Why I'm an atheist

[Dahhi]

       

                        Why am I an atheist

   It's absurd to ruin your life (a lucky but tiny oasis of awareness that exists between two infinite deserts of nothingness) by following absurd or immoral rules invented by primitive people of the Bronze Age which have no relation whatsoever with the happiness of other people.

Christian rules are not immoral in nature, the concept of marriage and having a family came out of religious beliefs and the family has a stabilizing effect on the society.

[1714479849]

1714479849

[1714479849]

1714479849

[1714479849]

1714479849

[1714479849]

1714479849

[Trading]

Give me your BTC, address, I will tip you! Never saw a more decent post in my entire life.

5. It is my life! I define my destiny, not a priest!

Thanks, but no need to tip me.

If you want to help us, atheists, promoting reason, science and tolerance, just post on this thread sometimes.

No doubt, many theists are tolerant people, however, the number of radical believers has been growing (thanks just to their higher birth rates and massive indoctrination of their children) and they can end up being a menace to our way of life or, at least, the one of our children.

Radicalism/orthodoxy has been rising not only on Muslim countries, including Turkey or Indonesia, but also on Israel and even on the United States.

And, yes, in the end, religion is mostly about the power and financial support of a cast of professional priests that live on the credulity of their fellow citizens.

And this has been going on for at least 13,000 years (see Gobekli Tepe).

[BADecker]

Give me your BTC, address, I will tip you! Never saw a more decent post in my entire life.

5. It is my life! I define my destiny, not a priest!

Thanks, but no need to tip me.

If you want to help us, atheists, promoting reason, science and tolerance, just post on this thread sometimes.

No doubt, many theists are tolerant people, however, the number of radical believers has been growing (thanks just to their higher birth rates and massive indoctrination of their children) and they can end up being a menace to our way of life or, at least, the one of our children.

Radicalism/orthodoxy has been rising not only on Muslim countries, including Turkey or Indonesia, but also on Israel and even on the United States.

And, yes, in the end, religion is mostly about the power and financial support of a cast of professional priests that live on the credulity of their fellow citizens.

And this has been going on for at least 13,000 years (see Gobekli Tepe).

Actually, God working with theists is the reason atheists even have a life. After all, since he saves many theists to eternal life, why not convert some of the atheists so some of them can be saved, as well?

Besides, nobody knows that Gobekli Tepe is 13,000 years old. It's part of all the things that the scientific community assumes, just so that they can downplay the idea of God.

[Samadur]

It is difficult to live without faith. It does not matter what you believe, the main thing that this faith helps you live. But theists really cunning. Talking about what they do not believe in God. Just for atheists, God is the science and art of some, god is money. So atheism is a religion too.

[Mauser]

It is difficult to live without faith. It does not matter what you believe, the main thing that this faith helps you live. But theists really cunning. Talking about what they do not believe in God. Just for atheists, God is the science and art of some, god is money. So atheism is a religion too.

God is science, art, money? Sounds like a very religious person to me. I agree with you that faith makes living easier because you have to think less about your own actions and just follow some 2 thousand year old rules. It also helps you to accept your own death. A  lot of elder people become religious again.

[Leprikon]

It is difficult to live without faith. It does not matter what you believe, the main thing that this faith helps you live. But theists really cunning. Talking about what they do not believe in God. Just for atheists, God is the science and art of some, god is money. So atheism is a religion too.

God is science, art, money? Sounds like a very religious person to me. I agree with you that faith makes living easier because you have to think less about your own actions and just follow some 2 thousand year old rules. It also helps you to accept your own death. A  lot of elder people become religious again.

Or I not correctly expressed his thought, or you do not understand me. But it is not important. Interesting. What do you have against the scriptures and commandments, including ?! The conflict with your view of the world, such statements. Like, do not kill, do not steal, You shall not covet your neighbor's wife ...

[Trading]

Actually, God working with theists is the reason atheists even have a life. After all, since he saves many theists to eternal life, why not convert some of the atheists so some of them can be saved, as well?

Besides, nobody knows that Gobekli Tepe is 13,000 years old. It's part of all the things that the scientific community assumes, just so that they can downplay the idea of God.

Since god (allegedly) created all of us, knowing very well what we would do and believe (the good book say he is omniscient, knows everything: Psalm 139:16 "Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be"), he created us atheists.

Why is the question theists have to answer.

Maybe god loves to have many atheists to burn in hell, so he makes many deliberately.

Clearly, this brave soldier of god thinks god is going to save him for spending his time trying to convert us.

The problem is that he is so bad (if his nick was suggested by a theist friend, I know where his friend found inspiration for the nick) trying to convert us that he ends up doing the opposite: he stimulates atheism.

At best, he will end at purgatory for instigating atheism. At worst, he will end up with us in hell. Wouldn't it be fun? He could keep preaching us there.

I seriously doubt he converted anyone on bitcointalk. If I'm being unfair, feel free to post if he converted you.

"Gobekli Tepe isn't 13,000 years old" 

"The Universe and the world only have about 6,000 years" 

Carry on the good (from our perspective) or god (from his perspective) work.

[BADecker]

Actually, God working with theists is the reason atheists even have a life. After all, since he saves many theists to eternal life, why not convert some of the atheists so some of them can be saved, as well?

Besides, nobody knows that Gobekli Tepe is 13,000 years old. It's part of all the things that the scientific community assumes, just so that they can downplay the idea of God.

Since god (allegedly) created all of us, knowing very well what we would do and believe (the good book say he is omniscient, knows everything: Psalm 139:16 "Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be"), he created us atheists.

Why is the question theists have to answer.

Maybe god loves to have many atheists to burn in hell, so he makes many deliberately.

Clearly, this brave soldier of god thinks god is going to save him for spending his time trying to convert us.

The problem is that he is so bad (if his nick was suggested by a theist friend, I know where his friend found inspiration for the nick) trying to convert us that he ends up doing the opposite: he stimulates atheism.

At best, he will end at purgatory for instigating atheism. At worst, he will end up with us in hell. Wouldn't it be fun? He could keep preaching us there.

I seriously doubt he converted anyone on bitcointalk. If I'm being unfair, feel free to post if he converted you.

"Gobekli Tepe isn't 13,000 years old" 

"The Universe and the world only have about 6,000 years" 

Carry on the good (from our perspective) or god (from his perspective) work.

As Saint Paul said in Romans, God gave us the law so sin would become utterly sinful.

If nobody on Bitcointalk is converted to believe in God and be saved, the thing that HAS happened is, they have read the things about God, and have set themselves in concrete (so to speak) against God. Since they have set themselves to be this way, it will be easy for God to not accidentally grab them as His own when the time comes for Him to take His people to their new home in Heaven.

[horace08122]

Actually, God working with theists is the reason atheists even have a life. After all, since he saves many theists to eternal life, why not convert some of the atheists so some of them can be saved, as well?

Besides, nobody knows that Gobekli Tepe is 13,000 years old. It's part of all the things that the scientific community assumes, just so that they can downplay the idea of God.

Since god (allegedly) created all of us, knowing very well what we would do and believe (the good book say he is omniscient, knows everything: Psalm 139:16 "Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be"), he created us atheists.

Why is the question theists have to answer.

Maybe god loves to have many atheists to burn in hell, so he makes many deliberately.

Clearly, this brave soldier of god thinks god is going to save him for spending his time trying to convert us.

The problem is that he is so bad (if his nick was suggested by a theist friend, I know where his friend found inspiration for the nick) trying to convert us that he ends up doing the opposite: he stimulates atheism.

At best, he will end at purgatory for instigating atheism. At worst, he will end up with us in hell. Wouldn't it be fun? He could keep preaching us there.

I seriously doubt he converted anyone on bitcointalk. If I'm being unfair, feel free to post if he converted you.

"Gobekli Tepe isn't 13,000 years old" 

"The Universe and the world only have about 6,000 years" 

Carry on the good (from our perspective) or god (from his perspective) work.

As Saint Paul said in Romans, God gave us the law so sin would become utterly sinful.

If nobody on Bitcointalk is converted to believe in God and be saved, the thing that HAS happened is, they have read the things about God, and have set themselves in concrete (so to speak) against God. Since they have set themselves to be this way, it will be easy for God to not accidentally grab them as His own when the time comes for Him to take His people to their new home in Heaven.

