and that's what you like reducing your entire existence to? a test? what a hopelessly depressing outlook.

How is that depressing at all? If you really think, the days of your life are filled with tests, one way or another.

Quote from Zed

Then he should write "I have other plans" on my bedroom wall in blood right now. By deceiving people and denying them the truth you impede their ability to make informed decisions. If God is wilfully misleading me as to his non-existence then he is affecting my ability to make free choices and the free will argument against evil breaks down.

So...If God doesnt do something completely dramatic to show he is there, you wont believe in him? And you know why God is not ruling us all? He gave us free will. We all can decide whether to believe in him or not. But he always gives you a chance at least once.

You can't "decide" to believe something just because you want to.

Quote from Hellsing

How is that depressing at all? If you really think, the days of your life are filled with tests, one way or another.

life is filled with a bunch of things, tests are just one of them, and arent tests unless you look at them as such.

Hmm... I like to stay neutral, but wouldn't staying neutral be atheist? Anyway, what I like to ask myself is this: why was religion created in the first place? I think the most accepted reason is to explain things that primitive humans couldn't understand. I mean, if you were a person with no knowledge gathered by the many generations of humans, and you were to look outside, and see I giant ball of yellow floating in the sky, what would you make of it? I mean, I know I wouldn't immediately say " Oh look, a giant ball of compressed gas that gives off heat and energy ". I would infer something closer to: ( if I was a human with no knowledge what-so-ever) Giant ball of light, that gives life to everything. So, I might make up a religion saying that this giant yellow ball in the heavens, is actually a god that gives life to the world, so I go and worship that " god " in thanks for the life it gives to the crops and plants and such.
To make a long story short, wouldn't it be easier to say the world and everything we know was created magically by a holy being, who we cannot see, hear, touch, feel, or taste? But if you have faith and do good deeds you will go to heaven in the after life.
Or would it be easier to say that the world began by the big bang where gas and all mass we know was flung into what we call space, the gas's forming together to create stars, and galaxy's. And the rocks and particles clumping together and creating planets, and those planets ( in some occasions such as ours) revolve around a star, creating planetary systems. ( Skipping forward ALOT because I'm not gonna cover all of the water getting to earth and the moon and stuff) And then uni-cellular life appears, then more complex, multi-cellular beings that evolved over millions of years into what animals we see today. ( Sorry if I didn't cover everything. )
I would say the religious way would be more easy to explain to your fellow humans, which gains more followers and such, creating a large scale religon over time. So yeah, pretty much what I'm saying is religon is kinda the easy way out to explain things in our everyday life, like the greek gods, they all represent something in our daily lifes, such as thunder, or war. I'm not saying I'm athiest, and I'm not religous, I'm just neutral on the subject haha.
And another thing, how do we know which religon in correct? like greek mythology and christianity? Or Buddhism or Sunni?
That is all I have to say :D

Quote from Automaton

Please provide that argument anyway, I need more ammo for my anti-theist arsenal XD

It's my logical positivist thread, which you already replied to :)

Quote from Hellsing

Life's a test.

A test which it seems 4 billion people are pre-destined to fail. Assuming the correct response to the test is, in your view, to become Christian, then your argument implies either (a) Arabians are stupid and incapable of passing tests or (b) Arabians are massively handicapped in the test because they've been born in the wrong place and brought up wrong. Either way portrays your god as a cunt.

Quote from Zamio

So...If God doesnt do something completely dramatic to show he is there, you wont believe in him? And you know why God is not ruling us all? He gave us free will. We all can decide whether to believe in him or not. But he always gives you a chance at least once.

You don't choose. You believe what your friends and family believe. Or at the very least you are massively influenced by it, otherwise you'd expect faiths to be equally distributed over the world rather than concentrated in different places. That is not freedom.

God doesn't have to hide to let us keep our free will. Showing His presence is not the same as reigning over us. Although saying that, it does seem like most religious people try to follow His commands anyway in which case He absolutely is reigning over us regardless of whether or not he even exists. So your post is flawed on two counts.

Quote from Zed

It's my logical positivist thread, which you already replied to :)



A test which it seems 4 billion people are pre-destined to fail. Assuming the correct response to the test is, in your view, to become Christian, then your argument implies either (a) Arabians are stupid and incapable of passing tests or (b) Arabians are massively handicapped in the test because they've been born in the wrong place and brought up wrong. Either way portrays your god as a cunt.



You don't choose. You believe what your friends and family believe. Or at the very least you are massively influenced by it, otherwise you'd expect faiths to be equally distributed over the world rather than concentrated in different places. That is not freedom.

God doesn't have to hide to let us keep our free will. Showing His presence is not the same as reigning over us. Although saying that, it does seem like most religious people try to follow His commands anyway in which case He absolutely is reigning over us regardless of whether or not he even exists. So your post is flawed on two counts.

