realizing that christianity and other "one true" religions rely on magic tricks for legitimacy
icon: "contemptuous (my face with bold cat-eye makeup, with a disgusted expression: eyebrows drawn together and down, eyes wide, lips curled up in the middle and down to the sides in an exaggerated frown)"
I've been watching "the Path" and the main character is having a crisis of faith because the leader of the religion might not have done a miracle. "What if this is all just a story someone wrote?" Which seemed so beside the point that I was like "why are you fixating on a magic trick? why does that matter if the moral code is good?" and then I realized that ALL the religions who follow some singular individual rely on a magic trick to validate them.
People don't follow Jesus because they think the teachings help them to be a more compassionate and ethical person -- they follow Jesus because "he proved he was the son of god" by "rising from the dead." A more logical explanation was that he was in a coma for 3 days and then woke up -- unlikely, but it happens! even if he was actually dead and then alive again, how the fuck does that prove anything at all about the value of the moral code Jesus espoused? It doesn't, that's how.
And if your entire belief system is based on a miracle, then as soon as someone else does a better one what, you're gonna switch? If some alien shows up and starts healing people's cancers by biting them you're gonna develop a new moral code around biting people?
If your whole belief system is based on taking some ancient people's word that someone did something that seemed magical, that is completely irresponsible and a TERRIBLE way to choose how to live your life. The same as it would be if some modern people said someone did a magic trick. That's basically relying on an appeal to authority (logical fallacy) as your justification for your moral code. It's using an inherently unreliable event (a miracle is only a miracle if it is not repeatable by other people) as a foundation for your actions in life -- why on earth would you do that??
When I identified as a Christian -- as a TEENAGER -- I remember people asking me "what if there really is no god, no heaven, no hell, and you spent your whole life like this?" and I said to them "then I used these teachings to live a better life, to be a better person!" The existence of a magical being wasn't the fucking point! I liked the things Jesus taught and I agreed that love was the most important and highest moral law through which a person can figure out the best choices to make.
It honestly boggles my mind to realize that most of the people who call themselves christians would stop doing so if it was proven that Jesus never rose from the dead. How can you base your morality on a completely unprovable story -- that is inherently amoral, for crying out loud!!! if Jesus rose from the dead, that wasn't an act of kindness or bravery or generosity, but a morally neutral act of self-preservation. And it is certainly not a better miracle than making one person's lunch feed a huge crowd. Why isn't that the miracle that gets its own holiday? I'll tell you why -- because it comes with a fucking MORAL that people should SHARE or else god does no good.