r/DebateReligion

Many religions even today determine their law of marriage to be based on puberty.

A woman can get her puberty as early as 11, she is legally permitted in the religion to be married to a for example 53 year old man and consent to sex too.

Well consent doesn't matter here, because after marriage she is required to satisfy her old and dying husband anyway.

Not saying your religion supports that, but if it does support such a thing, you deserve to be put on a list and be kicked out of any secular country.

Hey Christians, the Jesus many of you worship today isn’t a clearly preserved historical figure, and the timeline of the sources actually shows why.

No one wrote about Jesus while he was alive. The earliest written accounts appear decades later, in Greek, not the language he spoke, and they were written by authors whose identities we don’t actually know. This strongly suggests that what we have are later community traditions about Jesus rather than direct eyewitness documentation from his lifetime.

When you compare those accounts side by side, they don’t even agree with each other. The Gospels give different resurrection witnesses, different genealogies, and different last words on the cross. That’s not what a single preserved story looks like. That’s multiple competing versions of the same figure developing over time.

The timeline makes this even clearer. In the Gospel of Mark, generally considered the earliest Gospel, Jesus appears human and uncertain. He struggles, he suffers, and he even expresses abandonment. But by the time you get to the Gospel of John, written decades later, Jesus is presented as openly divine and fully in control of everything happening around him. As time passes, the character becomes more cosmic and more theological.

That’s the opposite of what you would expect from a stable historical record. It looks much more like a tradition evolving across decades rather than preserving a single, consistent portrait.

So what’s being worshiped today isn’t a figure frozen in history. It’s the version of Jesus that won after decades of interpretation, transmission, and theological development.

At some point, you have to ask whether you’re actually following the earliest recoverable historical Jesus or the version of him that emerged later as Christianity developed.

To begin, let me clarify what I mean by free will. I am not referring to the mere absence of external coercion (that is the weak version, compatibilism). I mean libertarian free will (LFW): the capacity of an agent, given exactly the same prior conditions (including their character, beliefs, desires, and brain state), to choose between two or more genuinely open alternatives. In LFW, the decision is not determined by prior causes, and the agent is the ultimate source of their choice. This is the notion that matters for ultimate moral responsibility, and therefore for any divine judgment that claims to be just.

My argument is divided into three stages:

1. Libertarian free will is necessary for divine judgment to be just.
2. Libertarian free will does not exist (nor can it exist).
3. Therefore, if the God of classical theism (omnipotent, omniscient, creator and judge) exists, then He is unjust; or else that God does not exist.

Stage 1: Why LFW is necessary for just divine judgment

The God of classical theism not only creates the world, but also judges His creatures: He punishes or rewards them according to their actions. The Christian, Jewish and Islamic traditions affirm that this judgment is just. But retributive justice — the kind that assigns punishment or reward based on desert — presupposes that the agent could have done otherwise. Punishing someone for an action they could not avoid is like punishing a stone for falling: it is violence, not justice.

A compatibilist theologian might object: "LFW is not needed. It is enough that the agent acts according to their own will, without external coercion. God can judge based on the character the agent has developed, even if that character is determined." But this objection fails for two reasons.

First reason: the problem of divine authorship. If God is the omnipotent and omniscient creator, then He not only determines the laws of the universe, but specifically chooses this universe among all possible ones. He knows exactly what character each person will have and what actions they will perform. In that context, the agent's "will" is nothing more than a cog in the divine design. To say that the agent is responsible because they act according to their will is like saying a robot is responsible for killing because its program dictates it. The ultimate responsible party is the programmer. Hence, even if we accepted compatibilism among humans, it would not work for God: He is the author of the will itself.

Second reason: divine judgment is retributive, not merely consequentialist. Some might argue that divine punishment has consequentialist aims: deterrence, reform, or protection. But the traditional doctrine of eternal hell is not consequentialist (it does not reform, it does not deter the already damned, it does not protect against anything that God could not avoid without torture). It is retributive: one suffers because one deserves to suffer. And desert, as Kant said, only makes sense if the agent could have acted otherwise. Without real alternatives, there is no merit or demerit.

