The Falsehood of God's Grand Punishments

If you're like me, and have either been involved in a religion or associated with religious people, then we have been told that God punishes bad people, the wicked, heretics, and the list just goes on and on. Even to the extent of "God will punish people that don't believe exactly as I do". And a lot of people truly believe this, to the detriment of humanity.

First off, God does not punish, if even one exists. Many people think that if a natural disaster happens in a certain region of the globe, that there was some kind of God behind it. They say things like "those people must have been really wicked" or "they forsake God and He's now punishing them", and the like. You know who I mean; we see them all over the place.

One example is the 2004 Indonesian Tsunami. I remember a lot of Christians at this time were saying that God caused the earthquake and tsunami, because mostly it was the Muslims who died in that tragedy. And likewise, the Muslims say the same things against the Christians if a natural disaster happened to be in a country or region that had a large Christian population. And there are just numerous examples of this on both sides. This kind of thought process is very dangerous for at least a couple of reasons.

The first is that it is unsupported by facts, which I won't go into much here as that is pretty much self-explanatory. Anybody who is at least slightly educated knows how earthquakes happen, and how tsunami's form. A natural disaster is just that, a natural disaster. God, or a god, does not need to be present for these types of tragedies to happen. They happen quite naturally, all by themselves, without needing some sort of supernatural power behind it.

The second is because it is this kind of intolerant and illogical thinking that leads to more hate and division, rather than peace and unity. This backwards thinking only harms humanity as it builds higher walls of mistrust. We need to come together in peace and forgiveness, and not point fingers anymore with the thinking "look at God punishing those people."

This post is just one small example of how religion is slowly destroying the world. Education is the key to our survival. Education and unity.