You don't read religious text much do you? The Bible and the Qu'ran both refer to God as male. That is why I refer to Him as "Him".

Doggylives. You ask for evidence and then you scoff at it...how rude is that? He allows people to die...true...maybe you should read some too...find out why death came into the world. Find out who brought death upon us. You see there is an answer for everything. This isn't something that we just come up with out of our ass or something.

*Your reading assignment is Genesis 3*

actually, gender in an omnipotent being would have to be neutral, the only reason gender exists is for reproduction.

the proper term would be 'it', yeah, but it's a symbolic father-figure thing, so it's mostly 'he'.

neither of those books have especially enlightened views on women, you should keep in mind.

that would be newton's second law of thermodynamics, entropy, which brought death upon us.

f**king newton. he's murdered us all.


(you weren't suggesting pinning the existence of death on eve, were you? no. you're a good person. you wouldn't do that.)

there is an answer for everything.

it isn't always the right answer, though, you should keep that in mind, too.

"Because it is" is not the right answer.


Yours is Freak Love. It's a really good book.

The bible says so therefore it's true. It's hardly surprising that a misogynistic book written at a time when women had to stay in their place and men were the top of the food chain, a book that claims all mankind's ails are caused by a woman also describes their god as a male figure is it.

You fail to answer the point I raised. You say god has saved your life many times and I ask, what makes you so special that god pays personal attention to your life threatening situations while ignoring the plight of millions the world over? It takes a special kind of arrogance and wishful thinking to use this as 'evidence' of a personal god.


Just not you apparently

No, that would take thinking, you just repeat what someone else pulled out their ass

Ahhhh, the talking snake. I've read the bible probably more than you have. It answers no questions at all.

Take the Genesis account you so condescendingly refer me to.

Why did an omnipresent, omnipotent god create humans knowing the outcome?

Why did Adam and Eve who were perfect make an imperfect decision?

Why did god test Adam and Eve when he knew the outcome beforehand?

How is it just and fair that god punish mankind for thousands of years and thousands of generations for the paradoxical mistake of Adam and Eve?

Was Jesus 'sacrifice' actually comparable to thousands of years of mankind suffering? Couple of days of humiliation and pain followed by a painful death (A death undergone by many criminals before and after him) and then resurrected to become God again.

Just a small sample of questions that arise from my reading of Genesis.

You see for me and a lot of other people, "It's in the darn bible therefore it's true" just doesn't hold weight.

Thomas Jefferson said it best when he said,

"Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear."

You could insert "Wishful thinking" instead of fear and the point still stands. Blindly ignoring reason and logic is everyone's prerogative and personal beliefs are fine. But when you assert an affirmative like "There is a god whether you believe in him or not" and then provide shaky "evidence" to back that up you have to expect people to find it hard to take you seriously.


It's further hard to take you seriously when you resort to, "Go read your bible".


Again, it's the, "It's in the bible therefore it's true" reasoning*. Do you do any thinking for yourself?





*I use the term reasoning in the loosest possible way.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

I saw some terrific "glacial striae" this morning*.

My geology textbook says they were caused by glaciers dragging rocks which gouged out these lines, but I think it's proof that His Noodley Appendages were present under the glaciers, carving out each noodle-shaped gouge with love.


*image is one I found on teh internets, not of the outcrop I saw.

I saw these gems provided as evidence on another website

No s**t, it was written by humans


Errrm yes. That's not even close to a loose definition of evidence.

The same article talks about evidence in a court case and how circumstantial evidence is taken into account.

Yet apply the 'evidence' above to a courtroom scenario. Prosecutor to witness, "So how do you know the defendant was in the house at the time of the murder, did you see them?". Witness, "Errr no, but I did feel their presence, inside me".

"Motion to strike from the record your honour"

Ok, so because an organisation exists it's claims and beliefs are fact and are true?

KKK anyone?


Article Here

One further issue I have with ... basically almost every monotheistic religion:

Monotheism hinges on the infallibility of God.