Therefore, I conclude that if the God of classical theism exists and judges retributively, then LFW must exist. Without LFW, that judgment is necessarily unjust.

Stage 2: Demonstration that libertarian free will does not exist

Now I must prove that LFW is impossible. I do not need to prove universal determinism (although I think it likely). It suffices to show that any candidate for LFW fails, whether the world is deterministic or indeterministic. I will do this via two convergent arguments.

2.1. The argument from chance (against indeterminism)

Suppose the universe is indeterministic: some decisions have no sufficient causes. That is, given the same prior conditions (the same brain, same beliefs, same desires, same reflection), two different outcomes could occur. A libertarian would say: "There is freedom: the decision is not predetermined, and the agent can choose."

But let us reflect. If the decision is not determined by the agent's reasons, then it is not controlled by those reasons. That I have reasons for A and reasons for B, and the final outcome depends on an indeterministic event (e.g., a quantum fluctuation in a neuron), makes my choice a matter of luck. It is not my decision in the relevant sense; it is a coin toss that happens inside me. If there is no causal explanation of why I chose A rather than B (beyond "it was indeterministic"), then I cannot claim the choice as mine in a responsible way.

The libertarian Robert Kane tries to rescue this with the notion of "controlled indeterminism": in difficult decisions, both outcomes are consistent with my character, and indeterminism merely "breaks the tie". But the problem persists: if the tie is broken at random, then the final outcome is random. Why would I deserve punishment or reward for something decided by a quantum coin? The only difference is that the coin is inside my head. That does not make it less random.

Therefore, indeterminism does not produce LFW; it produces chance. And chance is not freedom.

2.2. The argument from non-self-creation (against determinism)

If the universe is deterministic, then each of my decisions is caused by prior states (my brain, my environment, my upbringing, my genes). Those prior states are caused by earlier ones, and so on back to the origin of the universe. I did not choose my genes, my upbringing, my environment, or the initial configuration of my brain. Nor did I choose the physical laws that govern all this. In other words, I did not choose the set of causes that determine me.

Now, a compatibilist would say that does not matter: freedom is acting according to my own desires and beliefs, without coercion. But here we are talking about LFW, not compatibilism. LFW requires that I be the ultimate source of my decisions. If everything I am and everything I decide is traced out by causes I did not choose, then I am not the ultimate source of anything. I am a link in a chain. The chain may be very complex, it may include reflection and deliberation, but all of it was already written.

Some object: "But deliberation is real, and in it I consider alternatives." True, but deliberation itself is caused. If the causes were different, I would deliberate differently. There is no "I" separate from the causes that can jump outside the chain.

2.3. Unification: the dilemma of LFW

Bringing both arguments together, we have a dilemma:

· If the world is deterministic, then everything is caused by factors I did not choose, and there are no real alternatives. Hence there is no LFW. · If the world is indeterministic, then decisions are not causally determined, but then they depend on chance, and chance is neither control nor responsibility. Hence again there is no LFW.

LFW aims to occupy an impossible middle ground: control without determination, responsibility without chance. No such point exists. Therefore, LFW does not exist. It is a phenomenological illusion (we feel we could have done otherwise, but that feeling is part of the causal mechanism).

Stage 3: Consequences — God is unjust or does not exist

If we accept Stage 1 (just divine judgment requires LFW) and Stage 2 (LFW does not exist), it necessarily follows that the God of classical theism, if He exists and judges retributively, is unjust. But classical theism asserts that God is essentially just (He cannot be unjust). Hence we reach a contradiction if we affirm that this God exists and judges. Therefore:

· Either God does not exist (at least not an omnipotent, omniscient, judging God), · Or God exists but does not judge (which contradicts Scripture and tradition), · Or God exists but is unjust (which contradicts His essence).

In any of the three cases, the God of classical theism — the one worshipped by orthodox Christians, Muslims, and Jews — cannot be as described. The only theologically coherent way out would be to abandon retributive judgment (for example, adopt universalism where all are saved without eternal condemnation) or to abandon omnipotence/omniscience (for example, a finite god or deism). But these are not the majority doctrines.

