Complexity = insanity

[Voskhod]

Please trust in what I say when I admit that I have spent practically every sleepless night for the past few years pondering this question, its answer, and the ramifications of its answer.

What question is that? Well, the one that has plagued mankind since his very conception. In other, far less vague terms, the question of whether or not there is a supernatural or divine presence that has created and/or inhabits this reality.

But, before I proceed any further with this analysis of theology and organized religion, I'd like to point out a very important correlation that I've noticed throughout my studies. The more complicated, layered, and otherwise overdeveloped a system of beliefs is, the closer said belief system comes to bordering on insanity.

I by no means intend on the above observation as an insult or Ad Hominem, but rather as exactly that: An observation. It is not a biased simplification of a far deeper problem that is much more complex than its face value suggests, or a simple inflammatory remark that is intended to stir up arguments and flame wars. No, I have found that this simple correlation is entirely self-evident, it exists as a simple stone-cold fact.

What exactly do I mean by that? Well, lets take a look at a simple, hypothetical word problem. Believing in a god is simple, and straightforward - it has no attached baggage, no taped on beliefs or practices, no presumptions and interpretations based on millennial-old scripture, nothing at all. It is exactly that and absolutely nothing more, the belief in a god, period - a single, solitary belief that stands alone and can support its own weight. But very few people leave their beliefs at that. More often than not they develop it further. Most would believe that there is a God, AND he operates on a system of morality, that he created the universe and actively partakes in the events and future of said universe, and ultimately has a purpose for the reality he created. Again, fairly straightforward, has nothing tacked onto it, and can be considered by even the most cynical and harsh of Atheists as a perfectly valid and logical belief.

However, it very, very seldom ends there. Even more people hold onto the dear and deep-seated belief that there is a God, he created the universe, he operates on a system of morality, he created the universe and actively partakes in the events and future of said universe, ultimately has a purpose for us all as well as the universe he created, created the world in 6 days just for us, allowed for the creation of heaven and hell as reward and punishment for each individual souls deeds in his/her life, personally judges each mortal soul upon his/her death to decide their faith in the afterlife, created man in his own image, came into contact with man several thousand years ago and delivered his sacred word unto Abraham and Moses; and personally foresaw the translation and transition of his infallible word unto the languages of the Hebrews, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Europeans, and finally to us in the modern age with absolutely no translation errors or long-term meanings lost within the white noise of translating an entire book from one language to another to another to another ad nauseum; And on top of all this they believe he marked a single 24 hour period during the arbitrarily assigned rotation of 7 revolutions of the Earth's axis as an inexplicably holy day of rest known as the Sabbath unto which no man may work under penalty of sin and therefor eternal damnation; And on top of that still they believe that God created man with original sin, then impregnated a woman with himself so that he could be born, and once alive, allow his own assassination as a sacrifice to himself in order to save mankind from the sin he originally condemned them to; And on top of THAT oh Christ almighty it just keeps going and going and going.

As you can imagine, this is the point where many Atheists, Agnostics, skeptics and cynics begin having major problems. And for good reason. From my observations, the the average Christian believes in a system of faith that can only be described as a mystifyingly complex and near endless briar patch of paradoxes, contradictions, logical fallacies, loopholes, consistency errors, blatantly false myths, aged and obsolete morals, senseless rituals, archaic traditions, and hollow fables.

This brings us back to my initial observation: The correlation between a religion's complexity and number of beliefs in relation to its potential of being labeled that of complete lunacy by an unbiased 3rd party. And its observable in that of simple statistics: The more statements you claim to be true and infallible, the more likely at least 2 of them will contradict each other in a way that cannot be justified without modifying or even deleting one of those statements. And, using that flow of logic, one can deduce that a system of faith that has several thousands upon thousands of beliefs will statistically have hundreds of those aforementioned 'dead-end' contradictions; That is, if one truly looks for them hard enough - something that holders of such a faith will never willingly do.

I have thus come to this conclusion regarding organized religion and theology as a whole: If your beliefs cannot be described AND justified without the use and/or reference of several books containing thousands of paragraphs, scriptures, and passages...Chances are, you do not truly understand what you believe - but rather, you merely think you understand.

