But you say “Oh Shit!” You must have to take a crap.
“Bullshit!” You must have spotted some!

“What’s an idiom!” You’re an idiot.

If you knew someone that believed in flying pigs that believed that you should kill everyone over 20…would you fight that point of view?

Believers are denying gays rights, impeding science, and killing and torturing in god’s name without a shred of evidence. (Short version)

Yes, we’ll fight idiotic magical beliefs, as long as they effect us.

“What gets you out of bed in the morning? Any of us could die any time; there is no point in building up riches or a legacy. It will mean nothing later. ”

I enjoy my life. I was going to say more but I have no need since enjoying life is reason enough. When I was a Christian I was constantly depressed, feeling I had let “God Down” because its not humanly possible to emulate the life of Christ. That made me want to stay in bed. I’m sure it does you too. You are fooling nobody.

“Love without God only leads to pain.”
Where is your evidence for this? That’s an opinion not a fact and in my opinion its a bullshit opinion.

“Where is your hope? ”
Hope for what exactly? Why do I need hope when I am happy?. If I want to see something happen I do everything in my power to make it happen. What do you do? Pray and hope your imaginary friend listens and decides to do it for you? That’s called false hope.

” What is the point of your existence?”
This is a human concept. What is the point of the existence of the universe? There is no point. Unless you count reproduction. Perhaps that’s the point.. to pass on my genes. I don’t really care. For me I made my own point. That is to be happy and not to be another’s servant.
As a Christian I felt the point of my existence was to please God. That just made me depressed since I never knew if I were succeeding. And I would never know since how can something that does not exist ever communicate anything ?
Of course the other point here is why should I be trying to please anybody? If there actually were a God and he wanted people to please and worship him then that’s a pretty insecure selfish bastard right there, and there is no way I would do such a thing. I would prefer eternal damnation. I am nobodies slave and any creature that desires slaves is either mentally unstable or evil since nothing else can explain such selfishness.

” If God is not there, what is?”
The universe (and possibly, but not yet proven conclusively the mutliverse) is there. It is a vast complex thing that we currently have very little understanding of but are learning more every day about. Its an amazing and beautiful place and we are all a part of it. The very atoms in our bodies have been forged in the hearts of stars billions of years ago and when we die our bodies break down until our atoms finally rejoin the rest of the universe mixing and blending into other things.The particles that make up our atoms will exist for all time and its quite possible they will travel the entire universe. That is plenty for me.
As for my consciousness? when I die it will cease to exist. I wont even know . I have no awareness of anything when I loose consciousness, death will be the same but permanent. How can that be anything to fear? I wont even know it has happened.

Now I do not know if the universe itself has a consciousness or not? And even if it does, will it have any awareness of us or anything else. Perhaps its like you and I. we are filled with independent life:- Our cells, bacterial life, viruses and so on but we have no awareness of the individual organisms.
Or perhaps its just the universe with no independent consciousness.

Currently I have no way to know and I really don’t need to know to be happy. I enjoy learning and exploring. I don’t need anything to tell me what to do. I am mature enough to do this for myself.

One thing I do know though. God as described in the bible is a ludicrous idea… and, judging by his behavior in the bible, could only be described as psychotic. How can serving an imaginary psychopath possibly make you happy?

You are not a child, yet the idea of needing someone to tell you how to live shows a great level of immaturity. Perhaps it’s finally time to grow up.

Nazareth didn’t exist during “Jesus”, no worldwide flood occurred by geological record, the dissemination of species follows evolution to perfection and has zero support for Noah, No historical evidence for Jesus outside of the bible that hasn’t been proven falsified. The Old Testament has all the same problems. At what point, do you give up? If the ENTIRE bible were proven false, for sake of argument, would you still believe “the magic”?

Intelligent Design is a joke…it works the problem backwards. See how “complicated we are”…we share the design of damn near every animal on the planet…whales have finger bones!!!!! It ignores all of the failed designs that are extinct. And, I can only assume you don’t understand what 14 TRILLION years actually represents. That is a long time a lot can happen.

You are so disingenuous, it’s not funny. 9/11 was caused by religious zealots furthering the cause of Allah….PERIOD…their own words!!!! Tell me one positive benefit of religion that requires religion…JUST ONE!!!

You misrepresent Monica’s statements…where did she say “There are starving children in the world, therefore, there is no God.” I’ll wait. Then to further say she doesn’t care based upon nothing you fall into the basic claptrap we here CONSTANTLY. FUCK YOU! We Atheist are helping children as well. Bill Gates did more by himself then you bible thumping, child raping Xian’s thought about doing.

Atheist don’t have demons, they are as make believe as your god. Thanks for playing.

Oh, so that’s why I need eyeglasses, an asthma puffer and shares in an antihistamine manufacturer?

I don’t recall saying that Genesis is metaphor or symbolic. As a whole, Genesis is a historic narrative. The creation accounts, to which I’m assuming you are referring, are written in a style of exalted prose. They are left open for interpretation. Believing that the universe was created in a literal 7 days is not a belief held by all inerrantists. Christians must only believe that God created all things; they do not have to agree on how.

