What if God is subject to the Butterfly Effect (yes, the movie)?
Every time he interacts with the world by helping it, he just fucks it up more for the future?
I'd sit on my cloud and mope about my creation all day. Finally you have the ultimate God-Game, and then the only winning move is not to play.
That isn't God, that's just "A guy on a cloud who fucks everything up a lot". I mean, there's a limit to how much you can twist the definition of something.
Oh, and FYI for all atheists, just as gay has replaced homosexual as a word, you're now all bright.
Gay hasn't replaced homosexual, and bright hasn't replaced atheist.
While we're on the topic of atheism (HAHA), does anybody else think that Richard Dawkins is kind of a jerk? I'm not sure what is it, but something about that man rubs me the wrong way.
Not really, no. He certainly thinks it's illogical to believe in a God, but all he's done is wrote a book about it and made statements in public. He's also one of the most influential and important biologists around today.
Whether or not it's the same, extremists are the same the world over and they just give every and any denomination a bad name if it's not common knowledge what the denomination's actually about.
Before you continue, think - you just took a very
extreme position. What about the so called human rights "extremists" in China?
Most people follow the religion of their family and immediate community, since it's simply what they grew up with and were exposed to by their parents, friends, teachers, and priests/whatevers. Unless they have unusual circumstances or are exceptionally evaluative of themselves, they won't ever change. It's basically passive, benevolent indoctrination by imprinting on them the values and mores that define a culture. Like learning to read and write to get a job, you should learn to love and fear X to have a good afterlife.
It depends - you can have demographic shifts. For instance, the UK seems to be getting less and less religious as young people begin to lose touch with it.
Well, if you fear and obey X, you won't go to the bad afterlife. Saving an innocent from eternal pain/annoyance/ironic punishment is pretty benevolent.
I'm gonna push you off a cliff unless you're my slave forever.
Hey, I just saved you from being pushed off a cliff! Wow, I'm so benevolent!
Well, I suppose that allowing the belief to be questioned could lead to dissent and alternate interpretations, or even rejection entirely. And given that the belief exists to please the deity and help people get to a good afterlife, allowing questioning leads to God getting Angry and people going to Bad Afterlife.
I see it more as a kindof memetic evolution thing. Religions that encourage lack of questioning survive because... well, people don't question them, and they get passed down more. Another critical factor to the Abrahamic religion's success could be the "exclusivity" clause - you can't worship any other Gods, stopping the religion from changing or being forgotten.