God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent - it says so right here on the label. If you have a mind capable of believing all three of these attributes simultaneously, I have a wonderful bargain for you. No checks, please. Cash and in small bills.

Men rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a God superior to themselves. Most Gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.

The most preposterous notion that H. Sapiens has ever dreamed up is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed by their prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive this flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays all the expenses of the oldest, largest, and least productive industry in all of history.

I've never understood how God could expect His creatures to pick the one true religion by faith - it strikes me as a sloppy way to run a universe.

One man's theology is another man's belly laugh.

Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there.

Anyone who can worship a trinity and insist that his religion is a monotheism can believe anything... just give him time to rationalize it.

The Ten Commandments are for lame brains. The first five are solely for the benefit of the priests and the powers that be; the second five are half truths, neither complete nor adequate.

The Bible is such a gargantuan collection of conflicting values that anyone can prove anything from it.

-- Robert Anson Heinlein

I've been reading the man's books since 1977 and still believe he had an uncommon amount of common sense.

The most preposterous notion that H. Sapiens has ever dreamed up is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed by their prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive this flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays all the expenses of the oldest, largest, and least productive industry in all of history.

Yep. Although if I lived in a situation in which the rains might fail any year, and might drive people to killing each other over the remaining food, I might perceive lurking Powers of Petulance as well.

The important thing to remember is that the system, like all superstitions, is self-reinforcing. If there was a drought last year and the priest says, "Kill a goat and share it with your neighbors, and God will be pleased," chances are the rains come next year and you figure the priest is on to something. And if the rains don't come, the priest says, "This will take some intense prayer and maybe some study of the entrails of a chicken", and you wait, and the priest comes back and says, "God told me you have tolerated Smilia, who is a complete jerk and makes everybody in the village displease God by being grumpy with each other, so throw him out, and then the rains will come next year," there is a pretty good chance the rains will arrive next year, and Voila!

The remarkable thing about religion is that it evolved toward thinking about what God wants, i.e. what constitutes right behavior, independent of the superstition. This drama with an unseen, very powerful character requires reflection and contemplation. And not surprisingly, it eventually got around to concluding that what God (or the gods) wants from us is good behavior.

Anyone who can worship a trinity and insist that his religion is a monotheism can believe anything... just give him time to rationalize it.

Keynes, in a brilliant analysis of the Versailles Conference at the end of WWI, characterized Wilson as a "theologian", capable of justifying to himself whatever conclusion he needed to be true. (When Wilson gave up all of his Fourteen Points except the League, in order to win France over, and then the League was killed by the American congress, he was a broken man.)

It's still a danger for theology. Operating with very little basis for its epistemology (even using the term for theology is a belly laugh for some) it has to keep remembering to be humble. And when you claim you are interpreting what an unseen, very powerful character wants, humility doesn't come naturally. I have learned to interpret theological issues through the philosophical lens of existentialism. Among other things, it gives up on interpreting what an unseen, very powerful character wants.

ant wrote:

Or as Voltaire said, "if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him."

Here's an interesting post that discusses the entire context of the above quote:

https://www.quora.com/What-did-Voltaire ... invent-him

Thanks for this link. I followed it, and found the interesting proposition by Voltaire, that:
"Kings, if you oppress me, if your eminencies disdain
The tears of the innocent that you cause to flow,
My avenger is in the heavens: learn to tremble.
Such, at least, is the fruit of a useful creed. "

There is some merit in the notion that Kings tremble at the thought of the avenger in the heavens. Yet I am more thoroughly charmed by the image of King George II standing in the Hallelujah Chorus, when they sang, "King of Kings, and Lord of Lords." (Although there seems no evidence that this occurred, the custom of standing for the chorus has persisted to this day.) Why would a King acknowledge the "King of Kings" by standing in His presence? Perhaps because no one is as free as a King to ask what really makes life worth living, and what really amounts to a good life.

Like all of us, a King can squander his life if he chooses. But there is no power threatening him if he does, at least not on earth. And yet it matters.