An important objection and my response

Someone might say: "God could have created a world with LFW, but you have shown that LFW is impossible. Therefore God cannot create the impossible. So He is not unjust for not giving LFW, because it is logically impossible to give it." This objection is interesting. My response is twofold.

First, if LFW is logically impossible (as I have argued), then the idea of just retributive judgment is also impossible. An omnipotent and omniscient God should know that. Therefore, if He nevertheless institutes retributive judgment (such as hell), He is acting irrationally or unjustly: He is demanding something that no creature can fulfill. It would be like creating beings who necessarily fail and then punishing them for failing.

Second, an omnipotent God, if truly omnipotent, could have created a world where LFW were possible even if it seems impossible to us. Omnipotence includes the ability to do the logically possible. My argument in Stage 2 aims to show that LFW is logically impossible (due to the determinism/chance dilemma). But a theologian might claim that God can make indeterministic control intelligible. To that I respond: then the burden of proof falls on the theologian to explain how such control would work without falling into the dilemma. To this day, no theory of LFW has resolved the problem of luck. Meanwhile, my argument stands.

Final conclusion

In summary: libertarian free will is a necessary condition for divine judgment to be just; but libertarian free will does not exist (it is incoherent). Hence, the God who judges retributively cannot be just. For consistency, we must either reject the existence of that God or radically reformulate our idea of God and judgment. I incline toward the first: the God of classical theism, as preached in the Abrahamic religions, is an untenable hypothesis. The illusion of freedom we experience is not a divine gift, but a product of our causal architecture. And to pretend that this same God judges us for following the script He Himself wrote is, quite simply, a moral absurdity.

Final note (clarification): This does not deny moral responsibility among human beings. We humans share the same ontological category: none of us created the others, we are all products of causes we did not choose. That is why we can establish compatibilist systems of responsibility, based on consequences, deterrence, and social order. But that kind of responsibility is not what classical theology attributes to God. God is not just another human; He is the creator. And we cannot apply the same criterion to the creator as to creatures. That is why the analogy fails and divine judgment turns out to be incoherent.

Foreknowledge of infinite suffering or total failure, even if one is convinced it is not causative, would still cause the average Christian to do what they could to prevent said infinite suffering or total failure.

In this case, (the scenario listed in the title) the only thing the Christian in question could do to save this soul from hell would be to never birth it in the first place.

This hesitance to give birth is hardly something one needs the threat of hell to understand. We can completely forget religion for a second:

If, given absolute proof that your future potential child would be born with an incurable genetic disease that would lead said child to be severely handicapped and die at a young age, it's not unreasonable to abstain from reproducing. This doesn't even qualify as a hypothetical; it happens all the time.

Parents are used to operating under the assumption that they ought to do what's best for their infant children, even though their infants cannot provide input or consent. Birth itself is done without an infant's consent, but even after the fact, infants are still vaccinated. Circumcised. Fed a bunch of yucky food. Introduced to their family's faith. Ect. All for the greater good of the infant.

There is no compulsion to breed in Christianity, at least, so I've been told. Yes, I'm aware of the rather odd "fruitful and multiply" command, but refusing to reproduce is hardly unprecedented in Christianity, and it's not punished. Catholic priests exist. Monks exist. Nuns exist. Jesus exists.

And again, even if we forget religion for a second, it's absurd to think that every human must produce as many children as possible. There's no compulsion inside or outside of religion, and we are already comfortable with the notion that someone can abstain from having kids for any reason (even one's we don't relate to).

What better reason to abstain from having kids could there be than saving them from hell? Christians already sacrifice and intrude plenty in their attempts to save others from hell. And note, I'm only talking about children who a Christian parent knows, ahead of time, will go to hell. We're assuming God-like foresight and hell as Eternal Conscious Torment. I know some Christian frameworks do not grant God foresight and do not believe in hell.

For Christians who would have children they know would go to hell, surely there's a limit to the number they'd be willing to have? If so, I'd be curious about that number.

Oh, and if you need extra information, let's also assume that these hypothetical hell-bound children will die and go to hell before they themselves have any children. That's just in case you're interested in doing the whole "sacrifice my son to hell so that his seven grandchildren can go to heaven" math, though I'm told Christians reject utilitarianism.

