Why do Atheists Hate Religion?

[MakingMoneyHoney]

IF we assume the Christian version of God is the One True God. [premise 1]

AND we accept the Bible's teaching of the importance of everyone accepting The Lord into our hearts, for the fates of our Immortal Souls depend on it. [premise 2]

AND we accept the Bible's teaching that [premise 2] is of utmost important to God, who Loves us infinitely and desperately wants to save us from an Eternity in Hell. [premise 3]

AND we accept the Bible's teaching that God is the sole omniscient/omnipotent creator of The Universe and Everything. [premise 4]

Accepted.

HOW, then, do we account for the fact that our One True God failed to provide us with unique, undeniable evidence of the fact that The Teachings in these Holy Books are the One True Path to salvation, which we must follow to save our souls?

First, it's God's grace alone that is required for salvation, not works alone. I guess I'll post this again:

Isaiah 64:6 We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.

Romans 3:23 For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God

Ephesians 2:8-9 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

WHY would a Loving God allow 3.5 billion+ non-Christian people alive today (more than half!) of his beloved Children to burn in eternal hellfire for their heathen beliefs, when it would be a simple matter for He Who Created All to will undeniable evidence into existence at any time?

He was pretty up front about it back in the day, there was an actual flood, an actual Jesus with mysterious things happening recorded by others (not the bible), etc. Around Jesus' time people went around delivering people from demons in His name. People had proof back then right in front of their eyes. (Non-biblical accounts of Jesus - Scroll to around "Hostile Non-Biblical Pagan Witnesses") (Evidence suggests Noah's Biblical Flood Happened)

People who believe say they know for certain, they have proof. I have said this.

Though even while Jesus walked around He could not heal people who didn't have faith in him.

Mark 6:4 Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own town, among his relatives and in his own home.” 5 He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. 6 He was amazed at their lack of faith. Then Jesus went around teaching from village to village. 7 Calling the Twelve to him, he began to send them out two by two and gave them authority over impure spirits. 8 These were his instructions: “Take nothing for the journey except a staff—no bread, no bag, no money in your belts. 9 Wear sandals but not an extra shirt. 10 Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you leave that town. 11 And if any place will not welcome you or listen to you, leave that place and shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them.” 12 They went out and preached that people should repent. 13 They drove out many demons and anointed many sick people with oil and healed them.

God gave free will to all. What good is it to create life and force them to worship you all day? It would mean nothing. So He gave free will, so when we worship Him, we do so freely, and because we feel we should (because He's worthy of praise, not because we have to!)

The "problem" with free will is many choose to sin. Those who chose to break away and sin let their heart harden.

"Sin causes hearts to grow hard, especially continual and unrepentant sin. Now we know that “if we confess our sins, [Jesus] is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins” (1 John 1:9). However, if we don’t confess our sins, they have a cumulative and desensitizing effect on the conscience, making it difficult to even distinguish right from wrong. And this sinful and hardened heart is tantamount to the “seared conscience” Paul speaks of in 1 Timothy 4:1–2. Scripture makes it clear that if we relentlessly continue to engage in sin, there will come a time when God will give us over to our “debased mind” and let us have it our way. The apostle Paul writes about God’s wrath of abandonment in his letter to the Romans where we see that godless and wicked “men who suppress the truth” are eventually given over to the sinful desires of their hardened hearts (Romans 1:18–24)." (Causes/Hardened Heart)

The hardest part is probably generational curses.

Exodus 34:6 And the Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed, The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, 7 Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.

Which means those hardened hearts bred more and more people affected by them.

If anyone feels feels like it, they can always pray to have their heart softened, and ask for forgiveness for their ancestors, and see what happens. God bless anyone who attempts that sincerely.

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[BADecker]

IF we assume the Christian version of God is the One True God. [premise 1]

AND we accept the Bible's teaching of the importance of everyone accepting The Lord into our hearts, for the fates of our Immortal Souls depend on it. [premise 2]

AND we accept the Bible's teaching that [premise 2] is of utmost important to God, who Loves us infinitely and desperately wants to save us from an Eternity in Hell. [premise 3]

AND we accept the Bible's teaching that God is the sole omniscient/omnipotent creator of The Universe and Everything. [premise 4]


HOW, then, do we account for the fact that our One True God failed to provide us with unique, undeniable evidence of the fact that The Teachings in these Holy Books are the One True Path to salvation, which we must follow to save our souls?

WHY would a Loving God allow 3.5 billion+ non-Christian people alive today (more than half!) of his beloved Children to burn in eternal hellfire for their heathen beliefs, when it would be a simple matter for He Who Created All to will undeniable evidence into existence at any time?


Folks, these kinds of logical inconsistencies are fatal flaws for any system of belief attempting to describe reality.

Keeping in mind that mankind is so extremely stupid and of little ability, that he hasn't been able in all his logic and wisdom to advance people to live a mere 200 years...

When God made mankind, he placed inside them an aspect of Himself. He didn't make man to be entirely God. Yet he placed enough of Himself into man that man has some of the strength of God.

Much of the God-part that God placed into mankind revolves around man's ability to reason. Much of it revolves around man's spirit and soul which most of the scientific community is too weak to recognize exist.

How does God or anyone save mankind from the impending doom that mankind got himself into when he followed the devil, and made a pact with the devil in the Garden of Eden? After all, God made mankind with the strength of God in certain areas of reason, logic, soul and spirit. God can't coerce God. God can't coerce man.