When the time will come when God calls his people to himself, for God there is no difference believe in it or do not believe. Another thing the believers have to be ready for this relocation. And atheists have not easily accept such a change events. Many atheists for their stubbornness, will not be able to find a way to God's kingdom. They will not be able to hear God's voice.

[BADecker]

Actually, God working with theists is the reason atheists even have a life. After all, since he saves many theists to eternal life, why not convert some of the atheists so some of them can be saved, as well?

Besides, nobody knows that Gobekli Tepe is 13,000 years old. It's part of all the things that the scientific community assumes, just so that they can downplay the idea of God.

Since god (allegedly) created all of us, knowing very well what we would do and believe (the good book say he is omniscient, knows everything: Psalm 139:16 "Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be"), he created us atheists.

Why is the question theists have to answer.

Maybe god loves to have many atheists to burn in hell, so he makes many deliberately.

Clearly, this brave soldier of god thinks god is going to save him for spending his time trying to convert us.

The problem is that he is so bad (if his nick was suggested by a theist friend, I know where his friend found inspiration for the nick) trying to convert us that he ends up doing the opposite: he stimulates atheism.

At best, he will end at purgatory for instigating atheism. At worst, he will end up with us in hell. Wouldn't it be fun? He could keep preaching us there.

I seriously doubt he converted anyone on bitcointalk. If I'm being unfair, feel free to post if he converted you.

"Gobekli Tepe isn't 13,000 years old"  

"The Universe and the world only have about 6,000 years"  

Carry on the good (from our perspective) or god (from his perspective) work.

As Saint Paul said in Romans, God gave us the law so sin would become utterly sinful.

If nobody on Bitcointalk is converted to believe in God and be saved, the thing that HAS happened is, they have read the things about God, and have set themselves in concrete (so to speak) against God. Since they have set themselves to be this way, it will be easy for God to not accidentally grab them as His own when the time comes for Him to take His people to their new home in Heaven.

When the time will come when God calls his people to himself, for God there is no difference believe in it or do not believe. Another thing the believers have to be ready for this relocation. And atheists have not easily accept such a change events. Many atheists for their stubbornness, will not be able to find a way to God's kingdom. They will not be able to hear God's voice.

There is a great difference. People have to believe in Jesus to be saved. But for sure, if they are atheists, they do not even believe in God, and are not saved at all, but are damned.

[organofcorti]

Maybe god loves to have many atheists to burn in hell, so he makes many deliberately.

I had to do a double-take here -- this totally looked like something BADecker would have written.

[BADecker]

Maybe god loves to have many atheists to burn in hell, so he makes many deliberately.

I had to do a double-take here -- this totally looked like something BADecker would have written.

Actually, atheists love to burn in Hell. That's why they try to resist God-knowledge in themselves, knowledge that would save them if they simply accepted it... in the face of science and nature showing them that God exists.

[Trading]

Maybe god loves to have many atheists to burn in hell, so he makes many deliberately.

I had to do a double-take here -- this totally looked like something BADecker would have written.

I like our brave soldier of god (he can even take a joke without losing his head; he deserves to go to heaven; too bad, there isn't one), but I take that as an insult. 

Of course, as an atheist, I couldn't never believe on what I wrote.

But anyone that believes on an omniscient god have to accept that he knew exactly how we would be when he (allegedly) created us.

So, god would be creating conscientiously and deliberately atheists.

We could say that god was doing that in order to use atheist as an example to teach a lesson to theists.

But since god could create good theists that would never need any burning of atheists to be good theists, the only rational explanation to someone that accepts the premises that god exists and is omniscient would be that god is a sadist that loves to burn unnecessarily atheist in hell.

Free will is incompatible with the omniscience of god.

If he knows the future, he knows what we are going to do and, therefore, everything we do is already determined.

Determined by god, since he created (allegedly) us exactly as we are and determined to do what he knew we would do.

Of course, all of this only points out that there is no god and that, anyway, logically, he could never be omniscient and good at the same time, taking in account how bad the world and humans in certain situations can be.

But this is a dilemma theists have been trying to deal with (and failing miserably) for centuries.

[BADecker]

Maybe god loves to have many atheists to burn in hell, so he makes many deliberately.

I had to do a double-take here -- this totally looked like something BADecker would have written.

I like our brave soldier of god (he can even take a joke without losing his head; he deserves to go to heaven; too bad, there isn't one), but I take that as an insult. 

Of course, as an atheist, I couldn't never believe on what I wrote.

But anyone that believes on an omniscient god have to accept that he knew exactly how we would be when he (allegedly) created us.

So, god would be creating conscientiously and deliberately atheists.

We could say that god was doing that in order to use atheist as an example to teach a lesson to theists.

But since god could create good theists that would never need any burning of atheists to be good theists, the only rational explanation to someone that accepts the premises that god exists and is omniscient would be that god is a sadist that loves to burn unnecessarily atheist in hell.

Free will is incompatible with the omniscience of god.

If he knows the future, he knows what we are going to do and, therefore, everything we do is already determined.

Determined by god, since he created (allegedly) us exactly as we are and determined to do what he knew we would do.

Of course, all of this only points out that there is no god and that, anyway, logically, he could never be omniscient and good at the same time, taking in account how bad the world and humans in certain situations can be.

But this is a dilemma theists have been trying to deal with (and failing miserably) for centuries.

Theist failure isn't in explaining. Theist failure lies in their inability to get atheists to look at and understand how it works. Of course, this is only because the atheists CHOOSE to NOT look.

Take a look at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1221052.msg15839622#msg15839622, and think about it. If you take the time to truly think about what is written there, you will come to understand the weakness of mankind, the strength of God, and the fact that mankind has limited free will, while God has unlimited free will.

[Moloch]

[Trading]

This one is amusing.

The Pope's and the Buddhist's hats aren't even little, but are completely ridiculous.

I wonder if sometimes they even look at a mirror before going out.

[hpunsara]

       

                        Why I'm an atheist



   For normal forum standards, this is a huge post, based partly on previous posts I made. If you are lazy, just read the bold parts.

   There are other threads on this issue, but this post is too big to simple be inserted on a previous thread.

   This is a text in progress. If you post a comment with another strong point, I might add it with credits to you, if you are the original author or alternatively to him.

   Taking in account that knowledge should be free and this text's goal, feel free to use any part of it or change it as you please without need to give any credit.

  We are just a pattern of organization of a bunch of atoms that, by pure environmental circumstances and chance, gained conscience; it would be astonishing that, only because of this awareness, we were destined for a greater fate than the other common bunch of atoms.

   We are going to return to our natural state, our only real "permanent home", where we already spent an eternity, before being born: nothingness.

   There is no use to invent a helping imaginary "friend" who will offer you immortality.

   It's absurd to ruin your life (a lucky but tiny oasis of awareness that exists between two infinite deserts of nothingness) by following absurd or immoral rules invented by primitive people of the Bronze Age which have no relation whatsoever with the happiness of other people.

   Face your destiny in the eyes and live proud for having no leach, but the one imposed by your fellow human beings organized as a society (supposedly) for the benefice of all.

   However, I don't have anything against a sincere believer. You are my fellow human being who share with me our finite condition. You just found a different (erroneous, from my perspective) way to deal with it.

   The arguments presented were written thinking on the three main monotheist religions and, especially, Christianism. But most of them apply also to all other religions.

   My goal isn't offending you, but just to induce you to question the roots and logic of your faith.

   I also don't really want to convince you to be an atheist, but just a skeptical or, at least, someone with doubts.

   There isn't anything more dangerous for you, and for others, than you being absolute certain about something like your religious beliefs.

   Those absolute beliefs can change completely your philosophy, Ethics and life goals and not for the good.

   It's when religious people start being fanatics. They know the "truth", so, from my perspective, they are literally deadly wrong.

   It's when they are ready to start killing themselves or others for their beliefs or, at least, persecute people with different beliefs or without religious beliefs.

   As long as you have doubts, you can say you are still a religious person, but you will be a safer person for yourself and for others.

   In reality, you will live this life like if it was the only one you have (see point 11). You will give it more value and will be more tolerant with others.


        

1) God is a human creation.

   All the hundreds of religions/sects and their multiple absolute contradictions seem to be plenty evidence that all gods are human creations.

   The same conclusion can be based on the known influences of ancient myths and religions on the current main religions [the flood, the virgin birth, the resurrection after 3 days, Christmas day, Sunday (day of the Sun, the roman god Sol Invictus) as the holiday and not the Sabbath, etc.].