Quranic sources such as Sahih al-Bukhari Book 56 Hadith 186 it describes the massive scale of the caravan and specific goods (silver) being traded by Abu Sufyan and his men with Syria ; The History of al-Tabari in volume VI, Muhammad at Mecca, he provides more detail on The "Ilaf" (trade pacts) with the Ghassanids and the Byzanrines that supposedly made Mecca a hub ; The Qu'ran 106:1-4 it says "For the accustomed securitate of the Quraysh— Their accustomed securitate in the caravan of winter and summer— Let them worship the Lord of this House, Who had fed them, [saving them] from hunger and made them safe, [saving them] from fear.".

The historical problem with all of these is that none of these descriptions appear in non-Muslim records from the 600s. For example, Roman (Byzantine) records of trade in the 6th century mention the "Saracens" and various towns, but never mention a massive trade hub at Mecca or a "Hashim" getting trade permits from The Emperor and on top of that theres neither any archeological proof of major trade in the area.

Another narrative this damages is the very structural foundation for the entire story of Muhammad's mission. If Mecca was just a small, isolated village, many of the core themes of the Quran and the Sira (biography) would lose their meaning.

considering the narrative explains:

1. the "Great Tempation" and the Quran frequently condemning arrogance, greed, and the neglect of the poor (ex: Surah Al-Humazah or Surah At-Takathur). The logic is that if Mecca were a poor, subsistence-level village, the critique of "piling up wealth" requires a plutocracy (rule by The rich) for Muhammad to act as a social reformer.

2.Justification of the "Miracle" of the Quran as in Islamic tradition, Muhammad was an "unlettered" man in a city of sophisticated, wordly merchants. The logic assumes that by placing him in a Umm al-Qura (Mother of cities) that interactiv with Christians, Jews and Persians through trade, the barrative sets up the challange of how can a man from this merchant environment produce a book tha surpassed all the poets and rhetoricians of the most important city in Arabia?

3.The conflict with the Quraysh which were depicted as the most powerful tribe in Arabia cause of their control of the Kaaba and the Trade. The logic suggests that if Mecca was an international hub, then the Quraysh were international players. This makes Muhammad's eventual victory over them a sort of David vs Goliath story on a global scale. If Mecca were insignifiant, his conquest of it would seem like a minor tribal skirmish reather than a world-changing event

As my second argument to solidify my proof ill present archeological facts. Unlike other Arabian cities like Tayma and Dedan which have thousands of rock inscriptions dating back to The 8th century B.C, Mecca has no known pre-islamic inscriptions mentioning its name or its kings. A major tradehub should of left behind whats called a "trash layer" composed of foreign coins, Roman pottery or other time resistent luxury objects, which none have been found in the pre-islamic strata of Mecca. And the lack of contemporary maps suggest that it was insignifiant, whereas other Arabian towns like Yathrib (Medina) were well documented by the Greek and Roman geographers.

Archaeologists and historians like Patricia Crone point out that the Hadiths and the Sira describe the city as having olive trees, grapes, and lush vegetation. Archaeologically, the soil around Mecca is hyper-arid desert with very low rainfall. Olives, în particular, do not grow in that climate as they requite a Mediterranean enviorment like that of Jordan or Syria; Based also on The available water resources (the Zamzam well), modern estimates by historians like Majied Robinson suggest Mecca's actual population in the time of Muhammad was likely only around 550 people which is by population standards a tiny desert settlement and not a global hub

Im open for debate

^(24) Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock:

This seems like an innocuous verse, but in my mind it undermines all of Christianity, namely that salvation comes through faith in Christ alone.

Take the preceding three verses into context:

^(21) Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.

^(22) Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?

^(23) And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.

^(24) Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock:

As you can see, Jesus is saying that whoever does his sayings he will consider wise because those who do not do the will of the Father will not enter the kingdom of heaven, indicating that doing his sayings is at least in part doing the will of the Father. The problem with this for Christianity is that in his sermon Jesus is not talking about believing in him, but rather moralistic teachings such as "do unto others as they do unto you", and "judge not, that ye be not judged". What can be surmised from this is that according to Jesus, entrance into heaven is based (at least in part) on works. You must do the will of the Father to enter into the kingdom of heaven, and according to Jesus his sayings would be doing the will of the Father.

In my experience Christians get bogged down in things very easily and miss the point, so if you're still wondering what I'm talking about, it's simple. Jesus gives a moralistic sermon and says he will consider you wise if you put his sayings into practice because only those who do the will of the Father will enter into the kingdom of heaven. This means salvation is based at the very least in part on works, whether or not you do the will of the Father. This flies in the face of the Christian claim that salvation comes through faith in Christ alone. This claim is not possible because Jesus is predicating salvation here on doing the will of the Father which has to do with doing his sayings. This is bizarre because in John 3 Jesus claims that salvation indeed comes through believing in him. What you have is Jesus teaching two ways of salvation, which invalidates the whole religion because it becomes nonsense (which is indicative of it being made up).

I really don't see how I can be wrong about this, but I'm interested in opposing opinions.

Let’s put aside “existent” for a second and look at God as a fictional character. Lots of Christian say that God is all-good. But, in my opinion, this can’t be true. God does and orders some messed up stuff, especially in The Old Testament, the vast majority of The Bible. Flooding the whole Earth, letting Satan ruin Job’s wife and kill his family and animals, commanding Joshua and his men to slaughter innocents (yes I know they didn’t kill ALL of the but that’s still pretty bad), killing the golden calf worshippers, the plagues of Egypt (including the killing of firstborns).

But God specifically stars that murder is a sin. As per his own rules, the Old Testament God can’t be all-good .

If Muslims claim that the injeel and Torah are corrupted, but that Muhammad is confirming previous revelation, how are we supposed to be able to tell if Muhammad is a false prophet or not?

Continuity is required for prophethood, Muhammad is saying he's continuing the previous message, but Muslims say it's corrupted. How do we know if Muhammad is in continuity or not?

I think he is a false prophet like Joseph Smith.

Muhammad and Smith both claim to be getting private revelations, they use their prophethood for personal gain, and they both claim to be continuing the scriptures.

This sounds like something a liar would say.

"It is He who created night and day, the sun and the moon, each floating in its orbit."

21:33

Allah did mention that sun and moon has orbit but he couldn't add another extra word 'earth' in this verse apparently

In fact, nowhere in the fat book of Qur'an does Allah say earth has an orbit.

Almost as if Muhammad saw sun and moon in the sky and made stuff up, and explicitly avoided saying anything about the earth.

I have always been questioning my faith. My father is homeless and trying his best to get back on his feet, my mother is unhappy in life and struggling financially and everyday I have to see this. I go days without eating and maybe even days without light in my home. And when I see things like what palestinians are going through I can only wonder if he really truly exists. I am so tired of this

Scriptures and religions have never made sense to me when taken literally.

What changed things for me was looking at it symbolically instead.

For example:

- Adam and Eve isn’t necessarily about a literal snake and apple, but could represent the emergence of human consciousness and moral choice.

- Lucifer’s fall can be seen as a story about how pride and ego lead to downfall.

- “Demons” might not be physical entities, but representations of destructive human impulses.

- Noah’s Ark could symbolise a reset after widespread corruption, rather than a literal event involving every animal.

Viewing religion this way made it feel less like a set of unbelievable events and more like a collection of deep psychological and moral insights.

At the same time, I don’t think these scriptures are just random nonsense. They’ve lasted for thousands of years across different cultures, shaped entire civilisations, and still resonate with people today. That suggests there’s some deeper significance or truth embedded in them.

Because of that, it doesn’t really make sense to completely dismiss them but it also doesn’t necessarily mean the most common or surface level interpretations are correct either.

Most debates about religion focus on isolated arguments; historical claims, philosophical arguments, scientific tensions, or personal experiences and are treated independently.

This often leads to fragmented conclusions, where outcomes depend on which domain is prioritized.

Convergent epistemology proposes an alternative: religions should be evaluated based on whether multiple independent domains of evidence (historical, experiential, predictive, etc.) align or fail to align as a whole.