Since man has devolved so far that he no longer understands soul and spirit, there is little way left for mankind to even recognize the whole "playing field" so that he can apply logic to it.

You are badly mistaken, and as retarded in your thinking as any of the scientific atheists. Wake up to the fact of how weak you are in your logic by realizing that mankind in all his wisdom can't even make people to live 200 years.

In the Bible, God placed the information about His Son Jesus. Jesus, being the actual Son of God, used the strength of God complete, to make a way to save mankind. Get into the Bible and find what the method for salvation really is, so that you can be saved from your self-destruction, and from God's mopping up afterwards.

[Beliathon]

Keeping in mind that mankind is so extremely stupid and of little ability, that he hasn't been able in all his logic and wisdom to advance people to live a mere 200 years...

You're going to feel awfully silly in a mere 15-20 years when we're growing new bodies in labs for head transplants and other such wetware.

[God] was pretty up front about it back in the day, there was an actual flood, an actual Jesus with mysterious things happening recorded by others (not the bible), etc.
Around Jesus' time people went around delivering people from demons in His name. People had proof back then right in front of their eyes.

In the following argument of nine premises, I will aim to convince you that Jesus of Nazareth was a fictional character, and not a real person. Read on dear theist, if you dare.

I do not intend to sway the beliefs of many of you, nor even budge them - I know this to be an impossibility, for if the religious mind is well-trained at anything, it is circumventing rational argument. I only intend to sew seeds of doubt, in the hopes that perhaps some of you will nurture them and let them grow. Here goes.

1. Much, if not most, of the Bible is arguably fiction. Quit being so intellectually dishonest, Christians - this is the twenty-first century. That means the burden of proof is on YOU. If you make a claim about the universe, it is up to you to prove it is true, not the other way around. It is not up to us, the rest of the world, to prove your claims false - that is not scientific thinking, that is anti-scientific thinking. Because I am a man of my times, and believe in correcting ignorance, what I am doing here is out of courtesy to YOU, just as if I were to argue publicly that there is a Flying Spaghetti Monster orbiting Venus preparing to blow up Planet Earth, one of you would probably, out of simple human decency attempt to correct me and point me towards the truth. This is my way of doing that. Now, back to the Bible being fiction... that part's easy. Find me a snake with vocal chords, water that is dense enough for a human being to walk on, or a chemical process that converts complex carbohydrates to fish. Until then, you're out of luck, sucker. The evidence wins, and the evidence sides with me. These are invented stories... fictional dramas meant to impart some moral lesson. They are not real.

2. Following point two: from an objective, scrutinizing view, there is no reason to believe one story in the Bible over another. We cannot honestly engage shades of truth here - either the books in the Bible are historically true or they are not. Since they almost ubiquitously contain material to make the scientific person skeptical, we can chance to say the same is true of the entire book: either it happened, or it didn't. Therefore, it is no less plausible to disbelieve the Jesus myth than the myth about Enoch the nine-hundred year old man or the creation myth wherein God pats the first humans out of clay. Here's a hint: humans, like all other complex organisms, reached their present condition by millions of years of natural selection through the self-preservation of certain greedy genes. We can observe this happening today; anti-biotic resistant bacteria are a good example. Plus, we've mapped the human genome - we know our ancestry, and it's simian. Even Pope John Paul II said evolution is a historical fact. People did not come from clay.

3. By definition, intellect, or "reason" is the ability to revise one's beliefs in light of better argumentation. Taking simple, empirical data from the the world around you should make it easy to determine that the physical laws of the universe DO NOT CHANGE. It therefore stands to reason that "miracles" can only possible be one of two phenomena: A, an outside agent actually interfering with the laws of the universe; or B, hyperbolized coincidences. Considering the Bible was written in a time when allegory was the most common form of journalistic reporting and most people still believed spitting on a wound was an appropriate way to cure it, it is far more reasonable to assume the latter.

*Side note: Seriously Hoss, let me clue you in on something: things that are impossible to do now - like walking on water, resuscitation after days of biological death, and wine magically turning into blood - were just as impossible 2,000 years ago. There's a much greater power in the universe than "belief." It's called "observation."

4. To believe these stories, you must create strange rationalizations that do not hold up to true intellectual scrutiny. This brings us to the issue of honesty. Without deluding yourself, can you honestly answer the following questions? Such as, why doesn't God heal amputees? He heals everyone else miraculously, right? But neither you nor I have ever seen an amputee grow back a leg. Oh wait, God has a special plan for them. But isn't he supposed to be loving and just? What's with the discrimination, man? Or how about Jonah surviving in the belly of that whale? Wouldn't he be partially digested after three days? Maybe Baby Balooga had a slow metabolism?

