This is rather interesting....
Mainly because when it comes to "God", there is usually a lot of ignorance that follows. But seeing as everyone is dropping in knowledgeable stuff, I'm interested...

Religion is a social construct but the feeling of 'god' or religious awe, or oneness with the universe or whatever you'd like to call has some sort of evolutionary purpose. This religious type feeling has been linked to certain areas of the brain firing at the same time. So things that feel like miracles are actually internal instead of external, however, people can simultaniously experience these things if all their brains are firing the same. Coooooool right?

Anyway

You say 'switch between good and evil' like they're pre-determined. Good and evil are also social constructs, generally imposed through religion. If you grew up in a society where murder for sport and shitting on people were the norm, you'd find absolutely nothing wrong with it. Look in the past, Aztecs made human sacrifices to their gods. Did they think it was evil? No. No one in their society batted an eye at it. That's just how it was done. There is absolutely no objective good or evil, good and evil change over time to fit our perceptions of it.

People are absolutely a product of their social environment, it's more than just their family environment. We are a combination of our experiences balanced against our personality, represented in our genes. If you have poppa CEO, and you grow up in his business and dislike something about it, say one of the upper executives was rude to you and you're already genetically a pretty easygoing/shy person who hates conflict, then you have an amazing experience with painting a picture at school or something, you're likely to come out as an artist instead of a CEO. Now a lot of the time, you're gonna see family genes for personality matching up pretty well with occupations or whatnot, plus family has a huge control over what kind of experiences you're going to have. That's why there are a ton of family businesses, but that's not ALWAYS the case. It's just a combination of what you happen to experience, same as religion. Conversions generally happen when people experience events they cannot explain/understand as anything other than god or some other higher power. Likewise, de-conversions usually happen when events show incompatibility with the person's god or higher power and cannot be explained by them. But it's hard to get out when one of the explanations is 'well god is more awesome than me so he knows and I dont'.
My examples are super watered down compared to reality, but I think you get the gist. More or less I agree with you, it's the just scope of events you're looking at is too narrow. It's not just family. It's everything. Events vs. Knowledge vs. Personality




Also, try this one:

If God is all knowing/benevolent/powerful

Why not just make a world without pain in it?
Why not just make us all perfect?

Surely if I can think of these things he can. If he is all benevolent he should not force us to suffer. Especially if he is all powerful and can change anything and is all knowing and knows it's miserable for us.


If God is all knowing, why send us here?

He already knows EVERY action we will take and since he is all powerful and created us he either dooms us to hell or heaven since he is the one determining all our actions and attributes.

If You Believe In "God" You Believe In Monotheistic Doctrines So Therefore There Can't Be Another "More Powerful" God Cause There's Only One. Well According To Your "Faith" There Is...

Because Its A Test And All That Bull
And I Believe That Their Belief Is That He Isn't Determining Al Our Actions

You can't be independent from god otherwise he isn't all powerful in creating you. How is it a test if you already know what each of your students can and can't learn and what the outcome will be for any situation they are placed in because you 'programmed' them that way?

That's like testing the calculator program on your computer to see if it will build you a cake. You know it won't.

I Wasn't Suggesting That You're All Independent.
Its A Test As The Process Is Different For Each Individual.
And With The Right Guidance An Apple Can Become An Orange.

theologians would argue that part of God's design for us was free will

our reason + free will has the potential to be perfect, if used correctly. theoretically.
If god were to GIVE us the answer intrinsically, then his creation of free will would have no purpose, making an imperfect creation, making god imperfect.

so basically God DID make us perfect, he just gave us the ability to achieve that perfectness.

---------- Post added at 06:30 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:23 PM ----------

but then i would argue.. why didn't he just make our reason flawless. so that we were still making decisions, we were just always making the 'right' ones according to God.


to be honest these philosophers were just trying to not get hung up or exiled so they put God in their shit...

take for example descartes. the dude said, 'what if the world i perceive is created by an evil demon to deceive me'
that would mean one of three things
1. the demon is more powerful than god
2. god does not exist
3. god is complacent in evil

so Gods evil...

basically the dude wanted to say "what if God is tricking us?" but he couldn't say that so he figured out a way around it that pretty much says the same shit but doesn't hurt anyones feelings

im pretty sure these guys were just arguing for ideas like infinity and replacing it with 'god'

God is . . . . . . the energy of the universe. He/she/it/nothing it is in everything, every person, every place and every thought. I believe religion is a very twisted tool to use on weak minded sheep to keep the 'flock' civil. However that does not mean there is no place for faith and searching for something greater than yourself/ideals. I think we will never fully grasp what that feeling is of something else. But I also think as long as we question that feeling we are on the right path. iono I'm goofy tho

Only in death do we find absolution. Only in death, do we truly know if there is a God or not.
:high: