Which is better, believing in a god or not?

*sighs*

I never said that monogamy is only a Christian thing. I gave this just as a recent example.

Let's scale it down for the sake of avoiding misunderstandings. Since I am not from the US, I'll use Serbia as an example and therefore myself.

I was born in Serbia, the daughter of a Serbian mother and a Montenegrian father. Both very traditional societies supposedly based on Christian Orthodox values. I am a baptized Serbian Orthodox. I grew up in Austria, which is mostly Roman Catholic.

For 13 years I had two Christmas celebrations:
First I did the Advent calendar from the 1st to the 24th of December. I would light a candle on each Sunday before Christmas Eve. I would exchange Christmas gifts with my friends on December the 25th.
And then I would wait for two weeks and have a religious and calm Christmas celebration on January the 6th and 7th by Serbian Orthodox tradition (because we celebrate according to the Julian calendar).

My mother is deeply religious with a wild mixture of spiritual influences, but her core values are based on the Bible. My father is a silent atheist, he doesn't really believe in God, but follows along with my mother just in case.

Although both are the result of religious parents in Christian Orthodox manner, both are also the result of the influence of the Turks, who ruled these lands for 500 years. They never experienced the Turkish Siege themselves, but the influence on the culture in these countries are major.

The Balkans have the habit of soaking up new traditions and melting them with the old ones within a very short amount of time. Modern society shows traces of Islam as much as pagan roots, we managed to melt into the Christian Orthodox traditions (i.e. burning the Badnjak).

I, myself, am the direct result of two Christian cultures clashing together. I never understood why we stuck to the Julian calender, it made no sense to me that Christians celebrate Christmas according to a calendar, which was the reform of the Roman calendar, installed by a pagan Roman emperor (Julius Caesar), who btw didn't like the Christians at all.

Confronted by the fact that Christians have so many sub-churches a bit more directly than other Roman Catholic / Protestant kids, I never understood why Christians have to be split in sub-churches in the first place, if we assume that we all believe in the same God and same Jesus.

I came to grow up as someone who despises religious systems. I support the concept of faith. Faith is something everyone has to find for themselves, whether it's faith in a God or faith in love, or the faith in the right and good. I despise brainwashed drones and zombies, who follow religious concept without even trying to think twice. People who dislike other people, based on other people's interpretations of sacred texts. Not to mention that the typical religious hypocrite who preaches that God is love, but hates homosexuals for example, makes me wish for a world where religious systems are forbidden.

I believe. I have faith in the validity of the scientific method. I have faith that people, although only people, can overcome subjectivity and pursue objectivity. I have faith that an ultimate truth does exist and can be known.

No other approach is intellectually defensible.

I'm frankly not sure what point your trying to make or what point you thought I was trying to make. I'm not saying that religion has no affect on people, everything people do has some effect. I am however saying that there's no important value or behavior that, say Christianity or any other major religion invented, at least where I'm from, I am unaware of how the people of say Bangladesh live. Christmas is an excellent example. It was celebrated before Christianity and last Christmas had absolutely no christian things in it. Quite a lot of Pagan things in it though, but then again it is a Pagan holiday. Just like all other holidays we celebrate. But who takes the credit for Christmas?

Same goes for our moral values. Like if a preacher says that you should be nice to each other and not kill each other and trying to trademark that something that the Christians came up with... That is why they used to kill so many few hundreds years ago until people started to say no to religion and they forced to change and adapt the values that the people had, or disappear. A very similar situation to what Muslims in western countries are are faced with today.

Wait.If you're saying disobeying God will be tortured,and directly disobeying Him will cause me to have bliss,what's the point?It's like contradicting your own statement.

Actually it IS a valid point. You can find this dilemma even in sacred texts, like in the Torah (therefore also in the old Testament) in the part about Abraham.

According to Judaism and Christianity killing is wrong. God forbid it in the first set of rules he gave to Noah, God forbid it in the 10 commandments he gave to Moses. You shall not kill is one of the most basic laws of God according to Judaism and Christianity.

Well, then God came along and told Abraham to sacrifice his only son. I'll say it more brutally: God told Abraham to kill his son.