Under this approach:

- A failure in one domain does not automatically falsify the entire system

- Strength in one domain is not sufficient on its own

- What matters is whether independent domains converge in a consistent direction overall

The question is whether this convergence-based approach provides a stronger method of evaluation than argument-by-argument analysis, or whether it introduces new problems (such as confirmation bias or lack of independence between domains).

I feel this method is a step in the right direction.

1. Do you think faith or actions are more important?

2. If faith is, do you think faith is something we can make ourselves have? Like if you choose to believe in something simply to avoid possible consequences do you truly believe?

3. What are your views on evolution? If you believe that it happened, do you think evolution is a thing because God gets bored and changes things little by little, or do things change because the environment changes, which causes the animals to no longer fit?

4. If faith is the most important what about those who died before your religion was widely known or those who died before they could believe?

5. Is God's love different or the same as ours?

6. If it's the same why are things like disease and natural disasters a thing?

7.Do you ever fear that if god isn't real that you're wasting your life seeking validation and acceptance from something that never could give it to you?

8.Why do people get all offended when you ask them questions about what they believe, I think it's important to be able to defend your beliefs but it's also okay to admit when you don't know. Asking questions is how we uncover truth.

Imagine this scenario: A man who, throughout his entire life, never did a single good deed, killed 100 people, and surely committed other sins — since none of his actions were ever righteous. What awaits him? The correct answer is: Jannah — paradise filled with houris, beautiful pearl-like youths, rivers of wine and honey, the most exquisite cuisine…

But the question is — how did he earn such bliss?

Sahih Muslim 2766c:

Among those who lived before you was a man who had killed ninety-nine people. He asked about the most learned man on earth and was directed to a monk. Coming to him, he said that he had killed ninety-nine people — was there any possibility of repentance for him? The monk said: no. So he killed him too, bringing the count to one hundred. Then he again asked about the most learned man on earth and was directed to a scholar. He told him he had killed a hundred people — was there any possibility of repentance? The scholar said: yes, and who can stand between a man and repentance? Go to such-and-such a land — there live people who worship Allah. Go and worship Allah with them, and do not return to your own land — it is an evil place. He set off, and when he had traveled half the distance, death overtook him. The angels of mercy and the angels of punishment disputed over him. The angels of mercy said: he came repentant, having turned his heart to Allah. The angels of punishment said: he never performed a single good deed. Then an angel came to them in the form of a man, and they made him their judge. He said: measure the distance to the two lands — whichever he is closer to, that land shall have him. Allah commanded the land he had left to move farther away, and the land he was heading toward to draw closer. He was found nearer to the land he had been heading for — and the angels of mercy took him.

Here is the short version:

Someone killed 99 people, went to a monk and asked: is there repentance for me? The monk said: no. He killed him — making it 100. Eventually, a knowledgeable man pointed him toward a righteous land. He went — but never arrived. The angels argued and decided to judge him by distance. He turned out to be a hand’s span closer to the land of the righteous — because Allah moved one land and pulled the other away.

And so our protagonist — let’s call him a righteous mujahid — ended up in paradise and is living his best life.

On the topic of predestination, Muslims love to use the analogy of a teacher who knows which student will pass and which will fail. The teacher’s foreknowledge supposedly doesn’t negate the student’s free will.

Now imagine: a student spent the whole year skipping class, disrupting others, ignoring the teacher, doing zero preparation. But the day before the exam, he formed the intention to score 100%. Just the intention — but that was enough. The teacher gave his favorite troublemaker the highest grade in absentia and held him up as an example for everyone.

Do you understand? A lifetime of sin, taking the lives of others, not performing a single good deed — and the punishment for all of it is: eternal paradise.

Interesting that in Bukhari 2766, the killings are treated as sins, while Quran 4:93 states that killing a Muslim earns you hellfire. From this we can conclude that our mujahid most likely did not kill any Muslims — after all, the life of one Muslim is worth more than a countless number of non-Muslims.

The most fascinating part of this story is that entry into paradise was determined by geography — and even then, the mujahid couldn’t manage it on his own. Allah had to physically move the land.

Truly, Allah is wise and all-knowing.

Do I envy the mujahid? Of course.

Is this justice?

Allah knows best. Truly, this is a reminder for those who reflect.

