Atheists Better Pray to God They're Right

Faith has nothing to do with feelings. Faith is KNOWING, not warm fuzzy stuff called feelings.

The same standard you are using that tells you abortion, pedophilia, genocide, rape and slavery are wrong even though not only are these things not condemned in the Bible but often they are greatly encouraged.

I'm sure you could provide us with some references to support the claim that the Bible encourages all those. What are they?

What would have been better is if God would have slashed everyone's Achilles tendons so they couldn't swim at all. That would have been brilliant and right up his alley. What I wonder is what it sounds like to hear all those babies and children crying for help from their parents. That's got to be like going to the symphony for God-- just sitting back and listening with a big smile on his face.

I guess if you want a reason to hate God you have to make stuff like that up.

What exactly is a mischaracterization?

Would you drown your children like God drowned his children?

I’m serious. Why does that not bother you? It’s certainly not an elegant way to destroy the world. God could do that with a blink of his eye— no suffering or pain, just everyone gone in a puff of smoke instantly. We don’t drown death row inmates because we view it as cruel and unusual punishment. It’s a very violent way to die.

And, for a God who alleges to prize free will, how does killing all those children and babies fit with that? If God is saying that the children of the wicked will always be wicked, then we all better start up a Free Republic abortion clinic because there are a lot of wicked people having babies that need to be destroyed. I’m pro-life and find God’s glib destruction of civilization impossible to accept as the act of anyone with any love in his heart, much less the “infinite love” God supposedly has. That doesn’t even include things like killing off Job’s 10 kids as a part of a bet with the Devil of all people. God has a total disregard for our lives. He has a total disregard for your life.

Everything you’re portraying Him as is a mischaracterization of His character.

The whole statement about His reaction. Smiling? A symphony to His ears?

The earth was filled with violence and all the thoughts of men’s hearts was continually evil all the time. It took Noah 120 years to build that ark. No doubt he had lots of opportunity to tell people why. If they chose not to listen, they have no one but themselves to blame.

God does not glibly chose to destroy. He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked. God is not the author of evil and does not believe in a capricious evil way.

You do not have God over a barrel. You will not be able to use this against God to hold over Him and blackmail Him when you stand before Him some day.

But again, it’s amazing the lengths people will go to in creating fantasy with which to condemn God and justify their own anger and hatred of Him.

If your God were the real one, I wouldn’t want to believe in him either.

The earth was filled with violence and all the thoughts of men’s hearts was continually evil all the time. It took Noah 120 years to build that ark. No doubt he had lots of opportunity to tell people why. If they chose not to listen, they have no one but themselves to blame.

First, I can't believe you believe, really believe, that every single person on the planet was acting in an evil way toward each other. You can't even have societies when that's the case. There has to be a social contract for societies to function. So, you're saying you think that there was no civilization on the planet at the time of Noah. In fact, Noah could not have built an ark in that environment.

Second, Noah couldn't reach every person on the planet to tell them that the world was about to be destroyed. And why would anyone believe him? If someone came up to you today and said that, would you quit everything you were doing to follow the advice of an apparent apocalyptic lunatic? How can you suggest the uncorroborated rantings of a crazy person is fair warning? And how would Noah have the time to build an ark and go on tour warning everyone? God destroyed everyone, not just the people in Noah's neighborhood.

God does not glibly chose to destroy. He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked. God is not the author of evil and does not believe in a capricious evil way.

God would choose a different, more humane method of destruction if he were not glib about his destruction. My wife has a dog. It's a Newfie. It's huge and doesn't obey me. It barely obeys her. She isn't able to take it out in the morning and bring it inside at night. This dog jumps and tries to bite me (perhaps playfully) when I bring it inside at night and is strong enough and has a low enough center of gravity (like an NFL running back) to nearly pull my arm out when it decides to burst away from me to chase a squirrel. I wouldn't drown my wife's dog, period. God blew up Sodom and Gomorrah with fire. That's not humane. We don't set fire to any of our death row inmates. God has total power and uses it uncreatively. He does that in the stories, IMO, because God isn't real and the authors of those stories wrote what they knew-- fire and water. God didn't drop a neutron bomb on Sodom and Gomorrah because the authors couldn't conceive of such a thing. The Bible is written exactly the way you'd imagine it would be written if it were just a series of folk tales.

If God isn't the author of evil, who is? Lucifer was once good, but then evil. How does evil appear in Paradise before Lucifer is kicked out of Paradise because of being evil? Someone had to have Lucifer's job as author of evil before he had it, right?

You do not have God over a barrel. You will not be able to use this against God to hold over Him and blackmail Him when you stand before Him some day.

If God is the mass murderer depicted in the Bible, I have no expectations about what he will do because such people have totally unreliable behavior patterns. God didn't destroy Nazi Germany in a storm of fire and brimstone from Heaven. He didn't destroy Stalin's Soviet Union. He didn't destroy Imperialist Japan or the Incas, Aztecs, Mayas or the great Islamic Empires (Ottoman, Safavid, etc.). All of these clearly anti-God empires just died of natural causes, basically. There is no reliable record of God doing what God did in the Old Testament or doing it at any time thereafter even with just cause and so there is no reason to believe that he ever did those things or feels like doing them now. Who knows, maybe he's gotten nicer in his old age or something. It boggles the mind that somehow S&G were so ungodly that God couldn't stand it any longer, but that no places that are perhaps obviously just as ungodly both today and in the past, if not more so, are left un-destroyed by God.

“I agree. It seems 99% of atheists are loony libs.”

Really? They seem to make up a decent percentage of the posters on this board. Is insulting them a good conservative, or Christian, thing to do?