So not killing his son, would be disobeying God, but killing his son would be disobeying God too, because God said that you shall not kill.

In this particular case Abraham was rewarded for breaking God's law, because God told him to. But he didn't know that this would happen. God didn't tell him that he would be rewarded. Abraham could have ended up being punished by God for killing his son and breaking one of the basic commandments.

So, what would YOU do? If God would come to you and tell you that every religious you followed so far is 100% correct and those laws are to be obeyed to 100% with no exception - and then tells you to do something that is against one of those laws and according to those laws would result in eternal punishment and suffering?

Ohh...so you're talking about this.
Okay in the Quran,also have explained about this matter.
In the Quran stated that Abraham needs to kill his son in order to follow God's order.His son also agreed about this as this is also God's order.
But in the moment,he want to slaughter his son,God said"You are being a good servant,even you are very reluctant to do this.You still sincerely followed my orders.For that,your son will be replaced with a goat."So,because of his act being a faithful servant,God told him to slaughter a goat instead of his son.
That's why we have Eidul Adha,The day of remembering this history.
My point is God may ask you to do something that is against his own laws that we humans are reluctant to do in order to test us whether we are faithful or not.
But in the end,God made us not to do it as we already passed the test.
But this matter is very rare,I mean,after Abraham,God never do that to anyone anymore.

Sweety, it wouldn't be much of a test, if you would know the outcome. That's the whole concept of faith, you DON'T KNOW, you can only HOPE that you are doing the right thing and that it is according to God's will, but you DON'T KNOW for sure.

If you are a religious believer, you don't even know for sure that your religious system is the right one and to what extent it's right. You can't know, if you would knew, it wouldn't be faith.

Is there any stories of someone being punished for doing what god said? If there is not then there's not really any dilemma.

I know,we humans have already fixed way of thinking as we are being influenced by our surroundings,cultures and religion.And believing in God is also a fixed way of thinking.But what I know is if we don't have have a creed in our life,it's just worthless.I don't care what God will do to me,because I am His servant.He have every reason to do anything to me.Because He created me.So,He deserve to do whatever he wants.
But God is not human.He knows what he's doing.We are just humans.We can't assume that all bad things that happened to us is bad 100 percent.
Note:This is my critical way of thinking.Humans are just thinking for their own benefits.And it's fixed.

The dilemma actually never ends. It starts with the question, if God really exists or not. Than goes on about whether you are a member of the right religious system or not. If you are the follower of the right religious system, there is the question if the whole system is right, or it got maybe written down wrong. And there is always the interpretation of sacred texts, which gave us so many sub categories of every major religion in the first place.

And btw there is a story about someone who got everything right and was punished and tortured anyway: Job.

Firstly, concerning your response towards the Abraham story and sacrificing his son, you trumpet this as being a great day of faith where one simply does whatever god says, even if we think it's wrong. Your response to the idea of what YOU would do is, essentially, "I would do it, because I know he wouldn't really make me go through wit hit."

I wonder what you would do if God asked you to kill your son...and DIDN'T stop you.

You know, like he did with Jepthuh. The warrior that promised god to sacrifice the first thing that came out of his house if he was aided and allowed to win his battles. God then of course helps Jepthuh win his battles, and Jepthuh's daughter is the first one to come out and meet him. So Jepthuh bemoans her, saying his oath to her, she cries and asks if she can go out to the woods for a couple months and say goodbye to her friends, he lets her, she comes back, and he SACRIFICES HER. He went through with it. He put her on a pyre and offered her as a burnt sacrifice.

So clearly there's some inconsistencies here. Abraham doesn't have to sacrifice his son but Jepthuh had to sacrifice his daughter. God never came down and told Jepthuh, "You don't have to do that!" like he did with Abraham. Funny that.

In any case, I don't even want you to respond to any of that, because it's ALL besides my point.

I asked if you would follow god's law if doing so would cause you to be tortured. You said that the statement contradicts itself. you didn't give a REASON, you just said it contradicts itself.

