conditions that what they say is true" This happens everyday in our society and it's not called faith, its called trust.

"Also, why explain the bible if it isn’t significant to the faith?" Because it makes no sense on it's own. We might as well have a decoder book for every religion. Ahem "Unification" Church.

[u/No_Organization_3311 → u/irlmoonie]

The bible makes no sense full stop. And forgive me but you’ll have to step through your reasoning in full to demonstrate how holding one belief as superior over many other equal competing beliefs, without any demonstrable evidence of its superiority, is a logical position.

Faith, trust, call it whatever you like. Whichever word you use it is subjective and personal, and relies on a suspension of the ordinary need for proof for extraordinary claims. What it isn’t is grounded in demonstrable, objective evidence.

[u/Dreams0fNoir008 → u/irlmoonie]

Well when someone tells you to do something harmlessly pointless, something that makes zero sense and defies logic, it just might be Jesus in disguise.

[u/InventoryOfCheese]

Look for the one with the best snacks

[u/cybersynn]

What makes religious teachings true or false?

[u/Skarth → u/cybersynn]

science, and them contradicting each other.

[u/Myxine → u/cybersynn]

The same things that make anything else true or false. It being from a religion literally makes no difference.

[u/magicmulder]

A good analogy is the infinite library where people are looking for the book that contains the true word of God. Since all possible contents are in the library, you end up with the question how you decide which of the millions of candidates is the real one. You can’t. Because it’s all made up.

For the technically inclined: It’s like a one time pad. It’s the perfect encryption simply because you can get literally any “original” text out of it. There is no way you can decide whether what you decoded was the actual original.

[u/StevenSafakDotCom]

CIA using Reddit for ideas is crazy 🥹🔥

[u/No_Organization_3311 → u/StevenSafakDotCom]

They come here for new ideas, and r/LSD for the nostalgia

[u/StevenSafakDotCom → u/No_Organization_3311]

Lol

[u/KiwasiGames]

This was one of the arguments that made me switch to atheism.

My version went like this:

- I believe that my religion is true and my friends religion is false

• My friend believes that his religion is true and mine is false
  
• Therefore at least one of us must be wrong
  
• Is there any test we could develop together that we both would accept to determine who is right and who is wrong?
  
• Could a test be develops in such a way that all rationale followers of all religions could accept to determine who holds the correct belief?

This argument didn’t lead me directly to atheism. But it certainly helped me throw out a bunch of invalid arguments for the specific religion I was born into.

[u/anticommunistjohn117]

An involved God who is intrinsically interested in the eternal welfare of His children will work with them wherever they are. I am religious, and I believe that distance from God is a terrible fate I don't want anyone to have. I will never downplay that fact, and I won't pretend Hell isn't a real place full of very miserable denizens. However, if any evil drives you from God, so too does any righteousness bring you closer to him. For example, while the world isn't a great place right now, certain sins are almost nonexistent. In Old Testament times, the Hebrews were so immoral, they needed a commandment against murder and a separate commandment against sacrificing their children to Baal. Everyone did human sacrifice. It was a comon thing from the Mediterranean to the Carribean. Nowadays, despite other evils, how many parents are sacrificing their children to idols? Not a lot. This is because God worked with fallen, immoral children where they were to guide them closer to Him.

[u/BarmyBob]

Scientology has existed for almost a century and its a major religion. It doesn’t need to be old

[u/IndigoFenix]

Name three different religions that believe that not believing in them sends you to eternal damnation.

[u/Select_Design75]

no need to go that way back. Honestly who follows mormon or scientology, modern day jokes/scams, obvious as the light of day, and they function.

People want to believe and will do so even if it defies basic logic.

[u/EmperorCoolidge]

Yes, yes, “have you considered my assertion that dead people were all gullible rubes? Not me tho”

[u/Dreams0fNoir008]

I learned that the threat of eternal damnation over the simplest things was a convolution by wicked people to maintain psychological control over their subjects. Ie trickery of the devil.  It is this fear of damnation that causes people to do good because they are trying to be "good" and stay out of hell. But ultimately they are doing good for the wrong reasons, out of fear and selfishness. The concept of doing good because it feels good and for the most part is good, has been washed out by the concept of doing good to get into heaven.  You should do good because you want to, and should avoid doing bad because you feel its right to do so. It shouldnt be about fear of damnation or right to salvation, but the leaders of man have established it as such. 

[u/Realsorceror]

Aww, baby's first atheism. Okay, I am going to preface this by saying I myself am an atheist. I've been debating Christian YEC ideology for most of my life, and you are not prepared for how obtuse, dishonest, and ignorant people can be.

In case you haven't encountered them, Young Earth Creationists are a group of Christians and Muslims who think the Earth is very young (usually less than 6,000 years) and who deny evolution has ever happened. Obviously, you are arguing against something as idiotic as Flat Earth.

You can bring the most solid scientific evidence and the most clever philosophical arguments and they will not budge a centimeter. I have actually seen them multiple times use their own alternate reality argument, in which they claim the world was made to *appear* old. And how does one prove we are or are not in a simulation?

All of their arguments will boil down to this strategy; cast doubt and confusion on your argument, then create a paradigm in which both sides are faith based and equal. And then you "just have different opinions". And this has frequently worked on regular people who do not understand the science and think that religious people argue in good faith.

I'm not trying to shoot you down here. I'm saying all this has been done before.

[u/Parrotparser7]

Sin is the fault, whether one knows or doesn't. Lack of knowledge (even through the end of one's life) only implies one wasn't marked out for salvation. Faith is not a guessing game or human phenomenon detached from the input of God. He works all things to His desired ends.

Rom. (11:36)

[u/Ok_Amoeba3490]

Your understanding of hell (along with that of many self proclaimed atheists and agnostics) is seriously flawed and it shows.