Typical of the religious faithful. When you can’t convince us through reason to take up your religon, you insult us and dismiss us as fools.

I could say that people who belive in a man in the sky for whom there is no direct evidence are fools, but I have more respect than that for the beliefs of my friends and family. And I do respect their beliefs, which I believe are a source of comfort and solace for them, but I just can’t make myself believe.

I could say that people who belive in a man in the sky for whom there is no direct evidence are fools,

I would. Someone who believes in a man in the sky form there is no direct evidence is damn near as foolish as an atheist.

It is funny about people who are Christian and every now and then wonder if this is just a waste. I am speaking more about teenagers. I of course used to complain and not want to go to church during my brat days. One Sunday, being a total brat I yelled at my Mom “What if there is no God?” My Mom strangely culm said, “Well you know when you go to church you feel good. When you pray, you feel pretty fullfilled right?” I grudgedly said, “Yes.” Well let’s say this is all not true. What does it hurt? You feel good when you leave mass, you learn something new, you make friends, you love God, etc. So now get dressed and let’s get the family to Mass. My Mom said, “Would you want to just not believe in God or have a religion and find out that you were wrong that way or do everything right, stay close to God and find out that you were wrong? Which way do you want it. Of course, I want to go to Mass because what if I am wrong? LOL. A cute story for a brat!!!!

In the original book version of “Contact” (much better than the movie, as is usual), she DID come back with evidence of a sort, although not physical. What’s interesting though, is that her evidence actually proved that the universe that we know is the creation of an intelligence, at least to those who knew enough to understand it. So far from being an endorsement of atheism, or just promoting the concept of extraterrestial life, the book actually came down in favour of at least the possibility of a creator.

Possibly this could be considered more an endorsement of “Intelligent design” with an unspecified designer, than of conventional religion. Roger Penrose, in his book “The Emperor’s New Mind” actually posed some similar questions about how likely it is for the universe to have the properties that we see, of all the infinite different ways it could be that would be incompatible with life as we know it, possibly life of any sort. I am an atheist, but I keep an open mind. I don’t pretend to know what the origins of the universe or life are. One supposed that these were “natural” events that didn’t involve any sort of intelligence, in the abscence of any evidence that they did, but we don’t really know.

“The innocent child believes all sorts of things that aren’t true— like in Santa or the tooth fairy or monsters.”

Not only that, but does a child develop a belief in Santa, the tooth fairy, the Easter bunny, or God, without someone putting those ideas in their head. They do seem to dream up monsters in the closet or under the bed without any prompting, however. Hmmm, does that mean monsters in the closet and under the bed are real?

It's really neat how that evolution has hardwired our brain to deal with threats and to know about threats (intuition and such). My two year old doesn't need to know any context about the image he is looking at to decide that it's scary to him-- just things that are literally harmless in isolation like creepy, dark lighting. You could put a picture of Jesus Christ in that setting and he'd draw the same conclusion: that the person in that picture could do him harm. It's like goosebumps, which were useful when we had hair all over our bodies as a defense mechanism (making ourselves look larger than we really are to our foe).

I think that because children have a limited understanding of science-- practically everything they see adults do looks like a magic trick-- that children would readily believe that the only explanation for the world and the stars and the sun and moon is some magician like their parents.

Well stated. I don’t presume to understand where GraniteStateConservative’s anger comes from or why he talks about god as someone he’s very angry with if he doesn’t believe god is real. (No offense GSC; I really don’t disagree with some of your reasoning as you are very bright and knowledgeable, but your tone is rather harsh and personal and comes off as being edgy and angry and bitter and it sort of casts a bad light on some of us fellow non-believers….and it won’t win you any friends, my friend :), ).

It's bad form to not cc me on posts like this. I'll assume it was just accidental. It's no big deal.

I'm actually not the least bit angry at God, because, as you said, I don't think he exists. I'm not angry at Voldemort, either.

I state things the way I do because I call a spade, a spade. And I have known Christians my whole life who all basically ignore things about God that they don't really care for. They don't think about the implications of things in the Bible, their book of record. Most Christians believe because it's a cheap drug. They "take a hit", so to speak, when they feel sad or bad or confused. That's fine with me, I don't care if they want to medicate themselves. I just want to get inside the mind of someone who can still use that God pill even after having an appreciation for the things in the Bible that really make no sense at all. The Bible's practically like Alice in Wonderland, the way that there are holes in the plot and the characters act irrationally.

The standard cop-out is that because we can't be as smart as God, he can basically do whatever he wants-- he could give everyone on the planet ebola and then kick us all in the groin and that would somehow be justified. It's crazy talk, but I'm hoping to one day hear something better.

The analogy between God and Jigsaw the serial killer is a good one. They both do disgusting things for some supposedly enlightened purpose. It's not my fault that God did the things he did.

No one is comfortable defending God. That's what I've discovered.

But for me that also explains why god is also sometimes full of anger, jealousy and contradiction as those are also part of the human condition.

Yet, Christians run away from this characterization. They will tell you that God isn't the least bit like humans are.

I don’t believe that it’s my job to convince the believer to reject what he believes and what brings him or her comfort and meaning in this rather chaotic world anymore than I want the believer to convert me to a point of view that I find irrational. I believe that more good is done by leading by example and not shouting at one another in a futile attempt to prove who is right as that always comes down to a personal choice of ones own conscience. I could be wrong, you could be wrong, who knows we all might be wrong, but at the end of the day it comes down to how we treat one another that matters.

I don't confront people on the street or at churches, either. This is a forum for discussion, so I view it as something that is totally appropriate. I never call other posters names. But, you can't get points across without using clear examples and clear words.