   Gods are just one of the illusions mankind uses in order to be able to deal with the conscience of the inevitability of death. Humans created a god and an afterlife mainly (that also stimulate cooperation and obedience) because they feel anguish about dying. (Freud, Thoughts for the times on war and death, 1915, Part II)

   Even in the religions that claim to worship the same god, the contradictions are overwhelming.

   As you know, both Christians and Muslims say they worship the Torah's god, Yahweh. Islam says Jesus was an important prophet, but not the son of god. And Christians simple reject that Muhammad was a prophet. But the Qur'an says that his god is the god that sent Abraham, Moses and Jesus.

   But Yahweh initially was just a god in the middle of others. Most Jews, even during David times (about 1000 BC) and after, kept praying to other gods of the Canaanites (Semitic people comprising the Phoenicians, the Jews and some other peoples of the Levant).

   There is controversy, but Yahweh has been identified with EL, the supreme god of the Canaanites, that had one or two wives and an extensive number of sons (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_(deity)#Hebrew_Bible). Or, initially, with one of his sons: sometimes, Baal (the confusion was easy, because Baal means Lord; clearly, later, the Torah fights this identification, by ridiculing Baal), sometimes Hadad, sometimes a different son.

   In some of the Jewish holy books, we can still find several traces of this evolution, with references to a council of the gods presided by EL/Yahweh (Psalm 82:1 and 6; 1 Kings 22:19) or to different gods (Deuteronomy 32:8–9) (see, a summary in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_Council#Hebrew).

   Well, the Greeks were influenced by the Phoenicians and copied their gods, with different names. El was Uranus, the father of all gods (or sometimes Cronus, since some mythology says El was not the original god, but rather Elioun), that was deposed by his son, Cronus. Cronus was deposed by Zeus. The Romans used the same Gods (Caelus as Uranus; Saturn as Cronus and Jupiter as Zeus).

   So, are the believers on the three main religions praying to Uranus (Caelus) or even to Cronus (Saturn)?

   But, even if they are considered the same god, just compare the vengeful and jealous god of the Torah with the loving and forgiven god invented by Jesus.

   The contradictions are so big between them that some scholars (like Marcion of Sinope: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcionism) and christian sects (like the Gnostics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism#Dualism_and_monism) even defended that Yahweh, the Torah's god, was a different god or even the devil.

   Some of the most fracturing religious issues, like the so-called divine nature of Jesus, or its degree, divided drastically Christians and were finally settled by bishops on majority voting, under pressure from Constantine to reach an agreement.

   If Constantine, as roman emperor, was considered divine, how could Jesus be less than him? Of course, we can't find any evidence on the Gospels for that (not even on John's Gospel), but they couldn't care less for that detail.

   Most Christian churches defend the Trinity, that the father, the son (Jesus) and the holy ghost are not exactly one and the same, but are part of god. But these churches argue that this is perfectly compatible with a monotheism.

   Basically, Jesus on the Olive Garden and on the Cross wasn't exactly talking with him self, but something similar (if he was already complaining on the Garden, I imagine the family discussion when he arrived "home").

   Ancient Greeks could argue that they also had a father, Uranus/Cronus/Zeus, and their sons and parents, all part of a divine family. That the difference was of grade, and not nature, and so that they too were basically monotheists in this flexible sense, because they too had a supreme god, he just had a bigger family.

   But what all these contradictions, but also influences and slow evolution, point out is that gods are a human creation.

   With all these different gods and interpretations, are all the believers on different religions or sects lying or mistaken, but you?


   2) There are fundamental issues about which we still don't know enough, but ignorance isn't reason to believe in any god.

   We still don't know what is the ultimate origin of the source of the "physical stuff" that composes the Universe (see https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1221052.msg14388816#msg14388816 on the so-called theory of a Universe from nothing) or even the exact mechanism that created life from matter, but our ancestors also said that the gods were the creators of thunders and lightening.

   Actually, none of the main religions says what was his god's origin.


   3) Religious books are full of immoral rules.

   Some of those are so hideous that they can't seriously be considered the word of a god.

    For instance, "for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me". Exodus, 20.5.

   This horrible statement is part of the Ten Commandments! And it's stated also in Exodus 34:7; Deuteronomy 5:9; Numbers 14:18.

        But we can find even more heinous moral rules: "A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD; even to his tenth generation shall he not enter into the congregation of the LORD." Deuteronomy 23:2.

   The examples are innumerable: acceptance of genocide/extermination of women and children (Joshua 6:21; Judges 21:10; Numbers 31:7-18), killing of babies (Isaiah 13:16), massive rape (Numbers 31:18; Deuteronomy 20:10-14), slavery (Leviticus 25:44-46), death penalty for the most banal deeds, including sexual acts between consenting adults, forced marriage (Judges 21:21-23), women sacrifice or abuse (Judges 11:29-40 isn't clear), cruel punishments [cannibalism of children (Leviticus 26:29), burning alive (Joshua 7:15), stoning, etc.], sexual discrimination (Genesis 3:16; Leviticus 27:3-7), etc..

   I confirmed all of these quotes. I didn't copied the actual text to avoid increasing this post too much, but I might do that. Even if sometimes there are divergences on translation or interpretation, I tried to use clear examples. See for more http://www.evilbible.com; https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1367154.0.

   But a decisive one is enough to dismiss the Bible as a "sacred" source of moral precepts.

   The reason for these appalling statements seems simple: since all religious texts were made by humans, their moral standards stopped in time. But human morality evolved.

   The sociological reason of the importance of believing in the "right god" is human power.

   It's absurd saying that a good man will "burn in hell" (let's forget about punishing also his descendants, even if they are good and believe in the "right god"!) like an evil one, only because under an "honest mistake" he worships the "wrong god", unless we see the issue under the eyes of the humans who invented Yahweh.

   They needed to say those terrible things in order to consolidate their power over his fellow human beings by fear and to destroy competition from other religions.

   Do you really want to govern your life with the morality of Bronze Age people? (Christopher Hitchens).


   4) Religious books are full of myths and stories created by ignorant people and liars.

   These stories were simple created to cement power (a "holy" man can't answer to a question: I don't know; he has to invent something).

   Many of them (besides the order of creation of things, evolution, the creation of humans, etc., "By the seventh day God had finished the work": Genesis 2; see controversial attempts to make this compatible with science: http://www.godandscience.org/youngearth/age_of_the_earth.html) have been refuted by Science in terms that remove all credibility to those stories.

   Isn't all the "word of god"? How can it be wrong?

   A religious person only has two options: defend that everything in his religious text is true, making a fool of himself; or pick some things and reject others as simple metaphors in unconvincing terms.

   They were written and read as true stories across history. People were burned because of them.
   
   Calling them metaphors is just an artifice. Why wasn't the metaphor made accurately even on irrelevant details, like the order of creations of things? Would it lose its meaning for being correct?

   Isn't obvious that it's wrong because its authors knew nothing about what they were writing about?
 

   5) All evidence points to the conclusion that the idea that our conscience survives death is false.

   On the issue of the "soul", taking in account the recent research on the brain, doesn't make sense to say that the human brain, that is the most complex system we know on nature, doesn't create the conscience.

   The evidence we have point clearly in the positive sense, even if there are still much investigation to be done on the issue (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness#Neural_correlates).

   If that wasn't the case, we couldn't explain why your "soul" is affected by a trauma to the brain. Why when we pass out, our "soul" passes out too.

   Why someone with mental problems can in certain cases became better by a surgical intervention in the brain or by medication that changes the chemical balance in the brain.

   If there was a "soul" independent of the brain and the brain was just the link between the body and the "soul", all diseases/damages of the brain wouldn't affect our ability to still be aware and to think.

   Therefore, once the brain was again cured, we should be able to remember what happened when we were "out". But we don't.

   But if it is the brain that creates the conscience and allows reasoning, it's absurd to say that we will still be able to keep doing it as a "spirit" after the brain is dead.

   Actually, the idea that there is a soul that survives the body is recent on the Jewish religion, adopted by the other two main religions. Ancient Hebrews didn't believe in the afterlife [even if that idea was already present on the Cro-Magnon, more than 40,000 years ago, and, possible, even more than 400,000-200,000 years ago on the Homo heidelbergensis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_heidelbergensis#Social_behavior) and on the Neanderthals (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal_behavior#Burial_practices; also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic_religion)].