Infallibility is inability to make mistakes: perfection. God is perfect, and must be perfect, or the whole things falls apart.

We are God's Children, he made us special, in his own image.

We are also horrible sinners who are born in and from sin, we must repent these sins daily, suppress thoughts and emotions that would otherwise lead us to sin.

Do not even get me started on the basic sin of women even existing, hooo boy.

The bible seems to view us as extremely flawed beings requiring almost constant supervision, considering that we were created by an infallible God, in the image of that God.



Further, the notion that the perfect, infallible thoughts of God can be at all captured and recorded by the flawed hand of man is nothing short of egomania.

On the other hand, if atheists cannot use the "religion leads to war and strife and murder" arguments, then for the same reasons religious people shouldn't use the "religion makes people good" arguments.

I was genuinely hoping for an answer to this :(

Well, that's a hairy sort of thing to say.

Religion can't make people good, but if they take the right lessons, for example, "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you", "Love thy neighbor as thyself" and "Hate the sin but love the sinner," Religion can help make someone a good person.

Mostly, though, that's not religion that makes someone decent or not, it is parenting.

Your upbringing makes you the person you are. A person is decent because of or in spite of their upbringing.

Religion can help, though, yes absolutely. All it is is a series of moral codes, really.




What concerns me more is the very black-and-white way these mottos view the entirety of the world.

"Religion leads to war and strife and murder"
"religion makes people good"

So religion must be either completely good or completely evil?

Isn't that the sort of myopic nonsense that's so very frustrating about the bible?

Doublepost.

I'll give you an answer: Probability is a b***h.
She gives with one fractal and takes with the gambler's ruin.

It's because God always takes the credit that she's always so fickle.

The problem is that everything MUST be opposites. You can't endorse a code of behavior based on the behavior without also agreeing with the daddy-in-the-sky theory, you can't be motivated to help your neighbor and turn the other cheek whilst the godless murderous b*****d from across the street is leering at your children.

Oh, wait, right, yes you can. But most people don't, because it's too hard to accept that someone can be good without being just like me. Well, not ME, but someone else.

Dichotomies are hard, dammit.

False dichotomies particularly

about the only dichotomies I know of that aren't at least extremely shaky are black/white and wet/dry.

Probably hot/cold, but that's dependant on where you live, I know plenty of people out here who think 50 degrees is freezing.

The real irony is that the people who are generally considered to be on the 'dark side' of religion think that they are on the same side that the people used as examples of the 'good side' of religion are on. Both actions are based on the same impulse (if they are in reality based on a religious impulse), the difference is how others think about the actions. In the minds of Jihadists, the killing of infidels is as good as feeding starving children.

However, I don't see why religion takes the credit for charitable works. There are probably many charities and organizations out there without a religious motivation, but with a philosophical motivation to do good. And of course, some religions oppose things like this, like the African Muslim jihadists who try to stop vaccination from happening in Sub-Saharan Africa because they believe it is a Western Conspiracy to Make Islamic Men Infertile. Here, the only motive seems to be religion, and not nationalism, money, or the other things that usually cause strife along with religion.

Bill Gates as of 2007 had donated $28 billion to charity and is leaving almost his entire fortune to charities in his will. Bill Gates is an Atheist.

Warren Buffett, also an Atheist, has pledged $30.7bn of his $44bn fortune to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The billionaire investor will donate the money in stages, he said, in the form of shares in his company Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

Just two outstanding examples not including the thousands of secular charities and aid organisations.

These people give to charity out of choice not any underlying fear or desire to please any gods.

This is true.

And it is also true that the Bible espouses charitable works, and a number of charitable organizations are religious.

I'm well aware it also tells you to kill your children if they talk back and it's okay to sell your daughter into slavery because all women are evil filth.

We're not talking about the faults for a moment. There are plenty of faults.

Let's talk about the bit where it mentions "love thy neighbor as thyself."

I'd seriously doubt that the bible had masturbation in mind when this was thought of, so don't be so quick to go to your neighbor's house just yet...