To be fair no religion has made God pleased enough to reveal himself. So in terms of science how can we make God happy enough to reveal himself?
The Abrahamists (the only religionists about whose beliefs and customs most of us Westerners know very much) believe that God does not show himself because
he wants us to believe in him on the basis of faith rather than evidence.
I guess the first thing would be what is God like? How did his existence begin? Did it begin?
Indeed. This is the fatal flaw in all belief systems predicated on divine creation of the universe. The universe, by definition includes "everything that exists." The god described by all religions that I have any understanding of at all is said to have
created the universe. Yet this god clearly exists or he would not be able to perform these magnificent feats. And if he exists, also by definition he is part of the universe.
So the creation myth fails to be believable (or even comprehensible) by one of the bonehead rules of Logic 101A: The Fallacy Of Recursion. Nothing can create itself, because before it comes into existence it's not there to do any creating. Duh!
God is myth. Religion is superstition. That's a scientific appraisal of religion.
Very accurately and succinctly stated. Science is based on evidence. Religion is based on feelings, hunches, stories told by our parents which they got from their parents, and (according to Jung, with his language updated) instincts.
Whats wrong with trying to come up with a religion that moves humans forward? If we can't come up with one, then we all tried...
People have been trying to do that since the Stone Age. Some faith-based belief systems appear to move the species forward, such as Hinduism (perhaps; they haven't always been peace-and-love hippies) and Rastfarianism (it's too new to judge). But the monotheistic religions of Abraham that now dominate the world do just the opposite. By condensing the rich pantheon of the traditional religions into a pathetic one-dimensional scale of good vs. evil, they lose sight of the fact that all religions are based on the same universal archetypes (Jung's term for an image, ritual, idea, legend, etc. that is found in all societies in all eras). So each increasingly large body of followers loses its bond to the followers of the other monotheistic religions, which is why we appear to be headed for a nuclear holy war among Christians, Muslims and Jews, all of whom claim to worship the same god and believe in most of the same prophets.
If monotheism is the ultimate form of religion, then there's no possible way that it can ever move people forward. The next crusade, jihad, inquisition or world war is always just one or two generations ahead of us.
The members of each sect think they're just a little bit better than all the other people, so it's their right and duty to show us where we went wrong and rebuild our societies more
righteously, at the expense of the loss of our own laws and customs. Even during peacetime they look down on us. During turmoil they positively hate us. And what makes this system suck so bad is that
we automatically feel the same way about them because of the way they treat us.
Most likely it's scientism.
Nope. The fundamental premise that underlies all science and which has been tested exhaustively for 500 years is that the natural universe is a closed system whose behavior can be predicted by theories derived logically from empirical observation of its present and past behavior.
The fundamental premise of all religions is that an invisible, illogical supernatural universe exists, from which fantastic creatures and unbelievable forces perturb the behavior of the natural universe at irregular intervals, usually whimsically and often petulantly.
There is no way that these two premises can be combined into a single belief system.
Scientists who claim to believe in gods, angels and prophets who rise from the dead are simply practicing
cognitive dissonance.
Supposedly there's only one God.
Obviously you've spent your life in a modern Western or Middle Eastern country where almost the entire population are members of one of the monotheistic Abrahamic religions. In the not-so-distant past (classical Rome, Greece and Egypt, for example), polytheism was the standard belief system. The Jews were the first well-known group to embrace monotheism, and so far it hasn't worked to their advantage. Today there are still traditional religions in Africa. I don't know as much about the other parts of the world where people still live in the Paleolithic or Neolithic Era, but many of the Native Americans had multiple gods before the Christian occupation and slaughter. Perhaps one of our Australian or Kiwi members can tell us about the religions of their native peoples.