Allahu Akbar.

We know that indoctrination with religion is very common. It starts at birth, it may even start in the womb with prayers, sermons, and worship music, but I believe it starts even earlier than that it is a genetic predisposition just like adhd, autism, schizophrenia etc. Of course people can choose different religions, but the natural inclination to be religious I don’t think is a choice and vice versa. I say this because I noticed a pattern there are people that nothing you say or do would ever get them to stop believing in a God. In fact they might get angry if you present something of the contrary and have to have some sort of link to the religion, a simple God may not be real is not enough. The same is for me, nothing anyone says or does could get me to believe and trust me I’ve tried, but it all just feels so performative. This past weekend was Easter for Christians and everyone keeps posting even people you didn’t know were religious praising the lord etc. and I don’t get it.. I can’t believe in a God and even if I entertained the idea that God was real why all the suffering then just seems sadistic. There’s this theory floating around that some people just how they were born and wired need religion to survive so I’m wondering if it’s one of those things deeply ingrained at birth that some can’t break out of and also don’t want to. And I believe that theory is why we have religion. Some humans are hardwired in a way that they need God.

Saturn was recognized as a divine and central celestial body world-wide across ancient and pre-historic civilizations. In Greek/Roman tradition, the reign of Kronos/Saturn was described as a Golden Age. It was a time of peace, abundance, no wars, and no toil. Humans lived in harmony. The earth provided freely. The malefic qualities we associate with Saturn are remembered as the echoes of his downfall.

The myth goes that Kronos/Saturn castrated his primodial father Uranus/Sky in response to his mother Gaia/Earth's request to act against Uranus because he kept forcing Gaia to stuff their babies, whom Uranus hated, back inside her. Kronos castrates Uranus with a sickle. The blood fell on earth, and the genitals fell into the primordial sea. The genitals in the sea formed foam and from this seafoam Aphrodite/Venus/Morning Star/Lucifer emerges. Aphrodite is born from castration, chaos, and the sea, emerging from the violent severance of the old cosmic order, giving to her dual nature in mythology.

After this, Uranus essentially withdrew from active dominion. His retreat from earth is recognized as the sky and earth separating and no longer in constant union. That separation is what allows space for life, seasons, time itself to exist. Now Kronos/Saturn inherits dominion. Time and agriculture begin. The Golden Ages have come.

However, upon overthrowing Uranus, Kronos/Saturn receives the prophecy that he will be overthrown by his own children just as he had done to his father. Kronos receives this prophecy from both Uranus at his defeat, and then from Gaia/Earth, Kronos's own mother with whom he conspired to overthrow his father to begin with. During Kronos's reign, he lived in fear of the inevitable looming prophecy. To prevent it from fulling, Kronos devours his children one by one. This is until his final child Zeus/Jupiter is secretly spared by Rhea (Kronos's wife).

Zeus eventually carries out the prophecy. He gains strength on Crete and comes back to free his swallowed siblings from inside Kronos. The siblings, while being swallowed as infants, emerge from Kronos as fully realized divine beings with complete domains and powers. Their development inside Kronos represents a formative period suggesting that even inside the body of time, even in the darkest most enclosed condition, awareness persists and develops, and to it's highest form. You cannot destroy divine nature by containing it. Containment only deepens and focuses it. Cosmic events regarding Mars, Venus, Jupiter, and many moons follow, explained in Greek/Roman literature and other ancient records across the world.

This maps directly to the Saturnine archetype. The slow dark grinding development inside an enclosing force doesn't destroy what's inside–it forges it into its fullest expression. Though this effort takes some level of self-consumption. Additionally, Saturn could not escape consequences and time, even in creating the legacy he created. These are the malefic qualities of the Saturnine archetype. Time; Saturn moves slowly. Consequences. Consumption and decay. The eating of its own children, or rather, a form of self sacrifice and self consumption, to build something lasting, even if those externally don't understand how the containment and grind builds foundations for legacies behind the surface.