5. Following four, and this one is my favorite: if Jesus is the one true messiah, the only God, whom you shall hath no other gods before him, yada yada, how come so many gods DID come before him having nearly identical biographies? There are no less than two dozen god-men of the ancient Mediterranean whose birth was heralded by a bright star in the East (Sirius, for those who don't practice astronomy), who were also adored by wise men, walked on water, fed the hungry, resurrected the dead, were crucified and rose again, etc. Many even had the same birthday as Jesus - December 25th! Not coincidentally, this was the Roman Holiday of Saturnalia centuries before the clergy decided to call it Jesus' birthday. Surprise! Christians plagiarized earlier religions. I cannot spell it out any clearer than that. Knowing that, how can one believe anything Christian doctrine teaches? How do you even begin to separate what was invented from what was borrowed? You don't. The cold, hard truth is, it was an old story then, and it's an old story now. These messianic archetypes - the man that is god, the man who conquers death - existed long, long before Jesus came around. They were old news when soap was a cutting-edge technology, before written language was even invented. They are ancient fucking history. Jesus was not the antitype of these messianic figures, he was their distillation.

7. Following point 6. If you are skeptical of this information (and you should be, as doubt is the seed of all knowing), investigate the matter for yourself. One hugely recurring problem I find when debating with Christians is that they either know very little about other religions or are ignorant of their existence entirely. This is counter-intuitive to me, and perhaps my own fault in failing to understand the religious mind. Shouldn't it be fairly crucial to make the most educated decision in choosing a religion, if practicing the "right" one is important to you? For example, you wouldn't want to choose a religion based on plagiarism, would you? Or one that literally absorbed every earlier belief system it encountered through endless politicizing or the diplomacy of the sword? Well, better crack those books then - there's a whole heap of gods who fit the Christ mold long before Christ. I suggest you begin by researching Mithra of Rome, Attis of Frigia, Dionysis of Greece, Krishna of India, and Horus of Egypt. The last should be of particular interest to you, as his mythology is almost an exact carbon copy of Jesus', right down to the twelve apostles and three-day rebound time after being murdered by jealous clergy. Though, I should point out that Horus was worshipped nearly 1000 years BEFORE Christianity began spreading through the Hebrew-populated Roman colonies. This should come as no surprise to you, as it's written right in the bible that the Hebrews came out of Egypt.

8. On a more serious note. Western civilization may have been "built" on Judeo-Christian values (at least the "don't kill" and "don't steal" parts), but we have become a modern society and have adopted the scientific way of thinking. While the aforementioned values have indisputable merits, maintaining the dogma in its entirety is no longer necessary, especially when we consider the violence and segregation it has caused throughout the ages. Furthermore, philosophically speaking, Christian ethics are severely outdated. Since the Enlightenment, the Western World has seen far superior ethicists to Jesus of Nazareth. Kant and Mill, for example, created life-affirming ethical systems that can be applied to a wider range of people without destroying their culture or beliefs about where the universe came from and what kind of sex they should consider perverse. Truly, there is no reason to cling to the old way any longer. We have adopted science and reason in every other aspect of our lives... yet somehow we have retained Bronze Age ethics? It makes no sense. Why should we continue to believe it is better to be tribalists than to be humanists? This mentality is not compatible with a just, egalitarian society. Besides, Jesus may tell us to love one another, but he also says we should maintain the Old Testament in its entirety - no cherry-picking - which means we technically must condone rape, incest, slavery, and genocide (!). If we can do away with these parts (and we have), why not do away with the whole thing?

9. In the grand scheme of things, it would be generally permissible for one to believe in Christian ethics if it were readily understood that Jesus was not a historical person, and the story is allegory. However, if you are a Christian, you probably do believe that Jesus was a real human being. This is a threat to both the advancement of science and the absolution of religious conflict in the world, two issues that are paramount to our survival as a species as our planet nears carrying capacity and is dangerously on the brink of overheating. It creates too slippery a slope for other theocratic nonsense to take hold; for example, tthe mindset that human beings can literally live after death (how many soldiers would we send to die if everyone believed this is the only life?); or that preserving the existence of cell clusters which bear no conceivable human traits is somehow a better aim than alleviating actual human suffering; or that sex is harmful, but killing, bigotry, and total obedience to clandestine authority are healthy practices; or that blood sacrifice is a value modern societies should endorse. But Jesus WAS a real person, you say! There's a plethora of evidence! No, not really, outside of the gospels. And those hardly count as "evidence." They are secondary sources at best. Here's why: if a historical Jesus really lived and died between 0 and 33 CE, then we know beyond a doubt that at least forty years passed before the earliest gospel - the one written by Mark - was scribed. Because the aforementioned gospel discusses the destruction of Solomon's temple, we know it was written in or sometime after 70 CE. Given the lifespan of the period, that means the author or authors were at best infants or young children when Jesus of Nazareth was supposed to have been crucified. Moreover, the gospel writers are not themselves mentioned in the gospels, and they make no claim to actually having met Jesus. None of the apostles who walked with Jesus nor anyone who even met him wrote accounts to that effect. Granted, there are certain mentions of a "Christ" in the writings of Mediterranean historians from that period (not Justin Martyr or Pontius Pilate - sorry, but those are proven forgeries). However, if are a serious Christian, these should be of little consideration to you, as you know "the Christ" is really a title that simply means "the Anointed," and was taken up by many rabbis of that time. In not ONE of these documents is a man named Jesus, or Yeshua of Nazareth mentioned.


In conclusion, the gospels which discuss the life of Jesus of Nazareth are at best hearsay, almost certainly hyperbolized, and at worst complete fabrications. What we can determine beyond a doubt is that for at least four decades after his death, everyone in the world, including his sworn followers and students, simply forgot their messiah existed. If that doesn't cast on you a serious shade of doubt, then nothing will.