Whether you know it or not, that demonstrates my point as to why your 'reasoning' for doing good is no good reason at all. What is 'good' to you has nothing to do with the action, but of the outcome of the action: that is, being rewarded. So if the reward were torture, then nothing makes sense to you anymore. You now have no reason to do good, because you don't want the reward.

Let me help you out here. I have a friend who used to be a christian. He said that, while he was still a christian, he didn't think too much about ethics. things were right or wrong, in his eyes, and god was the reason. In college, however, he took an ethics class, and became confused as to how vague, ambiguous, and nondescript ethics can actually be.

One of the things that came up in his ethics class is exactly what you're referring to, the idea that one does good, for the incentive of personal reward.

My friend was asked a question: "Why does god want you to do good?"

This is a question your reasoning doesn't answer, and neither did his. He was presented the same hypothetical that I presented to you. And he acknowledged the fact that, "If an action is good, I will do it, rather than do an action that is bad. And it doesn't MATTER if the results of that action are to burn in hell, or go through bliss in heaven."

I'll try and demonstrate this a little simpler with a hypothetical that matches your paradigm a it better.

Say God comes to you and says that you need to kill all your kids. We'll say you have 4 kids, and they're all really young, aged 1-8. He says, "If you don't kill them, then they're destined to fall away from me and will be sent to hell. There is nothing you can do about it, except to kill them."

However, if you kill them, then YOU will be sent to hell when you die.

Baring all this in mind, your options are:
A. Kill your kids so that they get to go to heaven, however you'll go to hell.
B. Don't kill your kids, and you'll go to heaven, but they're all destined to go to hell.

Those are your options. And no, picking A won't result in God stopping you and going, "Gotcha, it was just a test." In this hypothetical, those are your options, with no caveats.

I don't have to kill my kids because in Islam,kids who don't have puberty goes to heaven without judgement.
So,it's a win-win situation.Gotcha.

Dude, that's specifically why I listed the kids as being 1-8.

You didn't pay attention to my hypothetical at all.

I said that god came down and says unless you kill all your kids RIGHT NOW, before they go through puberty, then they're destined to go to hell.

Please actually ANSWER the hypothetical. It's A or B. those are your options. Or I guess you could try to kill god if you want.

I will choose to...
go to hell.
My kids don't know anything.They don't deserve it.
As if for God,He created me.I am his possession.I don't care what he will do.
I will regret,yeah.But I would be relieved to see my kids just fine.

Great. So clearly, your motivation for doing good has NOTHING to do with being rewarded with heaven. That's not your motivation. thank you for proving my point.

Yeah,I don't care to be in Heaven.I want to be with God.My motivation is to be with God.
The statement that I've made about"doing good will go to heaven"is a typical general statement that inspired by believers,be it Muslim,Christian or Buddhism.
I want to see God, to be embraced and to hear His words by Himself.
That is clearly my motivation.But to be with God,I need to go to Heaven,not Hell.
It's still a win-win situation.

Slight correction. Buddhism is not about belief in God. Buddha said there was God but he admitted himself that he was not a God.

You contradicting yourself is really starting to annoy me Joker.

You don't care to be in Heaven, yet you have to be in Heaven to be satisfied.

You say your motivation is to be with God, yet if you pick the option you do, you won't be with God.

So clearly your motivation isn't to be with God.

Oh, and Buddhism doesn't have a "heaven" or a "god".

Well,in my teachings,we just cleanse ourselves for sins we've done in Hell.
By having ourselves tortured in fire.We don't stay there permanently.It's just those who don't believe in Islam will stay there permanently.
Note:Clear enough?I may go to Hell,but yet I will return to Heaven after being cleansed.
Edit:We are being tortured in Hell for the sins we made on Earth in order to cleanse ourselves from taint.After being cleansed, we go to Heaven.

I don't find the doctrine that anyone goes to hell 'temporarily' supported by any holy text. However, if that's true, and you killing your children as a Muslim results in temporary hell, while me NEVER killing my children, yet being an atheist means I go to eternal hell, brings up another issue, where your religion is so incredibly bias and unjust, that I should wonder why you embrace the teachings of such a spiteful and petty god.