...No. I believe in God because I choose to, because I believed he existed and I believed the Bible was the way he speaks to us. Not because my friends and family are. Thinking like that is kinda dense.

So, following God's guidelines is the same as ruling over us? Ruling over us is coming down and telling you to believe in him or he will crush you all. That's not how he works.

Quote from Zamio

...No. I believe in God because I choose to, because I believed he existed and I believed the Bible was the way he speaks to us. Not because my friends and family are. Thinking like that is kinda dense.

His point is that if you grew up in a Muslim part of the world, there's virtually no chance that you'd be a Christian. You believe what you believe because you were raised that way, not because you made an informed decision after thoroughly considering alternative beliefs.

In that sense, "choice" is largely removed. I didn't choose to believe in god as a kid, it was just how I was raised and I wasn't given any opportunity to explore other views.

Quote from Zamio

So, following God's guidelines is the same as ruling over us? Ruling over us is coming down and telling you to believe in him or he will crush you all. That's not how he works.

John 3:36: He who is believing in the Son, hath life age-during; and he who is not believing the Son, shall not see life, but the wrath of God doth remain upon him.

Revelation 21:8: But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.

John 3:16- For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

@Exilement - i thought about that too alot. and if you think about it, Islam and Judaism is a big chunk of the old testament which is basically the old covenant God set with Abraham and the Jews (the ten commandments) But in the new testament, a new covenant was made with ALL the people on earth which is basically that verse above (John 3:16) So even if you were born into a Muslim family, you will most likely be exposed to christianity and have your own choice in your heart to choose, and basically the "rules" have changed to get into heaven which is the belief in Jesus Christ. (The law used to be the ten commandments and muslims have their own thing they do i guess given to them by the prophet Muhammad but God will still Judge you in the end) This is why i still choose to be a christian and i believe in my heart God does exist and its the right path to choose.

You believe in the Christian God based on an assumption that God already exists? That's kind of strange.

And what if you don't get a chance to be exposed to Christianity in your entire life? What happens then?

Tough luck

So you believe that if someone never had a chance to believe in the Christian God, and was a good person their entire life, they are going to suffer unimaginable torture in Hell for all eternity, and deserve it?

Here's why I'm an atheist:
1. Think about the how long man has existed. If Christianity began about 2000 years ago, they what happened to all the people before that who were never introduced to it? Did God just send all of mankind up until around when Jesus started preaching to hell? It must be crowded to the brim then.

2. To believe in Christianity you must believe in some type of soul, which is sent to the after life. This soul is necessary for life to... well... be alive. I simply define being alive as the function of your cells. Dying is just when the cells malfunction and start to decompose and the atoms are recycled back into the Earth.

3. There have been HUGE amounts of religion ever since man started asking questions. Each of the believers of these religions truly thought that they had found the right answer. But eventually the religions died out. What makes Christianity and Islam or any other religion out there any different. In 1000 to 2000 years these will be gone too. And they increasing amount of scientific information we are discovering is becoming more readily available to the public. Now that we have access to actual answers for some of the once baffling questions we no longer have to turn to wild guesses.

4. Animals. If animals are alive than that would mean that they would have to have souls too. But to animals believe in god? some animals don't even have the ability to think, much less believe in a god. Do these animals get sent to hell?

5. I think that some people are religious because they don't believe that something so complex and intelligent as human life could not be created by chance. There had to be some sort or intelligent being who built them. There are approximately 160 billion planets in our galaxy alone but we have only found 1 with life on it, ours. Now that means that Earth is extremely lucky (or cursed, you decide). That show's that the chance for life was actually extremely small. I don't think that those probabilities suggest any being actively working to populate the universe. And if so, why only chose Earth?

6. I also think that some people believe because they want to have some kind of purpose. But according to the theory accepted today, life started all because of an accident. I'm more inclined to go with the scientists' opinion due to the fact that it was reached after countless tests and retests. I also don't mind the fact that I have no purpose.

7. There is way too much suffering going on in this world today. All of these 3rd world countries with people dying of starvation. Wars, disease, natural disasters. Would a god that loves mankind do something to help?

8. When believing in a religion, all logic that you have been taught since kindergarten has to be tossed out the window. You have to believe in something with absolutely no evidence to back it up, while men in suits with PhD's are going around disproving those beliefs every day. The bible has loads of contradictions and so do the arguments of believers when talking about god.

9. All religious texts were written by MEN, and everyone knows that they were written by MEN. The bible has been altered over 200 times, and around its creation, there were several hundred "books" left out. How can this be a legitimate source? How can you say an incomplete, extensively altered book written by men is the absolute word of god?