[MakingMoneyHoney]

[God] was pretty up front about it back in the day, there was an actual flood, an actual Jesus with mysterious things happening recorded by others (not the bible), etc.
Around Jesus' time people went around delivering people from demons in His name. People had proof back then right in front of their eyes.

In the following argument of nine premises, I will aim to convince you that Jesus of Nazareth was a fictional character, and not a real person.

I do not intend to sway the beliefs of many of you, nor even budge them - I know this to be an impossibility, for if the religious mind is well-trained at anything, it is circumventing rational argument. I only intend to sew seeds of doubt, in the hopes that perhaps some of you will nurture them and let them grow. Here goes.

Figures out of everything I wrote, even the links discussing other people's accounts of Jesus who didn't even believe in Him as a savior, wrote about Him, that He existed. And you argue not that He was just a human and not divine, but that He just did not exist?

1. Much, if not most, of the Bible is arguably fiction. Quit being so intellectually dishonest, Christians - this is the twenty-first century. That means the burden of proof is on YOU. If you make a claim about the universe, it is up to you to prove it is true, not the other way around. It is not up to us, the rest of the world, to prove your claims false - that is not scientific thinking, that is anti-scientific thinking. Because I am a man of my times, and believe in correcting ignorance, what I am doing here is out of courtesy to YOU, just as if I were to argue publicly that there is a Flying Spaghetti Monster orbiting Venus preparing to blow up Planet Earth, one of you would probably, out of simple human decency attempt to correct me and point me towards the truth. This is my way of doing that. Now, back to the Bible being fiction... that part's easy. Find me a snake with vocal chords, water that is dense enough for a human being to walk on, or a chemical process that converts complex carbohydrates to fish. Until then, you're out of luck, sucker. The evidence wins, and the evidence sides with me. These are invented stories... fictional dramas meant to impart some moral lesson. They are not real. 

God can do anything. The stories are real. The burden of proof is only those who attempt to change someone's heart. For anyone who doesn't believe, and has a hard heart, it's not even worth trying to prove it. Why am I responding? Other people are reading.

2. Following point two: from an objective, scrutinizing view, there is no reason to believe one story in the Bible over another. We cannot honestly engage shades of truth here - either the books in the Bible are historically true or they are not. Since they almost ubiquitously contain material to make the scientific person skeptical, we can chance to say the same is true of the entire book: either it happened, or it didn't. Therefore, it is no less plausible to disbelieve the Jesus myth than the myth about Enoch the nine-hundred year old man or the creation myth wherein God pats the first humans out of clay. Here's a hint: humans, like all other complex organisms, reached their present condition by millions of years of natural selection through the self-preservation of certain greedy genes. We can observe this happening today; anti-biotic resistant bacteria are a good example. Plus, we've mapped the human genome - we know our ancestry, and it's simian. Even Pope John Paul II said evolution is a historical fact. People did not come from clay. 

God can do anything. The bible is full of interesting stories. The stories are real. No one has said God couldn't have allowed evolution to take place on bodies created from the beginning of time. The old ages of humans at that time, may account for years and years people say are missing from the carbon dating. For some of the weirder creatures... there's some interesting biblical theories.

There is a short amount in the bible about this, but way more in something that didn't make it into the bible. Nephilim were the children of fallen angels (demons) mixing with humans. Genesis 6:4

It's also said in the parts that didn't make it into the bible that they played God with animals, mixing and matching. (The book of Enoch)

"These demonic hybrids began to completely corrupt and destroy the human race, they sinned not only with the daughters of men, they began to sin against the animals, beasts, birds, and reptiles, bringing forth the half human half animal creatures, which are so widely known throughout ancient cultures and civilizations and many were worshipped as gods. A time when ALL FLESH was corrupted it’s ways. And after a time, resulting in the Great Flood / Deluge"

These mixed Nephilim and mixed up animals may account for the odd fossils people find, such as dinosaurs. (Genetic Modification..)

3. By definition, intellect, or "reason" is the ability to revise one's beliefs in light of better argumentation. Taking simple, empirical data from the the world around you should make it easy to determine that the physical laws of the universe DO NOT CHANGE. It therefore stands to reason that "miracles" can only possible be one of two phenomena: A, an outside agent actually interfering with the laws of the universe; or B, hyperbolized coincidences. Considering the Bible was written in a time when allegory was the most common form of journalistic reporting and most people still believed spitting on a wound was an appropriate way to cure it, it is far more reasonable to assume the latter.

*Side note: Seriously Hoss, let me clue you in on something: things that are impossible to do now - like walking on water, resuscitation after days of biological death, and wine magically turning into blood - were just as impossible 2,000 years ago. There's a much greater power in the universe than "belief." It's called "observation." 

It wasn't allegory. God can do anything, you have to go with the premise that God created the universe so all laws are under His rule, though He leaves free will alone. The stories are real. These things are just as possible these days if people had the faith and required them and it was in God's will. As I've stated, and everyone else seems to agree, the world is filled with people who don't believe in God, IMHO, have hardened hearts. He's always had miracles happen less in those times, and these are the worst of them. 