[LikelyToBreak]

Okay...  I think I agree with you.  So, anything further along than say a Deistic God, would make the believer delusional to the point of lunacy or at least close to it.  Does that sound correct?

Kind of like a bad liar will add details, whereas a good liar won't.

[Voskhod]

Precisely.

[tyonfire80]

the beauty, and mind you i respect everything you wrote entirely, though i don't have much time these days, i skipped through it. I'm sure in the future, we can discuss this. But, what if you die? let's say that and then you learn all of the mysteries of the world. (I swear, i'm not crazy) o.k. what do you think would be beyond the outer layer of the universe. Boom, god. Jk. but maybe.  :roll:

[Hijiri Byakuren]

(I swear, i'm not crazy)

Writing a coherent post would be a good start on the path toward proving this statement true.

[Hydra009]

But, before I proceed any further with this analysis of theology and organized religion, I'd like to point out a very important correlation that I've noticed throughout my studies. The more complicated, layered, and otherwise overdeveloped a system of beliefs is, the closer said belief system comes to bordering on insanity.

I dunno if that's necessarily the case.  There are plenty of fairly complicated ideas that are pretty well-supported and plenty of wrong ideas that are very simple.  (For example, vitalism is a pretty simple but wrong idea.  And dualism.  And spontaneous generation.  Compare those to the mystifyingly complex theories of quantum mechanics, cell biology, and big bang cosmology.  As they say, science takes a lifetime to learn, but nonsense merely takes the afternoon.)

What exactly do I mean by that? Well, lets take a look at a simple, hypothetical word problem. Believing in a god is simple, and straightforward - it has no attached baggage, no taped on beliefs or practices, no presumptions and interpretations based on millennial-old scripture, nothing at all. It is exactly that and absolutely nothing more, the belief in a god, period - a single, solitary belief that stands alone and can support its own weight.

Initially simple, perhaps.  But this claim raises quite a few questions.  How and why does a god exist?  Are there more than one or only one?  What does a god do?  Does a god have a mind?  What does a god want?  Why?  And so forth.  The resolution to these questions (and further follow-ups) necessarily entails a whole slew of beliefs.

However, it very, very seldom ends there. Even more people hold onto the dear and deep-seated belief that there is a God, he created the universe, he operates on a system of morality, he created the universe and actively partakes in the events and future of said universe, ultimately has a purpose for us all as well as the universe he created, created the world in 6 days just for us, allowed for the creation of heaven and hell as reward and punishment for each individual souls deeds in his/her life, personally judges each mortal soul upon his/her death to decide their faith in the afterlife, created man in his own image, came into contact with man several thousand years ago and delivered his sacred word unto Abraham and Moses; and personally foresaw the translation and transition of his infallible word unto the languages of the Hebrews, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Europeans, and finally to us in the modern age with absolutely no translation errors or long-term meanings lost within the white noise of translating an entire book from one language to another to another to another ad nauseum; And on top of all this they believe he marked a single 24 hour period during the arbitrarily assigned rotation of 7 revolutions of the Earth's axis as an inexplicably holy day of rest known as the Sabbath unto which no man may work under penalty of sin and therefor eternal damnation; And on top of that still they believe that God created man with original sin, then impregnated a woman with himself so that he could be born, and once alive, allow his own assassination as a sacrifice to himself in order to save mankind from the sin he originally condemned them to; And on top of THAT oh Christ almighty it just keeps going and going and going.

Precisely what happens when a formerly simple beliefs are organized, expounded upon, translated, retranslated, interpreted, reinterpreted, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters.

As you can imagine, this is the point where many Atheists, Agnostics, skeptics and cynics begin having major problems. And for good reason. From my observations, the the average Christian believes in a system of faith that can only be described as a mystifyingly complex and near endless briar patch of paradoxes, contradictions, logical fallacies, loopholes, consistency errors, blatantly false myths, aged and obsolete morals, senseless rituals, archaic traditions, and hollow fables.

Yep.  That's fanboys for ya.  The canon's always right, even when it contradicts itself.  Especially when it contradicts itself.

This brings us back to my initial observation: The correlation between a religion's complexity and number of beliefs in relation to its potential of being labeled that of complete lunacy by an unbiased 3rd party. And its observable in that of simple statistics: The more statements you claim to be true and infallible, the more likely at least 2 of them will contradict each other in a way that cannot be justified without modifying or even deleting one of those statements. And, using that flow of logic, one can deduce that a system of faith that has several thousands upon thousands of beliefs will statistically have hundreds of those aforementioned 'dead-end' contradictions; That is, if one truly looks for them hard enough - something that holders of such a faith will never willingly do.

You have basically just described the principle of parsimony.

I have thus come to this conclusion regarding organized religion and theology as a whole: If your beliefs cannot be described AND justified without the use and/or reference of several books containing thousands of paragraphs, scriptures, and passages...Chances are, you do not truly understand what you believe - but rather, you merely think you understand.

Goes without saying.  Physical evidence is certainly in high demand and low supply.  Ink, however, is available in vast quantities.

[Colanth]

But, what if you die? let's say that and then you learn all of the mysteries of the world. (I swear, i'm not crazy) o.k. what do you think would be beyond the outer layer of the universe.

Since "the universe" means "everything that exists", what's "beyond the outer layer of the universe" is the same as "north of the north pole" - a concept that has no equivalent in reality.  Since the universe is unbounded (if you disagree, take it up with Einstein), there's no "outer layer".

[ApostateLois]

the beauty, and mind you i respect everything you wrote entirely, though i don't have much time these days, i skipped through it. I'm sure in the future, we can discuss this. But, what if you die? let's say that and then you learn all of the mysteries of the world. (I swear, i'm not crazy) o.k. what do you think would be beyond the outer layer of the universe. Boom, god. Jk. but maybe.  :roll:

We WILL all die, there is no question of that. Do we have a soul that "goes" somewhere afterward? I don't think so. I could be wrong, of course, but it seems to me that if I am, if there is some aspect of us that survives physical death and floats away to another realm, that nobody knows what that realm is because nobody has been there and come back to tell about it. Oh, there are millions of people with their own ideas about what it is all about, of course; but they can't prove a single word of what they claim. They have no evidence for heaven, hell, purgatory, reincarnation, Valhalla, or anything else. They have only the claims of religious leaders down through the ages, and the beliefs of their parents, grandparents, teachers, and other authority figures. But claims and beliefs are not evidence. If there is an afterlife, obviously we need not concern ourselves with it, because it will take care of itself. Maybe nothing happens at all. Maybe our life force or whatever just gets absorbed into the planet, to become the life force of other creatures and plants and trees and bacteria and fungi and fishes and amoebas. That's not such a bad thing, is it?

[aitm]

the beauty, and mind you i respect everything you wrote entirely, though i don't have much time these days, i skipped through it. I'm sure in the future, we can discuss this. But, what if you die? let's say that and then you learn all of the mysteries of the world. (I swear, i'm not crazy) o.k. what do you think would be beyond the outer layer of the universe. Boom, god. Jk. but maybe.  :roll:

once your dead, your dead. Now if you are suggesting that one doesn't actually die but goes off into some la-la spirituality thingy....well.....thats just crazy talk.

[Jesus]

the beauty, and mind you i respect everything you wrote entirely, though i don't have much time these days, i skipped through it. I'm sure in the future, we can discuss this. But, what if you die? let's say that and then you learn all of the mysteries of the world. (I swear, i'm not crazy) o.k. what do you think would be beyond the outer layer of the universe. Boom, god. Jk. but maybe.  :roll:

Still, just because there is an unknown afterlife shouldn't make one believe in a God to fill its gap. By doing so it creates ignorance and possibly denial.

[Colanth]

We WILL all die, there is no question of that. Do we have a soul that "goes" somewhere afterward? I don't think so. I could be wrong, of course, but it seems to me that if I am, if there is some aspect of us that survives physical death and floats away to another realm, that nobody knows what that realm is because nobody has been there and come back to tell about it.

Well ... there have been.  People who have been clinically dead (no EEG) for more than just a few seconds.  And they've all reported the same thing - death is the same as before conception.  Nada with a side of nothingness.