   And the first Hebrews that defended it argued this occur under the form of the Resurrection of the dead in flesh and blood and not of any "soul".

   Even today, the confusion on all the Christian churches about what happen when we die is immense.

   Some say that our soul survives; others say it's our body that is resurrected in the judgement day, same mix both versions in an absurd way (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_eschatology#Resurrection_of_the_dead).

   Of course, they never knew anything about what will happen and their inventions, like all invented narratives, changed with time.

   The so-called situations of people "dead" that were taken back to life and remember seeing things are just reactions of the neurons to the near death situation.

   However, Brain activity measurable on a EGG only disappears after 20-40 seconds without oxygen/blood flow (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinical_death).

   This time is enough to leave memories of hallucinations (some people see Jesus, lights, out-of-body experiences, etc.) caused by chemical reactions provoked by a dying brain. Actually, the hallucinations probably start before the complete stop of the supply of oxygen. And in that situation, 40 seconds of hallucinations might seem minutes to the near death individual.

   The same hallucinations can be felt using chemicals like ketamine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recreational_use_of_ketamine#Non-lethal_manifestations), Psilocybin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psilocybin), Phencyclidine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phencyclidine) or Dextromethorphan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dextromethorphan).

   How dare you to believe that your "soul" will survive the death of your brain based on what we know?

   Is mixing your aspirations and your fear from death (read my https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1221052) with reality.

   Any prudent person would say, at best, I don't know, I'm not shore... but believers just say, I know I have an immortal soul...

   Yeah, shore: "Want to know what happens after death? Go look at some dead things." (Dave Enyeart)


   6) Did god left us without guidance for almost 200,000 years?

   The homo sapiens have existed at least for 200,000 years (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omo_remains).

   But the god invented by the main monotheist religions decided to let us without guidance for more than 194,000 years? Only decided to manifest his existence to Abraham? or, at best, to Adam and Eve a few thousand years ago (Christopher Hitchens).

   The main holy books don't mention older prophets or divine interventions.



   7) Religions can't explain evil or even natural disasters.

   Seeing how unfair (ex. some children die of hunger or hunger related diseases and others have diseases caused by eating too much), and many times evil (think on all the wars and on most crimes), the world is, if god existed he would have to be one of two kind of persons (Dostoyevsky, The Karamazov Brothers; Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus):

   a) A cruel being: because if he is all powerful and omniscient, when he created the world, he knew how horrible at times it would be.

   Don't tell me about the original sin: kids guilty for the sins of their parents, is that divine justice?

   Don't also talk me about the "devil". No religious person can coherently explain how god is omnipotent and still lets the devil exist.

   Moreover, if the devil is a "former" angel, it was god that created him. If the devil isn't an angel, even so, god created everything, so he created the devil.

   Well, since he is omniscient, when he created the devil, he knew how evil he was going to be.

   Denying that the devil exists and evil is created by evil humans won't free will really help you.

   Free will can't explain natural disasters.

   But also can't justify human evil.

   When god (allegedly) created humankind, he already knew who would be the ancestors of Hitler and knew that Hitler would born on 20 April 1889 and do all the things he did (Psalm 139:16 "Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be").

   Any insignificant change on the current of events would avoid the existence of Hitler (a few seconds could be the difference that would allow a brother to be born created by a different spermatozoid and not Hitler).

   But god decided to create his ancestors exactly the way that allowed Hitler to be born.

   So in the end, god planed and created indirectly Hitler with full conscience about whom he was creating (see also Marshall Brain, http://godisimaginary.com/i6.htm).

   He is guilty for everything Hitler did as an individual is guilty for creating a chain of events with the clear conscience that those events will necessarily provoke a catastrophe or even any damage

   Don't tell me that everyone killed in World War II were sinners, including all the children.

   If god existed, he had to be a cruel Geppetto creating deliberately many monstrous Pinocchios.

   Moreover, he could have saved those innocent kids with a snap of his finger.

   Don't, again, come with the mysterious god's plan that we can't understand.

   Any being that kills or deliberately let children be killed to test his parents, or for any other purpose, is a monster! (Dostoyevsky).

   b) Or, in alternative, god would be a pathetic being, that couldn't do anything to change anything and that would see with horror his creation that he never imagined this way.

   I doubt that this second vision can be accepted by most believers, so we would have to conclude that god would be (if he existed) also the source of evil.


   8] Even for informed believers, that think there was a Big Bang, created by god with the final goal of creating us, it's very hard to explain why god waited 13.72 thousand million years (the consensual age of the Universe) to final create us.

   In the middle, he had to wait for the first generation of stars to die in supernovas to create the elements that are the basis of planets and of us (so forget Jesus, it were the stars that had to die for us to live: Lawrence Krauss).

   Wait for 9,22 thousand million years, for Earth to finally be formed and then for life to emerge.

   Then wait for several mass extinctions (pointless destruction) to finally get to modern humans, 200,000 years ago (deGrasse Tyson).

   Why?, if he could create everything in 6 days, as the bible says.

   You can repeat the old wasted say "god works in mysterious ways", but it's much more logical to just conclude that there was no god behind this arbitrary chain of events.


   9) Doesn't make any sense to base your philosophy of life and morality on something completely irrational as faith and unsubstantiated fear.

   When main Churches acknowledge they can't offer any scientific or even rational base to believing in god, they ask you to believe in it out of faith (and fear).

   But imagine how your life would be if you ruled it solely on faith.

   Do you invest your money, make decisions about your health or on professional issues based only on faith?

   Imagine an engineer that planed his builds on faith. Would you trust his work?

   But if you try to live your life based on experience and scientific knowledge, why are you willing to base your philosophy of life and morality on such absurd grounds?

   As you know, Paul (originally, Saul) of Tarsus is much more important to Christianity than any of the Apostles. He converted Christianity from a Jewish sect into a universal religion.

   But initially he persecuted Christians. He only stopped and started promoting Christianity when "Jesus appeared to him" (Acts 9:1-9 and 12-18).

   So, Paul, the most important priest in the history of Christianity, didn't embrace it on faith. He needed to see with his own eyes.

   Why god demands from you that you believe on him based solely on faith, but didn't ask the same from Paul?

   Let him appear or send Jesus too (as seen above, they are not exactly the same) to you like to Paul.

   If you keep talking to god, but he doesn't answer (or only you can hear or see him or his "miracles"), something might be wrong with him (or, sorry to say, with you).


   10) If the meaning of this life is being a test to see if we are worthy of heaven, what is its point? Doesn't god, since he is omniscient, already know who would be the worthy ones?

   The so-called natural freedom of human beings (that has been questioned by science) is incompatible with the omniscience of god: if he already knows what we are going to do, our actions are already determined.

   Even if the test wasn't already ruined by the fact that god is responsible for what we do, since he (allegedly) created indirectly each one of us genetically exactly as we are and anticipated all our social conditions, even so, as an omniscient being, he already would know what were the results of the test.

   But that makes the test completely pointless.


   11) Deep down, most people saying they are religious, don't real believe in god or on a afterlife. Or, at least, they are not ready to risk this life or most of the things they have on it for a promise of an afterlife.

   One of the most astonishing things is the importance religious people give to all the details, material resources and honors they have in this life and how scare they usually are of dying.

   Even suicidal bombers hesitate or give up some times.

   For a real believer, this life of, say, 100 years, should be irrelevant compared with the next immortal one.
   
   If you knew for shore that exploding yourself would assure you a ticket to heaven doing that would make sense. Exchanging a life of 100 years for an eternal life seems logical.

   Why then this is absurd?

   Of course, first of all, because it is absurd to think that a god of love would send to heaven killers of innocent people, even on a "holy war", just to increase the number of worshipers (by violence and coercive conversions).

   But, mostly, it's absurd because all of this seems rubbish: there is no ground to think there is an afterlife waiting for you, as you deep down know.

   Moreover, that all believers (more or less, at least in some moments) are ready to sin against others and god (at least, small sins), risking their immortality, many times for petty things, seems completely absurd.

   Unless, deep down, you feel this is really the only life you will have.

   However, this implies a strategic approach to god.

   You play safe, to protect yourself if he do exists, and claim you are a religious person out of absurd fear. But you aren't really prepared to sacrifice any important thing in this life for your claim, since deep down you have serious doubts about his existence.

   Isn't he "omniscient" and aware of your doubts and lack of commitment? "Won't he punish you because of them with the flames of hell"?

   Isn't more honest and liberating to have the courage to admit that you aren't a religious person?[/b]



   Besides being false, religions also have negative social consequences:


   1) Religion and Churches are one of the oldest and the biggest scam in the history of Mankind.

   All religions end up building a church composed by a professional group of people who transmits, interprets and, sometimes, executes divine will.

   Of course, they are all economically supported by societies.

   Historically, they were supported coercively. Paying the taxes to the church was a duty of all Christians sanctioned by the government, if necessary.

   In many Protestants Europeans countries, there still exists a church tax, collected by the government!! (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_tax).

   In others, it's the State that pays the salaries and pensions of the priests of the main church (it's the case of the bankrupt Greece)!

   The Catholic Church even sold indulgences that allowed Christians to sin (!) and ended up provoking the Reformation movement in the XVI century.

   Only the Holy Sea knows the truth, but this church is considered one of the wealthy institutions on the world (http://www.economist.com/node/21560536;  http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/how-rich-vatican-so-wealthy-it-can-stumble-across-millions-euros-just-tucked-away-1478219).  

   But since it seems god doesn't listen to their pries and don't give miraculous gold to any church, in the end all are paid by society or, at least, by their believers' community.

   What do they give in exchange? More or less, they claim having the key to heaven.

   They say you have an immortal soul and directly or indirectly ask for money in exchange for telling you how to save it and helping/granting that you will be successful on that.

   If a doctor tried to ask for money in exchange of giving you a medicine that allegedly would grant you immortality, he would probably be arrested as a scammer.

   But a priest can promise that and get all your money in your dying bed.

   Millions of professional priests are supported by societies for a service based on clearly unsubstantiated allegations.

   You could argue that most of them do believe on what they say. However, many don't believe for a second on what they preach. And most of the rest, besides being aware that they have no evidence for what they are promising, do have serious doubts about the veracity of their statements (even Mother Teresa wrote about their own). This is enough to call these scammers.

   It's like someone here at the forum selling applications he doesn't know if they really work, having only faith, or even clear doubts, that this will happen, without disclosing that.

   I'm not going to open a thread on the Bitcointalk's scams forum against most of the churches of the world. The feeling that selling religious services is fair game is so rooted, that probably my thread would be transfer to this forum or removed as a political statement. But they would deserve it.

   I'm also not going to do that against god, since it isn't his fault: every thing suggests that he doesn't exist.

   No doubt, certain churches also have important social supporting activities, but they are well paid by the government or by private donations for that.

   Moreover, a few churches have resources to do much more than they do. But increasing their followers (and so, their power) had always prevalence over the needs of the poor.


   2) Religions induce conformity, intolerance, obscurantism and other nasty social consequences.

   Some believers, conceding that there is no evidence or even rational arguments supporting religious faith, say that, even if false, religion has positive social consequences.

   Recent investigations concluded otherwise, saying that religious children are more selfish, intolerant and punitive than children from atheist families. (https://www.academia.edu/19164068/The_Negative_Association_between_Religiousness_and_Children_s_Altruism_across_the_World).

   I won't write like some that religion has been the main cause of murder and wars.

   I admit that Thucydides's classic trilogy of fear, honor and greed for natural resources and power beats religion on this matter.

        But, even if its weight was small, let's remember this: "George Bush: 'God told me to end the tyranny in Iraq'" (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/oct/07/iraq.usa ).

   No doubt, religion has been a very important cause for murder and war.

   Moreover, Marx called religion the people's opium with some reason. It installs on the people conformity for oppressive laws and arbitrary inequalities. "Suffer and obey now, you will get your reward in the afterlife".

   Religion has been mostly an instrument of power, helping legitimating political power and inducing obedience. ("Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God": Romans 13:1).

   Religions that aren't at the service of political power usually end badly, suppressed by the government or by churches fearing consequences (like with the Falun Gong in China or the Theology of liberation in South America).

   But religions are always at the service of the power of the leaders in the community of followers.

   Religion has also been an obstacle to progress in:

   Morality: since it's mainly based on Bronze Age rules.

   Science: by burning or repressing as heretics many scientists and rational thinkers by all the available means and censuring books.
   Even today, by trying to block investigation on certain domains based only on religious grounds.

   Education: historically, mainly in Catholic countries, by controlling schools and restringing learning to priests and elites in order to limit the direct access of the population to the "sacred" texts.
   I admit that in Jewish and Protestants societies that wasn't the case and religiosity might have even increased literacy, but mainly as an instrument to better understand religious texts. Schools transmitted basically knowledge conform with religious doctrine. On the United States, even now, is staggering the resistance to the study of evolution or modern cosmology in Schools.

   Politics: by supporting feudalism, absolute monarchies (Romans 13:1) and, currently, mainly, conservative ideas.

   Economy: historically, by the christian ban on interest rates (Deuteronomy, 23.20-21; and by canon law: http://canonlawmadeeasy.com/2014/09/04/what-does-the-church-say-about-usury/), still the rule on many Muslim countries.

   Mentalities: Catholicism, and its contemplative/passive mentality, is considered (controversially) the major reason for the decadence of catholic countries (Max Weber).

   There are also allegations that the high incidence of religiosity on the United States can explain his high rates of violent crimes, teen pregnancies and sexual diseases when compared with the low religiosity on Europe (Sam Harris).

   There isn't clear empirical evidence on the existence of a relation of causality between religiosity and crime, but the lack of sexual education and resistance on using contraceptives (like condoms) might explain teen pregnancy and sexual diseases.

   I can concede religion has inspire people to create beautiful art, but at what price? I'm sure talented people could find other sources of inspiration with equal results.

   
   Conclusion:

   The burden of proof is on the believers' side, since they are who argue for a positive thing: the existence of a mysterious higher being.

   Since they clearly didn't fulfill this burden, I can conclude that I don't believe in the existence of god. But I don't say I'm certain that god doesn't exist (even if I live clearly under this assumption). That could make me look like a believer, with faith on a negative fact.

   I just say I have no reasons to believe on his existence and have some grounds above presented that point against his existence.

   It's the same situation that makes be very skeptic on the existence of flying horses.

   I'm very skeptical, but I'm open to any real evidence on the existence of god or flying horses.

   Therefore, I think I have grounds to say that I'm an atheist and not a simple agnostic.

   

I read two three times this post.. I am a buddhist.. I asked these questions since I was a child.. But when I learned Buddhism and modern science I have found the all the answers.. You can get all the answers in thripitaka book in therawada Buddhism. Its not believing its understanding. Just come and try compare with all the science if it make sense believe otherwise you at your will

[BADecker]

       

                        Why I'm an atheist



   For normal forum standards, this is a huge post, based partly on previous posts I made. If you are lazy, just read the bold parts.

   There are other threads on this issue, but this post is too big to simple be inserted on a previous thread.

   This is a text in progress. If you post a comment with another strong point, I might add it with credits to you, if you are the original author or alternatively to him.

   Taking in account that knowledge should be free and this text's goal, feel free to use any part of it or change it as you please without need to give any credit.

  We are just a pattern of organization of a bunch of atoms that, by pure environmental circumstances and chance, gained conscience; it would be astonishing that, only because of this awareness, we were destined for a greater fate than the other common bunch of atoms.

   We are going to return to our natural state, our only real "permanent home", where we already spent an eternity, before being born: nothingness.

   There is no use to invent a helping imaginary "friend" who will offer you immortality.

   It's absurd to ruin your life (a lucky but tiny oasis of awareness that exists between two infinite deserts of nothingness) by following absurd or immoral rules invented by primitive people of the Bronze Age which have no relation whatsoever with the happiness of other people.

   Face your destiny in the eyes and live proud for having no leach, but the one imposed by your fellow human beings organized as a society (supposedly) for the benefice of all.

   However, I don't have anything against a sincere believer. You are my fellow human being who share with me our finite condition. You just found a different (erroneous, from my perspective) way to deal with it.

   The arguments presented were written thinking on the three main monotheist religions and, especially, Christianism. But most of them apply also to all other religions.

   My goal isn't offending you, but just to induce you to question the roots and logic of your faith.

   I also don't really want to convince you to be an atheist, but just a skeptical or, at least, someone with doubts.