4. To believe these stories, you must create strange rationalizations that do not hold up to true intellectual scrutiny. This brings us to the issue of honesty. Without deluding yourself, can you honestly answer the following questions? Such as, why doesn't God heal amputees? He heals everyone else miraculously, right? But neither you nor I have ever seen an amputee grow back a leg. Oh wait, God has a special plan for them. But isn't he supposed to be loving and just? What's with the discrimination, man? Or how about Jonah surviving in the belly of that whale? Wouldn't he be partially digested after three days? Maybe Baby Balooga had a slow metabolism? 

He would heal an amputee if He wanted to, but some other things such as illnesses are a result of sinful behavior and generational curses. Some people are hurt in other ways, so they can be healed and do more good in the long run. He is loving, but people have turned their back on him, in some cases that results in negative results. For the whale. the stories are real, God can do anything. You should have put the premise of God can do anything (except affect free will) at the beginning of this, it would have saved a lot of typing.

5. Following four, and this one is my favorite: if Jesus is the one true messiah, the only God, whom you shall hath no other gods before him, yada yada, how come so many gods DID come before him having nearly identical biographies? There are no less than two dozen god-men of the ancient Mediterranean whose birth was heralded by a bright star in the East (Sirius, for those who don't practice astronomy), who were also adored by wise men, walked on water, fed the hungry, resurrected the dead, were crucified and rose again, etc. Many even had the same birthday as Jesus - December 25th! Not coincidentally, this was the Roman Holiday of Saturnalia centuries before the clergy decided to call it Jesus' birthday. Surprise! Christians plagiarized earlier religions. I cannot spell it out any clearer than that. Knowing that, how can one believe anything Christian doctrine teaches? How do you even begin to separate what was invented from what was borrowed? You don't. The cold, hard truth is, it was an old story then, and it's an old story now. These messianic archetypes - the man that is god, the man who conquers death - existed long, long before Jesus came around. They were old news when soap was a cutting-edge technology, before written language was even invented. They are ancient fucking history. Jesus was not the antitype of these messianic figures, he was their distillation. 

I can't argue against sinful Christians using a pagan holiday. It was wrong. Demons knew God was coming to save us, besides trying to mess up the genetic line (which got thwarted with the flood), they also wanted people to worship them, and they knew what was coming. The bible warns about false idols, for a reason.

7. Following point 6. If you are skeptical of this information (and you should be, as doubt is the seed of all knowing), investigate the matter for yourself. One hugely recurring problem I find when debating with Christians is that they either know very little about other religions or are ignorant of their existence entirely. This is counter-intuitive to me, and perhaps my own fault in failing to understand the religious mind. Shouldn't it be fairly crucial to make the most educated decision in choosing a religion, if practicing the "right" one is important to you? For example, you wouldn't want to choose a religion based on plagiarism, would you? Or one that literally absorbed every earlier belief system it encountered through endless politicizing or the diplomacy of the sword? Well, better crack those books then - there's a whole heap of gods who fit the Christ mold long before Christ. I suggest you begin by researching Mithra of Rome, Attis of Frigia, Dionysis of Greece, Krishna of India, and Horus of Egypt. The last should be of particular interest to you, as his mythology is almost an exact carbon copy of Jesus', right down to the twelve apostles and three-day rebound time after being murdered by jealous clergy. Though, I should point out that Horus was worshipped nearly 1000 years BEFORE Christianity began spreading through the Hebrew-populated Roman colonies. This should come as no surprise to you, as it's written right in the bible that the Hebrews came out of Egypt. 

Same answer as above. Demons trying to get people to sin and worship false gods.

8. On a more serious note. Western civilization may have been "built" on Judeo-Christian values (at least the "don't kill" and "don't steal" parts), but we have become a modern society and have adopted the scientific way of thinking. While the aforementioned values have indisputable merits, maintaining the dogma in its entirety is no longer necessary, especially when we consider the violence and segregation it has caused throughout the ages. Furthermore, philosophically speaking, Christian ethics are severely outdated. Since the Enlightenment, the Western World has seen far superior ethicists to Jesus of Nazareth. Kant and Mill, for example, created life-affirming ethical systems that can be applied to a wider range of people without destroying their culture or beliefs about where the universe came from and what kind of sex they should consider perverse. Truly, there is no reason to cling to the old way any longer. We have adopted science and reason in every other aspect of our lives... yet somehow we have retained Bronze Age ethics? It makes no sense. Why should we continue to believe it is better to be tribalists than to be humanists? This mentality is not compatible with a just, egalitarian society. Besides, Jesus may tell us to love one another, but he also says we should maintain the Old Testament in its entirety - no cherry-picking - which means we technically must condone rape, incest, slavery, and genocide (!). If we can do away with these parts (and we have), why not do away with the whole thing? 