The predetermined cycle of domain and withdrawal speak to the inevitable cosmic experience, where the entire cosmos are burned and reset periodically. Uranus, Kronos, and Zeus are all shadowed by their prophecies of doing something or another to their kids to prevent being overthrown. Apollo/Sun eventually takes supreme authority. This is inline with ancient records that indicate the celestial bodies could have been closer to earth at one time with a different planetary order. Scholars are ancient cosmology argue there was a period Saturn was seen as the central sun before catastrophic cosmic rearrangements allowed for the sun and moon to become central to our existence as humans.

The point in sharing this back story is so you understand that Saturn carries both the memory of the Golden Age and the tragedy of the fall. So those who honor Saturn honor the pursuit of their duty, specialty, domain, or legacy. Consistency, containment, continual learning, and structured growth are foundational to life existence. Possibly this containment associated with Saturn even speaks to the structure of which we perceived our own reality.

Consumption and containment are fundamental to build something lasting. Legacy creators sacrifice comfort, ease, and immediate gratification for something greater that is to be used and benefited from by all of mankind. Saturn was the Sun before he was cast away and his legacy wasn't forgotten as the cosmic order was fundamental to human life at critical periods in our evolution.

Much of the mainstream discussion on Saturn worship fails to include full history that provides accurate context instead of misinformed conspiracy mumbo jumbo. The reason I believe Saturn has gotten such a bad rep is because when monotheistic traditions consolidated their theology, their neighbors (who were even relatives and communities they emerged from) were still worshipping planetary dieties, which was the main religious framework across ancient civilizations across the globe. When you're establishing a new religious order against existing ones you don't acknowledge the other gods as legitimate. You demonize them. The gods of your neighbors become false gods, corrupting influences. You genocide, rewrite history. You McGraw-Hill that b****!

Saturn represents things that are uncomfortable and that everyone struggles to integrate–Time destroys everything. Consequences are inescapable. Structure requires sacrifice. The slow grind is necessary but painful. Endings are real. Monotheistic traditions that emphasized eternal transcendence -life beyond death, escape from material limitation, divine rescue from consequence- were structurally in conflict with Saturn's fundamental message: that you cannot escape time, consequence, or limitation, you must work within them. While eternal transcendence is a wonderful topic to consider, effectively applying ourself to building something meaningful during our lifetimes, within the worldly constraints we have, is pragmatic and productive.

I will touch on where things get dark. There was child sacrifice practiced in the ancient Semite Canaanite culture. El is the supreme deity associated with Saturn, and Moloch represents the child-consuming aspect of that same tradition. El and Moloch represent the two faces of the Saturn archetype in Canaanite religion. El being the positive Saturnine face of cosmic order, ancient wisdom, divine authority, structured time. Moloch as the negative Saturnine face is devouring, the consumption of what you generated, fear driven destruction of your own offspring.

Hebrew monotheism sought to fix this unclear moral framework by keeping the positive El tradition and absorbing it into Yahweh's identity, while condemning the Moloch tradition as the defining abomination. The Saturnine archetype was split decisively: one face becomes holy, the other becomes the ultimate evil. As the memory of stories told of the pre-historic cosmic events fade away with forgotten history, the movement to organize groups of different beliefs into a consolidated organized society requires blind obedience from a sovereign god.

Organized monotheism required not just theological consolidation but epistemological monopoly. It wasn't enough to say our god is the true god. You had to ensure that the frameworks capable of generating alternative cosmologies (astronomy, natural philosophy, mystery traditions) are either absorbed, suppressed, or criminalized. You see this in the events that following: the burning of the Library of Alexandria, the persecution of Neoplatonists under Justinian, the Inquisition targeting natural philosophers, the condemnation of astrology while simultaneously using it in papal courts.

Saturn's bad reputation is itself a Saturnine phenomenon. Time, conquest, and the slow grinding rewriting of history buried the more complete understanding. He was consumed by the same forces he embodies, in perfect mythological self-consistency.

1. Gnosticism literally calls straight the name YHW as the most evil/ignorant "creature", responsible for all evils and that creation is evil/flawed.

2. YHW despite being evil, is even subordonated to "The One" or Monad, unlike zoroastrianism which at least are equal forces, YHW is directly subordonated to "The Father" .

3.This is the most opposing end pole religion for judaism, and even for christianity and islam, but less so directly for this two.