BTW my OP is not just about God. It's more about sin - which the majority of the western populace practices even those who consider themselves religious.
Read for comprehension: I find it difficult to believe that it is easier to live a life of personal (I can't be vicariously redeemed) and collective responsibility (I can't pretend that "only god can judge me"), than living a life wherein the burden of "my sins" are shouldered by someone else who has the inherent power to absolve me of every single one of my misdeeds.
So it's easier to believe in something you can't see, hear, smell, touch. Whose never talked to you and you don't know of except in certain books, rarely over several hundred years at a time.
Yes. When there are social institutions in place that reinforce belief from early childhood onward, the issue of belief becomes a systemic one. Do you really think that, for example, children spend their days toiling intellectually and emotionally over whether their pastor, parents, and authority figures are right when they say that Jesus loves them or Moses parted this or that sea and all that nonsense? Fuck no. They tend to accept it as easily as they accept the notion that Santa is real, and for all the same ridiculous reasons.
Believe in something that prevents you from satisfying all of your 'sinful' desires yet tells you you're happiest when you follow it?
Excuse me: there is nothing in the Talmud or the original Covenant, the New Covenant or the New-New Covenant that "prevents" anyone from satisfying their sinful desires. That's why people "sin" (as ridiculous as the concept is to begin with) in the first place. If they were "prevented" from doing those things, then they wouldn't be capable of doing them. The fact of the matter is that we have Catholic priests boning little boys up the butt, Protestant ministers screwing homosexual prostitutes and doing drugs while decrying gays, Imams ordering capital punishment on women who get raped. We have husbands cheating on their wives, teens using god's name in vain. There's lying, stealing, murder. There ain't shit in any of these religions that stop people from doing whatever the fuck they want.
It is harder to be religious than it is not to be religious.
Life is life. Religiosity has no beneficial relationship impacting "sinful behavior" and non-sinful behavior. And in fact, it contributes to social dysfunction: http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.html
However this is more applicable in western societies where faith in God/Religion is weaker than it is in the East. Generally.
Generally? Based on what?
Still haven't answered my question. Was it easy for you to give up on God. You stopped having faith in Him - was it easy.
Learn to read. Quote: What's difficult, is being a heretic--not believing when you live in a country, a hemisphere, a planet, where its people tell you every minute of every day that there is a magic sky daddy out there, from the moment of your birth onward, and that disbelieving in that sky daddy will result in eternal damnation or some other nonsense. Becoming enlightened, tearing away the chains of indoctrination, is the hardest thing imaginable.
I'm tired of repeating myself. You can have the last word. But stop pretending I haven't answered your points on both belief and sin.
