[massgopguy]

The big problem with the idea of there being no God is that there are too many people who fancy that they could fill the void.

[PeterPrinciple]

I would encourage all freepers to use the Truth Project in a small group:

http://www.thetruthproject.org/

[Tzimisce]

I’ve been told Atheism is not a religion. If that’s true, we can ban these people from talking without having to listen to them scream about discrimination...

[Calm_Cool_and_Elected]

ping for later

[FormerLib]

The McGraths also point out the folly of believing that if religion were eliminated wars would cease...

Maybe someone forgot about the Soccer War that broke out a while back?

[stm]

If you live your life as if there is no God, for your sake you better damn well be right.

[Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus]

One of his proofs of theistic obtuseness is that "viruses like HIV, as well as a wide range of harmful bacteria, can be seen evolving right under our noses, developing resistance to antiviral and antibiotic drugs."

How come Sammy doesn't understand that an HIV virus that mutates is, um, still an HIV virus?

Oh right, it's because most people who stump for evolution don't actually know very much ABOUT evolution.

[HaveHadEnough]

Nineteenth-century novelist Gustave Flaubert used to joke about archaeologists discovering a stone tablet signed "God" and reading, "I do not exist." His punch line had an atheist then exclaiming, "See! I told you so!"

That's funny.

[TheDon]

"An average Christian, in an average church, listening to an average Sunday sermon has achieved a level of arrogance simply unimaginable in scientific discourse."

I'd say the manking caused "Global Warming" believers is a good counter point to this point!

[Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus]

Here's something to have a little fun with atheists - You might be a fundamentalist atheist if....

[windsorknot]

Atheism is irrational. For atheists the existence of God is not even open to question: not only does God not exist, but there isn’t even the possibility of his existence.

[tophat9000]

Here, for example, is Dawkins' view of God: "arguably the most unpleasant character in fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully."

Dawkins "view of God" has got be the most illogical statement ever.....Stupid...you say God does not existed God is fiction... but what you list clearly does existed it's not fiction...

So physics created and dictates that law of the universe and the men that do it all without God ...If you rant about what's real...rant about the real sources not what you say is fiction

That the same as cursing your luck and saying luck does not exist all at the same time

And if you say that the fiction cause the bad then the fiction can cause the good

[rock_lobsta]

For people that claim not to believe in God, these athiests sure do hate Him.

[reagan_fanatic]

WORLD for two decades has reported stories around this country of compassionate evangelicals who must be dumb, because they've spent their lives in a racket that's yielded them almost no money. They've adopted hard-to-place children, built AIDs orphanages in Africa, helped addicts and alcoholics to turn their lives around, transformed the lives of teens who were heading into drugs and crime, and much besides.

A point that often gets overlooked in a world full of Benny Hinns and Jan Crouches. Most churches and most Pastors are hard working and frugal. My Church supports a number of missionaries around the world, has an active AIDS ministry and an active youth ministry that has helped hundreds of kids lost in drugs and sex to straighten out their lives. Most of these people would be classified as middle class - not rich.

Unfortunately, good deeds don't draw the amount of attention that the charlatans and crooks do, a fact that ignorant atheists like Hitchens use to their full advantage.

[TChris]

The main problem with arguments from atheists against "religion", is that they just lump them all together, effectively sharing with Christians the blame for Muslim atrocities, since it's all "religion".

As Jesus taught, "By their fruits ye shall know them." The fruits of various religions are by no means equal. It's intellectually lazy and disingenuous to lump all of them together, then criticize only the most rotten fruit.

Dawkins, and others like him, have consistently tried to measure religion with the tools of science. This is rather like trying to measure the wavelength of a radio signal with a ruler. It's just the wrong tool for the job.

[VOA]

bump

[onedoug]

I'll take Pascal's Bet, thanks.

From the earliest instant, when even time itself had just come into being, the symmetry of the creation event was broken, and nuclear strong and weak/electromagnetic forces somehow therein also gave rise to gravitation which, though exceptionally weak by the other three, nonetheless gradually coalesced their parts into various galactic types and structures.

And as we live in one out of billions of those spiral galaxies, two thirds of the way out from its dense center between whirling arms which are relatively debris and dust free; where metals are fairly well concentrated, but rarer in the Milky Way’s outer reaches…. Where too, were we further in, we wouldn’t be able to see the universe outside.

That we live in the habitable zone of a single G2V star, in a system with a large outer planet to sweep up a considerable amount of debris that might otherwise be drawn to the inner solar system and collide with Earth. That we have a magnetic field which protects us from too much cosmic and solar radiation, and allows us too – geometrically by the more distant stars – to navigate around our planet.

That we have a moon massive enough to stabilize our planetary axis, and which perhaps also couples gravitationally to assist plate tectonics in recycling our oceanic crust and mantle, yielding a balance of nitrogen/oxygen and carbon dioxide to our atmosphere. That the laws of physics at both the macro- and micro levels should be so fine tuned - and unified! - allowing these processes to be carried out at all.

That we are alive in such a system!

The odds of it – ALL - seem somehow inconceivable that there isn’t God who – being God sets the values of good and evil, and cares that we should prefer that Good.

"If I knew God I’d be Him." Though He’s there.

[AU72]

What do you say about an atheist's wake?

All dressed up with nowhere to go.

[GunRunner]

On Page 17 he writes that religion "does not have the confidence in its own various preachings even to allow coexistence between different faiths." At the annual March for Life in Washington tens of thousands of Catholics and Protestants walk side by side along with individuals from Jews for Life, Buddhists for Life, and so on.

This is a legitimate gripe by Hitchen's. A few Buddhists and Jews marching with some Christians at a pro-life rally was probably done for political expedience rather than an agreement on theology.

It doesn't change the fact that even the most loving and generous of my evangelical friends maintain that if you don't believe in Jesus divinity, you are going to Hell.

[shuckmaster]

Children who are brainwashed at a very young age to believe that they are the creations of mythical skygods who exist only in the scribblings of ancient scrolls and are thousands of years past due for their miraculous return tend to cling on to these false hopes for life.

Unless, they get their hands on a real science book and learn some truth.