You’ve done a good job of searching out the right questions, it just doesn’t seem like you’ve spent much time searching for the Biblical answers. The answers are there if you’re willing to look. I advise you research the resurrection. Undoubtedly you have questions. See if you can’t find the answers by honestly searching.

I spent quite a long time fighting like you. I thought that my mind could never allow me to have faith, but God freed my mind from its restrictions.

And Biblical inerrance? Wow. I’d say maybe it’s not me that needs to read the Bible more closely . . .

So you’re a literalist? YEC and everything? I mean, you’re talking about Intelligent Design and most of the rest of us know that’s just warmed over creationism but I don’t see how you can claim inerrancy but then turn around and say Genesis is metaphor or symbolic.

There is an old book. Very old. Written by dozens of men of hundreds of years. Not one point contradicts another. Not one of its historicities has been proven false. Prophecies were made and later fulfilled. Other prophecies have yet to pass. Its promises are trustworthy. There is hope within its pages. It begs not just to be read, but to be studied.

Don’t restrict your mind to what you can see. “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” – Hebrews 11:1.

In other words, if no matter how carefully scientists control for variables there is always the possibility that God supernaturally intervenes to give some outcome rather than what would have naturally occurred then no science results could ever be trusted because they are always at the whim of a God whose “plan” can at best be said to our eyes as wholly random (and if you throw up Prosperity Gospel then this exchange is over because that is wholly despicable and immoral). We should never place our lives in the hands of scientific Laws or Theories, no matter how well supported, because at any given time God could suspend them . . . or maybe it is the inverse and he’s been giving us wrong data all along and at some point he’ll stop and we’ll all fly off the planet, for example. But at the end of the day that concept just doesn’t fit with our ability to rely on the scientific method, especially for those things we rely upon for our lives every day. Water treatment. Vaccines. Power production. Computers. We put our lives in science’s hands every single day of our lives in one way or another, and the idea that you can’t trust it after everything discovered by science is practically the definition of insanity.

I agree with you, if there is a God creator of the Universe then far be it from us to say that he/she/it cannot intervene. But in particular the concept of an actively interventionist God just does not fit the evidence. It would be true irony indeed if a God existed who gave us the senses and mental capacity to ultimately determine there is no evidence he/she/it exists, but since the first part can only be had on faith and not measurable, repeatable observation that gives rise to predictable action or observation we never have to get to the second part.

If you questioned your own beliefs with the tenacity that you questioned God, you may be surprised what you find.

As for me, I’ll put my faith in something above science, and I’ll pray that you will too

i.e: If in 2009 I tried to describe to you the Louisiana Pancake Batfish (discovered in 2010), you would be forced to denounce its existence. For how could you acknowledge it without scientific study? Does that mean the animal did not exist in 2009?

As humans, we are extremely limited in the scope of what we can see and observe? What right do we have to say what does not exist simply because we can not, or have not yet measured it?

In the same way that we laugh at the scientists of old who thought the world was flat, our descendants will laugh at what we believed scientifically to be true.

Further, I have followed you for a little while. I very much hope that Christians do not look to you as somebody to fear. You make bold claims of ‘critical thinking’ and then you stop thinking at the point which your opinion is fixed. You mock intelligent design in saying, “Our feet are miraculous because they fit so perfectly into our socks.”

Arguing against intelligent design with the fact that there are many planets is like arguing that the chances of winning the lottery increases every time you play. The anthropic principle is so miraculous because the chance of 122 constants being in place in ANY planet without intelligent guidance is one chance in 1 with 138 zeros after it. (Source: Astrophysicist Hugh Ross)

However, it is not your inherently wrong analogies that bug me. It is that your favorite argument against Christianity, and your reasons for campaigning against it is that there is evil in the world. (You have no argument against the standard of objective morality other than your mocking of that argument.)

You argue that religion is the cause of 9/11. This is like arguing that the bank is the cause of a shooting in a bank robbery. Religion doesn’t poison everything; everything poisons religion.

You will make claims like “There are starving children in the world, therefore, there is no God.”

From this, I can draw that you care little about the worlds’ starving children. You use them to bring the name of God down. If otherwise, you would have said “There are staving children in the world, therefore, I am going to feed them!”

My Christians are deploying some of the most hostile places of the world to feed these starving children, and you have the audacity to say that God does nothing for them? You are a strong example of blind, pitiless indifference.

If you want to claim to care about children, then shut up. Walk the walk.

(Also, I am using an unprofessional e-mail and not including my website. I do not want my twitter feed or website bandwidth overwhelmed by your demonic minions.)

A: For the same reasons you hate Superman.

Actually I don’t believe in any gods, not just the horrible versions. I also don’t believe in the fluffy and nice hippy Jesus who gives free booze away or the magical fairyland deity who saved all the animals apart from unicorns. No gods. Get it?

Answer)If you need an imaginary friend to tell you how to be a human, I really feel sorry for you.