   There isn't anything more dangerous for you, and for others, than you being absolute certain about something like your religious beliefs.

   Those absolute beliefs can change completely your philosophy, Ethics and life goals and not for the good.

   It's when religious people start being fanatics. They know the "truth", so, from my perspective, they are literally deadly wrong.

   It's when they are ready to start killing themselves or others for their beliefs or, at least, persecute people with different beliefs or without religious beliefs.

   As long as you have doubts, you can say you are still a religious person, but you will be a safer person for yourself and for others.

   In reality, you will live this life like if it was the only one you have (see point 11). You will give it more value and will be more tolerant with others.


        

1) God is a human creation.

   All the hundreds of religions/sects and their multiple absolute contradictions seem to be plenty evidence that all gods are human creations.

   The same conclusion can be based on the known influences of ancient myths and religions on the current main religions [the flood, the virgin birth, the resurrection after 3 days, Christmas day, Sunday (day of the Sun, the roman god Sol Invictus) as the holiday and not the Sabbath, etc.].

   Gods are just one of the illusions mankind uses in order to be able to deal with the conscience of the inevitability of death. Humans created a god and an afterlife mainly (that also stimulate cooperation and obedience) because they feel anguish about dying. (Freud, Thoughts for the times on war and death, 1915, Part II)

   Even in the religions that claim to worship the same god, the contradictions are overwhelming.

   As you know, both Christians and Muslims say they worship the Torah's god, Yahweh. Islam says Jesus was an important prophet, but not the son of god. And Christians simple reject that Muhammad was a prophet. But the Qur'an says that his god is the god that sent Abraham, Moses and Jesus.

   But Yahweh initially was just a god in the middle of others. Most Jews, even during David times (about 1000 BC) and after, kept praying to other gods of the Canaanites (Semitic people comprising the Phoenicians, the Jews and some other peoples of the Levant).

   There is controversy, but Yahweh has been identified with EL, the supreme god of the Canaanites, that had one or two wives and an extensive number of sons (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_(deity)#Hebrew_Bible). Or, initially, with one of his sons: sometimes, Baal (the confusion was easy, because Baal means Lord; clearly, later, the Torah fights this identification, by ridiculing Baal), sometimes Hadad, sometimes a different son.

   In some of the Jewish holy books, we can still find several traces of this evolution, with references to a council of the gods presided by EL/Yahweh (Psalm 82:1 and 6; 1 Kings 22:19) or to different gods (Deuteronomy 32:8–9) (see, a summary in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_Council#Hebrew).

   Well, the Greeks were influenced by the Phoenicians and copied their gods, with different names. El was Uranus, the father of all gods (or sometimes Cronus, since some mythology says El was not the original god, but rather Elioun), that was deposed by his son, Cronus. Cronus was deposed by Zeus. The Romans used the same Gods (Caelus as Uranus; Saturn as Cronus and Jupiter as Zeus).

   So, are the believers on the three main religions praying to Uranus (Caelus) or even to Cronus (Saturn)?

   But, even if they are considered the same god, just compare the vengeful and jealous god of the Torah with the loving and forgiven god invented by Jesus.

   The contradictions are so big between them that some scholars (like Marcion of Sinope: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcionism) and christian sects (like the Gnostics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism#Dualism_and_monism) even defended that Yahweh, the Torah's god, was a different god or even the devil.

   Some of the most fracturing religious issues, like the so-called divine nature of Jesus, or its degree, divided drastically Christians and were finally settled by bishops on majority voting, under pressure from Constantine to reach an agreement.

   If Constantine, as roman emperor, was considered divine, how could Jesus be less than him? Of course, we can't find any evidence on the Gospels for that (not even on John's Gospel), but they couldn't care less for that detail.

   Most Christian churches defend the Trinity, that the father, the son (Jesus) and the holy ghost are not exactly one and the same, but are part of god. But these churches argue that this is perfectly compatible with a monotheism.

   Basically, Jesus on the Olive Garden and on the Cross wasn't exactly talking with him self, but something similar (if he was already complaining on the Garden, I imagine the family discussion when he arrived "home").

   Ancient Greeks could argue that they also had a father, Uranus/Cronus/Zeus, and their sons and parents, all part of a divine family. That the difference was of grade, and not nature, and so that they too were basically monotheists in this flexible sense, because they too had a supreme god, he just had a bigger family.

   But what all these contradictions, but also influences and slow evolution, point out is that gods are a human creation.

   With all these different gods and interpretations, are all the believers on different religions or sects lying or mistaken, but you?


   2) There are fundamental issues about which we still don't know enough, but ignorance isn't reason to believe in any god.

   We still don't know what is the ultimate origin of the source of the "physical stuff" that composes the Universe (see https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1221052.msg14388816#msg14388816 on the so-called theory of a Universe from nothing) or even the exact mechanism that created life from matter, but our ancestors also said that the gods were the creators of thunders and lightening.

   Actually, none of the main religions says what was his god's origin.


   3) Religious books are full of immoral rules.

   Some of those are so hideous that they can't seriously be considered the word of a god.

    For instance, "for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me". Exodus, 20.5.

   This horrible statement is part of the Ten Commandments! And it's stated also in Exodus 34:7; Deuteronomy 5:9; Numbers 14:18.

        But we can find even more heinous moral rules: "A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD; even to his tenth generation shall he not enter into the congregation of the LORD." Deuteronomy 23:2.

   The examples are innumerable: acceptance of genocide/extermination of women and children (Joshua 6:21; Judges 21:10; Numbers 31:7-18), killing of babies (Isaiah 13:16), massive rape (Numbers 31:18; Deuteronomy 20:10-14), slavery (Leviticus 25:44-46), death penalty for the most banal deeds, including sexual acts between consenting adults, forced marriage (Judges 21:21-23), women sacrifice or abuse (Judges 11:29-40 isn't clear), cruel punishments [cannibalism of children (Leviticus 26:29), burning alive (Joshua 7:15), stoning, etc.], sexual discrimination (Genesis 3:16; Leviticus 27:3-7), etc..

   I confirmed all of these quotes. I didn't copied the actual text to avoid increasing this post too much, but I might do that. Even if sometimes there are divergences on translation or interpretation, I tried to use clear examples. See for more http://www.evilbible.com; https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1367154.0.

   But a decisive one is enough to dismiss the Bible as a "sacred" source of moral precepts.

   The reason for these appalling statements seems simple: since all religious texts were made by humans, their moral standards stopped in time. But human morality evolved.

   The sociological reason of the importance of believing in the "right god" is human power.

   It's absurd saying that a good man will "burn in hell" (let's forget about punishing also his descendants, even if they are good and believe in the "right god"!) like an evil one, only because under an "honest mistake" he worships the "wrong god", unless we see the issue under the eyes of the humans who invented Yahweh.

   They needed to say those terrible things in order to consolidate their power over his fellow human beings by fear and to destroy competition from other religions.

   Do you really want to govern your life with the morality of Bronze Age people? (Christopher Hitchens).


   4) Religious books are full of myths and stories created by ignorant people and liars.

   These stories were simple created to cement power (a "holy" man can't answer to a question: I don't know; he has to invent something).

   Many of them (besides the order of creation of things, evolution, the creation of humans, etc., "By the seventh day God had finished the work": Genesis 2; see controversial attempts to make this compatible with science: http://www.godandscience.org/youngearth/age_of_the_earth.html) have been refuted by Science in terms that remove all credibility to those stories.

   Isn't all the "word of god"? How can it be wrong?

   A religious person only has two options: defend that everything in his religious text is true, making a fool of himself; or pick some things and reject others as simple metaphors in unconvincing terms.

   They were written and read as true stories across history. People were burned because of them.
   
   Calling them metaphors is just an artifice. Why wasn't the metaphor made accurately even on irrelevant details, like the order of creations of things? Would it lose its meaning for being correct?

   Isn't obvious that it's wrong because its authors knew nothing about what they were writing about?
 

   5) All evidence points to the conclusion that the idea that our conscience survives death is false.

   On the issue of the "soul", taking in account the recent research on the brain, doesn't make sense to say that the human brain, that is the most complex system we know on nature, doesn't create the conscience.

   The evidence we have point clearly in the positive sense, even if there are still much investigation to be done on the issue (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness#Neural_correlates).