Feel free to site where Jesus said we were supposed to maintain the OT in its entirety. The sins that they were offering sacrifices for, etc, were all washed away with the blood of Jesus when He died on the cross for our sins. (..obey the Old Testament law? )

Jesus gave new commandments when He came:

Matthew 34 But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 And one of them, ea lawyer, asked him a question fto test him. 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

9. In the grand scheme of things, it would be generally permissible for one to believe in Christian ethics if it were readily understood that Jesus was not a historical person, and the story is allegory. However, if you are a Christian, you probably do believe that Jesus was a real human being. This is a threat to both the advancement of science and the absolution of religious conflict in the world, two issues that are paramount to our survival as a species as our planet nears carrying capacity and is dangerously on the brink of overheating. It creates too slippery a slope for other theocratic nonsense to take hold; for example, tthe mindset that human beings can literally live after death (how many soldiers would we send to die if everyone believed this is the only life?); or that preserving the existence of cell clusters which bear no conceivable human traits is somehow a better aim than alleviating actual human suffering; or that sex is harmful, but killing, bigotry, and total obedience to clandestine authority are healthy practices; or that blood sacrifice is a value modern societies should endorse. But Jesus WAS a real person, you say! There's a plethora of evidence! No, not really, outside of the gospels. And those hardly count as "evidence." They are secondary sources at best. Here's why: if a historical Jesus really lived and died between 0 and 33 CE, then we know beyond a doubt that at least forty years passed before the earliest gospel - the one written by Mark - was scribed. Because the aforementioned gospel discusses the destruction of Solomon's temple, we know it was written in or sometime after 70 CE. Given the lifespan of the period, that means the author or authors were at best infants or young children when Jesus of Nazareth was supposed to have been crucified. Moreover, the gospel writers are not themselves mentioned in the gospels, and they make no claim to actually having met Jesus. None of the apostles who walked with Jesus nor anyone who even met him wrote accounts to that effect. Granted, there are certain mentions of a "Christ" in the writings of Mediterranean historians from that period (not Justin Martyr or Pontius Pilate - sorry, but those are proven forgeries). However, if are a serious Christian, these should be of little consideration to you, as you know "the Christ" is really a title that simply means "the Anointed," and was taken up by many rabbis of that time. In not ONE of these documents is a man named Jesus, or Yeshua of Nazareth mentioned. 

Believing in Christ Jesus is not dangerous. You're trying to prove He didn't exist by saying you don't have proof that He did. Isn't that what you say is wrong with Christians saying there is a God? Also sex isn't sinful, in a heterosexual marriage according to the bible. He fully wanted Christians to go forth and multiply. 

In conclusion, the gospels which discuss the life of Jesus of Nazareth are at best hearsay, almost certainly hyperbolized, and at worst complete fabrications. What we can determine beyond a doubt is that for at least four decades after his death, everyone in the world, including his sworn followers and students, simply forgot their messiah existed. If that doesn't cast on you a serious shade of doubt, then nothing will, and perhaps I'm not "the fool".

It doesn't cast a shadow of a doubt for me. Also, I'm not surprised that Christians are becoming a minority. It was prophesied in the bible.

As for the demon/nephilim comments, I'm sure you'll think I'm crazy, so will some Christians. "The finest trick of the devil is to persuade you that he does not exist." by Charles Baudelaire

[BADecker]

Keeping in mind that mankind is so extremely stupid and of little ability, that he hasn't been able in all his logic and wisdom to advance people to live a mere 200 years...

You're going to feel awfully silly in a mere 15-20 years when we're growing new bodies in labs for head transplants and other such wetware.

Back in the 1950s people were told that in a few short years we would have moon rockets and bases on the moon, and people would be traveling back and forth to the moon on a regular basis, and some would be living there like, full time. Now we are finding a whole lot of evidence that the Apollo moon landings were all faked. And even if they weren't, we still aren't on the moon with moon bases... at least within the formal knowledge of the general public.

You are going to feel awfully silly in a mere 15-20 years when you find out that all the new bodies and head transplants, if not fictitious, will be only available to the ultra rich.

By the way, most of modern scientific theory is only science fiction. Little of it is based in real fact.

The evidence of the Dead Sea Scrolls shows that the Bible is reasonably accurate over a period of more than 2,000 years. The evidence in the heart of the Bible reader who is a believer, proves the accuracy of the things written in the Bible beyond a shadow of a doubt in his/her heart.

[Buffer Overflow]

Demons trying to get people to sin and worship false gods.

Can your compile us a list of all these false Gods please? I want to be sure to avoid them.
Please answer in your own words and directly as possible. Thanks.

[MakingMoneyHoney]

Demons trying to get people to sin and worship false gods.

Can your compile us a list of all these false Gods please? I want to be sure to avoid them.
Please answer in your own words and directly as possible. Thanks.

Anyone or anything that is not the true God of the bible /Jesus should not be worshipped or placed in higher respect than God/Jesus.

[Buffer Overflow]

Demons trying to get people to sin and worship false gods.

Can your compile us a list of all these false Gods please? I want to be sure to avoid them.
Please answer in your own words and directly as possible. Thanks.

Anyone or anything that is not the true God of the bible /Jesus should not be worshipped or placed in higher respect than God/Jesus.

How have you come to that conclusion? Give me an example; let's say the Islamic God Allah. How have you concluded this one is false?

[Beliathon]

How have you come to that conclusion? Give me an example; let's say the Islamic God Allah. How have you concluded this one is false?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZ_BtZ-5O60

[cryptodevil]

No, I'm not interested in considering I'm wrong.

I'm always interested in considering that I may be wrong. It is reassuring when one's continued questioning and study of new data and reasoning continues to lead one back to supporting the proposition that there is no evidence, no need, for a 'god' in this Universe and that those who believe such are provably employing intellectually dishonest reasoning to support their false argument.

If, however, things were to change and there was a whole new set of data I could incorporate into my understanding, such that I needed to modify my position substantially, I would always be open to doing so.