   If that wasn't the case, we couldn't explain why your "soul" is affected by a trauma to the brain. Why when we pass out, our "soul" passes out too.

   Why someone with mental problems can in certain cases became better by a surgical intervention in the brain or by medication that changes the chemical balance in the brain.

   If there was a "soul" independent of the brain and the brain was just the link between the body and the "soul", all diseases/damages of the brain wouldn't affect our ability to still be aware and to think.

   Therefore, once the brain was again cured, we should be able to remember what happened when we were "out". But we don't.

   But if it is the brain that creates the conscience and allows reasoning, it's absurd to say that we will still be able to keep doing it as a "spirit" after the brain is dead.

   Actually, the idea that there is a soul that survives the body is recent on the Jewish religion, adopted by the other two main religions. Ancient Hebrews didn't believe in the afterlife [even if that idea was already present on the Cro-Magnon, more than 40,000 years ago, and, possible, even more than 400,000-200,000 years ago on the Homo heidelbergensis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_heidelbergensis#Social_behavior) and on the Neanderthals (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal_behavior#Burial_practices; also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic_religion)].

   And the first Hebrews that defended it argued this occur under the form of the Resurrection of the dead in flesh and blood and not of any "soul".

   Even today, the confusion on all the Christian churches about what happen when we die is immense.

   Some say that our soul survives; others say it's our body that is resurrected in the judgement day, same mix both versions in an absurd way (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_eschatology#Resurrection_of_the_dead).

   Of course, they never knew anything about what will happen and their inventions, like all invented narratives, changed with time.

   The so-called situations of people "dead" that were taken back to life and remember seeing things are just reactions of the neurons to the near death situation.

   However, Brain activity measurable on a EGG only disappears after 20-40 seconds without oxygen/blood flow (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinical_death).

   This time is enough to leave memories of hallucinations (some people see Jesus, lights, out-of-body experiences, etc.) caused by chemical reactions provoked by a dying brain. Actually, the hallucinations probably start before the complete stop of the supply of oxygen. And in that situation, 40 seconds of hallucinations might seem minutes to the near death individual.

   The same hallucinations can be felt using chemicals like ketamine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recreational_use_of_ketamine#Non-lethal_manifestations), Psilocybin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psilocybin), Phencyclidine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phencyclidine) or Dextromethorphan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dextromethorphan).

   How dare you to believe that your "soul" will survive the death of your brain based on what we know?

   Is mixing your aspirations and your fear from death (read my https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1221052) with reality.

   Any prudent person would say, at best, I don't know, I'm not shore... but believers just say, I know I have an immortal soul...

   Yeah, shore: "Want to know what happens after death? Go look at some dead things." (Dave Enyeart)


   6) Did god left us without guidance for almost 200,000 years?

   The homo sapiens have existed at least for 200,000 years (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omo_remains).

   But the god invented by the main monotheist religions decided to let us without guidance for more than 194,000 years? Only decided to manifest his existence to Abraham? or, at best, to Adam and Eve a few thousand years ago (Christopher Hitchens).

   The main holy books don't mention older prophets or divine interventions.



   7) Religions can't explain evil or even natural disasters.

   Seeing how unfair (ex. some children die of hunger or hunger related diseases and others have diseases caused by eating too much), and many times evil (think on all the wars and on most crimes), the world is, if god existed he would have to be one of two kind of persons (Dostoyevsky, The Karamazov Brothers; Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus):

   a) A cruel being: because if he is all powerful and omniscient, when he created the world, he knew how horrible at times it would be.

   Don't tell me about the original sin: kids guilty for the sins of their parents, is that divine justice?

   Don't also talk me about the "devil". No religious person can coherently explain how god is omnipotent and still lets the devil exist.

   Moreover, if the devil is a "former" angel, it was god that created him. If the devil isn't an angel, even so, god created everything, so he created the devil.

   Well, since he is omniscient, when he created the devil, he knew how evil he was going to be.

   Denying that the devil exists and evil is created by evil humans won't free will really help you.

   Free will can't explain natural disasters.

   But also can't justify human evil.

   When god (allegedly) created humankind, he already knew who would be the ancestors of Hitler and knew that Hitler would born on 20 April 1889 and do all the things he did (Psalm 139:16 "Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be").

   Any insignificant change on the current of events would avoid the existence of Hitler (a few seconds could be the difference that would allow a brother to be born created by a different spermatozoid and not Hitler).

   But god decided to create his ancestors exactly the way that allowed Hitler to be born.

   So in the end, god planed and created indirectly Hitler with full conscience about whom he was creating (see also Marshall Brain, http://godisimaginary.com/i6.htm).

   He is guilty for everything Hitler did as an individual is guilty for creating a chain of events with the clear conscience that those events will necessarily provoke a catastrophe or even any damage

   Don't tell me that everyone killed in World War II were sinners, including all the children.

   If god existed, he had to be a cruel Geppetto creating deliberately many monstrous Pinocchios.

   Moreover, he could have saved those innocent kids with a snap of his finger.

   Don't, again, come with the mysterious god's plan that we can't understand.

   Any being that kills or deliberately let children be killed to test his parents, or for any other purpose, is a monster! (Dostoyevsky).

   b) Or, in alternative, god would be a pathetic being, that couldn't do anything to change anything and that would see with horror his creation that he never imagined this way.

   I doubt that this second vision can be accepted by most believers, so we would have to conclude that god would be (if he existed) also the source of evil.


   8] Even for informed believers, that think there was a Big Bang, created by god with the final goal of creating us, it's very hard to explain why god waited 13.72 thousand million years (the consensual age of the Universe) to final create us.

   In the middle, he had to wait for the first generation of stars to die in supernovas to create the elements that are the basis of planets and of us (so forget Jesus, it were the stars that had to die for us to live: Lawrence Krauss).

   Wait for 9,22 thousand million years, for Earth to finally be formed and then for life to emerge.

   Then wait for several mass extinctions (pointless destruction) to finally get to modern humans, 200,000 years ago (deGrasse Tyson).

   Why?, if he could create everything in 6 days, as the bible says.

   You can repeat the old wasted say "god works in mysterious ways", but it's much more logical to just conclude that there was no god behind this arbitrary chain of events.


   9) Doesn't make any sense to base your philosophy of life and morality on something completely irrational as faith and unsubstantiated fear.

   When main Churches acknowledge they can't offer any scientific or even rational base to believing in god, they ask you to believe in it out of faith (and fear).

   But imagine how your life would be if you ruled it solely on faith.

   Do you invest your money, make decisions about your health or on professional issues based only on faith?

   Imagine an engineer that planed his builds on faith. Would you trust his work?

   But if you try to live your life based on experience and scientific knowledge, why are you willing to base your philosophy of life and morality on such absurd grounds?

   As you know, Paul (originally, Saul) of Tarsus is much more important to Christianity than any of the Apostles. He converted Christianity from a Jewish sect into a universal religion.

   But initially he persecuted Christians. He only stopped and started promoting Christianity when "Jesus appeared to him" (Acts 9:1-9 and 12-18).

   So, Paul, the most important priest in the history of Christianity, didn't embrace it on faith. He needed to see with his own eyes.

   Why god demands from you that you believe on him based solely on faith, but didn't ask the same from Paul?

   Let him appear or send Jesus too (as seen above, they are not exactly the same) to you like to Paul.

   If you keep talking to god, but he doesn't answer (or only you can hear or see him or his "miracles"), something might be wrong with him (or, sorry to say, with you).


   10) If the meaning of this life is being a test to see if we are worthy of heaven, what is its point? Doesn't god, since he is omniscient, already know who would be the worthy ones?

   The so-called natural freedom of human beings (that has been questioned by science) is incompatible with the omniscience of god: if he already knows what we are going to do, our actions are already determined.

   Even if the test wasn't already ruined by the fact that god is responsible for what we do, since he (allegedly) created indirectly each one of us genetically exactly as we are and anticipated all our social conditions, even so, as an omniscient being, he already would know what were the results of the test.

   But that makes the test completely pointless.


   11) Deep down, most people saying they are religious, don't real believe in god or on a afterlife. Or, at least, they are not ready to risk this life or most of the things they have on it for a promise of an afterlife.

   One of the most astonishing things is the importance religious people give to all the details, material resources and honors they have in this life and how scare they usually are of dying.

   Even suicidal bombers hesitate or give up some times.