You are not. You have decided that your own subjective wishing and active confirmation bias is enough and all the myriad of contradictions and conflicts can just be swept under the carpet . . . because god. No thanks, I prefer not to have to make my subconscious mind continually wrestle with cognitive dissonance, it isn't healthy.

Atheists aren't much better, in not wanting to consider God exists, they found their answer a long time ago too.

I think you'll find that atheists are actually considerably more qualified in the balance of consideration for your claims for god than you. Your assertions are simply, "He does because . . .[insert logical fallacy here]". We're not afraid of the answers to the questions we ask. You are, that's why you have no intellectual integrity and your world is constructed from 'woo'. Careful, it's not a particularly reliable building material, it is prone to crumbling when analysed by objective reasoning.

How does it feel to you to know that you are someone who doesn't want to understand life properly? To ignore what's really going on?

]

See, that's the thing, the moment I stopped looking for 'The Supernatural' I stopped seeing it, everywhere.

You, unfortunately, will dishonestly take that to mean I closed my eyes to the 'wonder of woo' when, the fact of the matter is, I simply stopped projecting my faulty assumptions and preconceived perceptions onto ordinary situations. When I began to practice intellectual honesty in order to more reliable understand Life, The Universe and Everything, I found that there were understandable answers for everything and none of it required invoking 'woo' and, in fact, 'woo' was clearly found to be one of the root causes of cognitive dissonance and confusion as, much like the Bible is chock-full of contradictions and conflicts, what with it being not one story but a collection of stories selected for inclusion by a group of men many centuries after the myths concerned were written, the introduction of 'woo' to try and explain anything simply becomes an infantile conflicting game of, "Because I say so!", rather than a route towards actual knowledge of The Universe.

The bible is a wonderful guide on how to act.

My goodness, I take it you haven't actually read the damn thing, then? Do you even know the origins of that absurd publication?

Just so I know where you stand, do I turn the other cheek or is it 'an eye for an eye'?

[Buffer Overflow]

No, I'm not interested in considering I'm wrong.

That's terrible. The church has sealed your eyes, ears and mind tightly shut.
I don't see any good will become of that.

[Lauda]

No, I'm not interested in considering I'm wrong.

That's terrible. The church has sealed your eyes, ears and mind tightly shut.
I don't see any good will become of that.

Exactly. This is got to be one of the worst attitudes towards life that one can have. Life has taught me many things, and one of those is to ignore such people.
How could one discuss a certain subject (especially tough ones such as religion) with a person who thinks that what they think is the ultimate truth? That would only be a waste of time.
Such people are like robots (not AI). They do not accept new information and this is what makes them vulnerable.

"Close-minded people would march off a cliff if doing so matched one of their preconceived notions."

[BADecker]

No, I'm not interested in considering I'm wrong.

That's terrible. The church has sealed your eyes, ears and mind tightly shut.
I don't see any good will become of that.

Exactly. This is got to be one of the worst attitudes towards life that one can have. Life has taught me many things, and one of those is to ignore such people.
How could one discuss a certain subject (especially tough ones such as religion) with a person who thinks that what they think is the ultimate truth? That would only be a waste of time.
Such people are like robots (not AI). They do not accept new information and this is what makes them vulnerable.

"Close-minded people would march off a cliff if doing so matched one of their preconceived notions."

That's because the so-called new ideas are not really new ideas. The ideas against God and proper religion have been around almost since the Beginning, the time of the creation. Many of them came into being shortly after the fall of mankind into sin.

These ideas have been found to be false throughout the years. Their adherents are the people of the nations who have lived a short time and then died without hope.

Come over to the only salvation that can save you from death... before it is too late. Turn and accept the salvation that God provides through Jesus. The new ideas - which are really old ideas being expressed again - cannot save you from destruction.

[the joint]

No, I'm not interested in considering I'm wrong.

I'm always interested in considering that I may be wrong. It is reassuring when one's continued questioning and study of new data and reasoning continues to lead one back to supporting the proposition that there is no evidence, no need, for a 'god' in this Universe and that those who believe such are provably employing intellectually dishonest reasoning to support their false argument.

If, however, things were to change and there was a whole new set of data I could incorporate into my understanding, such that I needed to modify my position substantially, I would always be open to doing so.

You are not. You have decided that your own subjective wishing and active confirmation bias is enough and all the myriad of contradictions and conflicts can just be swept under the carpet . . . because god. No thanks, I prefer not to have to make my subconscious mind continually wrestle with cognitive dissonance, it isn't healthy.

Atheists aren't much better, in not wanting to consider God exists, they found their answer a long time ago too.

I think you'll find that atheists are actually considerably more qualified in the balance of consideration for your claims for god than you. Your assertions are simply, "He does because . . .[insert logical fallacy here]". We're not afraid of the answers to the questions we ask. You are, that's why you have no intellectual integrity and your world is constructed from 'woo'. Careful, it's not a particularly reliable building material, it is prone to crumbling when analysed by objective reasoning.

How does it feel to you to know that you are someone who doesn't want to understand life properly? To ignore what's really going on?

]

See, that's the thing, the moment I stopped looking for 'The Supernatural' I stopped seeing it, everywhere.

You, unfortunately, will dishonestly take that to mean I closed my eyes to the 'wonder of woo' when, the fact of the matter is, I simply stopped projecting my faulty assumptions and preconceived perceptions onto ordinary situations. When I began to practice intellectual honesty in order to more reliable understand Life, The Universe and Everything, I found that there were understandable answers for everything and none of it required invoking 'woo' and, in fact, 'woo' was clearly found to be one of the root causes of cognitive dissonance and confusion as, much like the Bible is chock-full of contradictions and conflicts, what with it being not one story but a collection of stories selected for inclusion by a group of men many centuries after the myths concerned were written, the introduction of 'woo' to try and explain anything simply becomes an infantile conflicting game of, "Because I say so!", rather than a route towards actual knowledge of The Universe.

The bible is a wonderful guide on how to act.

My goodness, I take it you haven't actually read the damn thing, then? Do you even know the origins of that absurd publication?

Just so I know where you stand, do I turn the other cheek or is it 'an eye for an eye'?

With all due respect -- and I say that because I know from your posts you do value intellectual honesty -- you have no basis to say there is no "need" for God or an Intelligent Designer.  In the absence of a comprehensive scientific explanation for reality, and given that certain mathematical explanations such as ex-nihilo creation or otherwise fall short of such comprehension, your current perspective must acknowledge a horizon of knowledge exists whose threshold you have yet to surpass.

I strongly encourage you to consider the problem that none of these current explanations provide an explanation for theories themselves, which are the basis for all of our conceptual understanding.  For example, you can't comprehensively explain theories in terms of the brain because what we know of the brain is a theory of it (and that means we put the cart before the horse).

To have a comprehensive theory of what reality is all about, the theory we have about reality requires that it can account for itself. 

[Beliathon]

No, I'm not interested in considering I'm wrong.

That's terrible. The church has sealed your eyes, ears and mind tightly shut.

That's standard religion protocol. If critical reasoning is not sufficiently impaired, the religion doesn't stick, it melts away in the face of everyday observation.

What sane person, having experienced five or six orgasms in a day, would believe there's any need for a heaven after death, when heaven is so obviously a place here on Earth?

[the joint]

No, I'm not interested in considering I'm wrong.

That's terrible. The church has sealed your eyes, ears and mind tightly shut.

That's standard religion protocol. If critical reasoning is not sufficiently impaired, the religion doesn't stick, it melts away in the face of everyday observation.

What sane person, having experienced five or six orgasms in a day, would believe there's any need for a heaven after death, when heaven is so obviously a place here on Earth?

What sane person, having achieved a meditative state, would believe an orgasm is a heavenly state?

[Beliathon]

No, I'm not interested in considering I'm wrong.

That's terrible. The church has sealed your eyes, ears and mind tightly shut.

That's standard religion protocol. If critical reasoning is not sufficiently impaired, the religion doesn't stick, it melts away in the face of everyday observation.

What sane person, having experienced five or six orgasms in a day, would believe there's any need for a heaven after death, when heaven is so obviously a place here on Earth?

What sane person, having achieved a meditative state, would believe an orgasm is a heavenly state?

Nothing against meditation, but sex is the ultimate nirvana. Like mathematics, this is a self-evident truth, and no myths(lies) you write will ever change that.

Also like mathematics, nearly everyone is born with everything required to experience this truth for themselves.

[the joint]

No, I'm not interested in considering I'm wrong.

That's terrible. The church has sealed your eyes, ears and mind tightly shut.

That's standard religion protocol. If critical reasoning is not sufficiently impaired, the religion doesn't stick, it melts away in the face of everyday observation.

What sane person, having experienced five or six orgasms in a day, would believe there's any need for a heaven after death, when heaven is so obviously a place here on Earth?

What sane person, having achieved a meditative state, would believe an orgasm is a heavenly state?

Nothing against meditation, but sex is the ultimate nirvana. This is a self-evident truth, like mathematics, and no lies you can write will ever change it.

Then it is self-apparent you have never achieved a meditative state, which is infinitely more blissful by definition.

[Beliathon]

Then it is self-apparent you have never achieved a meditative state, which is infinitely more blissful by definition.

That's surprising, considering I have hundreds of hours of yoga and I'm a daily practitioner of Ericksonian meditation for over seven years.

Maybe I've been doing it wrong this whole time? Or perhaps you shouldn't go around making assumptions about internet strangers.

[the joint]

Then it is self-apparent you have never achieved a meditative state, which is infinitely more blissful by definition.

That's surprising, considering I have hundreds of hours of yoga and I'm a daily practitioner of Ericksonian meditation for over seven years.

Maybe I've been doing it wrong this whole time? Or perhaps you shouldn't go around making assumptions about internet strangers.

I don't have to assume anything when you have stated all the information necessary to reach such a conclusion, unless you are a liar.

If sex is the ultimate nirvana, then why is tantric sex (axiomatically) more blissful?

Edit: Yes, meditation can simply be calming, even significantly so.  But this calming feeling is infinitely different from a meditative state.  There is absolutely no mistaking a meditative state.  The primary difference is that one achieves a meditative state at the instant the perception of one's "self" disappears entirely.  I'm particular with my language, and to say a meditative state is "infinitely" more blissful is a poignantly chosen phrase, and in no way euphemistic.  There are no boundaries invoked by a self in which the bliss can be contained, and accordingly the bliss is "non-finite" or infinite.

Edit 2: I would possibly concede to a semantic distinction between "pleasurable" and "blissful" whereupon sex could be described as more pleasurable, but certainly not more blissful or 'heavenly.'