   For a real believer, this life of, say, 100 years, should be irrelevant compared with the next immortal one.
   
   If you knew for shore that exploding yourself would assure you a ticket to heaven doing that would make sense. Exchanging a life of 100 years for an eternal life seems logical.

   Why then this is absurd?

   Of course, first of all, because it is absurd to think that a god of love would send to heaven killers of innocent people, even on a "holy war", just to increase the number of worshipers (by violence and coercive conversions).

   But, mostly, it's absurd because all of this seems rubbish: there is no ground to think there is an afterlife waiting for you, as you deep down know.

   Moreover, that all believers (more or less, at least in some moments) are ready to sin against others and god (at least, small sins), risking their immortality, many times for petty things, seems completely absurd.

   Unless, deep down, you feel this is really the only life you will have.

   However, this implies a strategic approach to god.

   You play safe, to protect yourself if he do exists, and claim you are a religious person out of absurd fear. But you aren't really prepared to sacrifice any important thing in this life for your claim, since deep down you have serious doubts about his existence.

   Isn't he "omniscient" and aware of your doubts and lack of commitment? "Won't he punish you because of them with the flames of hell"?

   Isn't more honest and liberating to have the courage to admit that you aren't a religious person?[/b]



   Besides being false, religions also have negative social consequences:


   1) Religion and Churches are one of the oldest and the biggest scam in the history of Mankind.

   All religions end up building a church composed by a professional group of people who transmits, interprets and, sometimes, executes divine will.

   Of course, they are all economically supported by societies.

   Historically, they were supported coercively. Paying the taxes to the church was a duty of all Christians sanctioned by the government, if necessary.

   In many Protestants Europeans countries, there still exists a church tax, collected by the government!! (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_tax).

   In others, it's the State that pays the salaries and pensions of the priests of the main church (it's the case of the bankrupt Greece)!

   The Catholic Church even sold indulgences that allowed Christians to sin (!) and ended up provoking the Reformation movement in the XVI century.

   Only the Holy Sea knows the truth, but this church is considered one of the wealthy institutions on the world (http://www.economist.com/node/21560536;  http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/how-rich-vatican-so-wealthy-it-can-stumble-across-millions-euros-just-tucked-away-1478219).  

   But since it seems god doesn't listen to their pries and don't give miraculous gold to any church, in the end all are paid by society or, at least, by their believers' community.

   What do they give in exchange? More or less, they claim having the key to heaven.

   They say you have an immortal soul and directly or indirectly ask for money in exchange for telling you how to save it and helping/granting that you will be successful on that.

   If a doctor tried to ask for money in exchange of giving you a medicine that allegedly would grant you immortality, he would probably be arrested as a scammer.

   But a priest can promise that and get all your money in your dying bed.

   Millions of professional priests are supported by societies for a service based on clearly unsubstantiated allegations.

   You could argue that most of them do believe on what they say. However, many don't believe for a second on what they preach. And most of the rest, besides being aware that they have no evidence for what they are promising, do have serious doubts about the veracity of their statements (even Mother Teresa wrote about their own). This is enough to call these scammers.

   It's like someone here at the forum selling applications he doesn't know if they really work, having only faith, or even clear doubts, that this will happen, without disclosing that.

   I'm not going to open a thread on the Bitcointalk's scams forum against most of the churches of the world. The feeling that selling religious services is fair game is so rooted, that probably my thread would be transfer to this forum or removed as a political statement. But they would deserve it.

   I'm also not going to do that against god, since it isn't his fault: every thing suggests that he doesn't exist.

   No doubt, certain churches also have important social supporting activities, but they are well paid by the government or by private donations for that.

   Moreover, a few churches have resources to do much more than they do. But increasing their followers (and so, their power) had always prevalence over the needs of the poor.


   2) Religions induce conformity, intolerance, obscurantism and other nasty social consequences.

   Some believers, conceding that there is no evidence or even rational arguments supporting religious faith, say that, even if false, religion has positive social consequences.

   Recent investigations concluded otherwise, saying that religious children are more selfish, intolerant and punitive than children from atheist families. (https://www.academia.edu/19164068/The_Negative_Association_between_Religiousness_and_Children_s_Altruism_across_the_World).

   I won't write like some that religion has been the main cause of murder and wars.

   I admit that Thucydides's classic trilogy of fear, honor and greed for natural resources and power beats religion on this matter.

        But, even if its weight was small, let's remember this: "George Bush: 'God told me to end the tyranny in Iraq'" (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/oct/07/iraq.usa ).

   No doubt, religion has been a very important cause for murder and war.

   Moreover, Marx called religion the people's opium with some reason. It installs on the people conformity for oppressive laws and arbitrary inequalities. "Suffer and obey now, you will get your reward in the afterlife".

   Religion has been mostly an instrument of power, helping legitimating political power and inducing obedience. ("Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God": Romans 13:1).

   Religions that aren't at the service of political power usually end badly, suppressed by the government or by churches fearing consequences (like with the Falun Gong in China or the Theology of liberation in South America).

   But religions are always at the service of the power of the leaders in the community of followers.

   Religion has also been an obstacle to progress in:

   Morality: since it's mainly based on Bronze Age rules.

   Science: by burning or repressing as heretics many scientists and rational thinkers by all the available means and censuring books.
   Even today, by trying to block investigation on certain domains based only on religious grounds.

   Education: historically, mainly in Catholic countries, by controlling schools and restringing learning to priests and elites in order to limit the direct access of the population to the "sacred" texts.
   I admit that in Jewish and Protestants societies that wasn't the case and religiosity might have even increased literacy, but mainly as an instrument to better understand religious texts. Schools transmitted basically knowledge conform with religious doctrine. On the United States, even now, is staggering the resistance to the study of evolution or modern cosmology in Schools.

   Politics: by supporting feudalism, absolute monarchies (Romans 13:1) and, currently, mainly, conservative ideas.

   Economy: historically, by the christian ban on interest rates (Deuteronomy, 23.20-21; and by canon law: http://canonlawmadeeasy.com/2014/09/04/what-does-the-church-say-about-usury/), still the rule on many Muslim countries.

   Mentalities: Catholicism, and its contemplative/passive mentality, is considered (controversially) the major reason for the decadence of catholic countries (Max Weber).

   There are also allegations that the high incidence of religiosity on the United States can explain his high rates of violent crimes, teen pregnancies and sexual diseases when compared with the low religiosity on Europe (Sam Harris).

   There isn't clear empirical evidence on the existence of a relation of causality between religiosity and crime, but the lack of sexual education and resistance on using contraceptives (like condoms) might explain teen pregnancy and sexual diseases.

   I can concede religion has inspire people to create beautiful art, but at what price? I'm sure talented people could find other sources of inspiration with equal results.

   
   Conclusion:

   The burden of proof is on the believers' side, since they are who argue for a positive thing: the existence of a mysterious higher being.

   Since they clearly didn't fulfill this burden, I can conclude that I don't believe in the existence of god. But I don't say I'm certain that god doesn't exist (even if I live clearly under this assumption). That could make me look like a believer, with faith on a negative fact.

   I just say I have no reasons to believe on his existence and have some grounds above presented that point against his existence.

   It's the same situation that makes be very skeptic on the existence of flying horses.

   I'm very skeptical, but I'm open to any real evidence on the existence of god or flying horses.

   Therefore, I think I have grounds to say that I'm an atheist and not a simple agnostic.

   

Must be a fanatic, religious atheist to write such a large post on why you are an atheist.

[kik1977]

Pro Jesus;

- thousands of years of prophecies in stories predicting Jesus character and mission
- fine tuning of the universe
- complex DNA coding
- materialism has been proven wrong by (quantum) physics
- christianity sparked and sustained the evolution of modern civilization (including science)
- cosmic linear evolution, everything seems to be "directed" in a certain direction

You can substitute the word jesus with santa clauss, zeus, thor, buddha, the flying spaghetti monster, jeova, etc. ... and still have exactly the same amount of evidence (which is zero)

I think the most reasonable position is to be an agnostic, I simply don't know....

I am also agnostic towards santa clauss, in the sense that I cannot disprove its existence.. but from not being able to disprove, to actually believe in it...

[BADecker]

Pro Jesus;

- thousands of years of prophecies in stories predicting Jesus character and mission
- fine tuning of the universe
- complex DNA coding
- materialism has been proven wrong by (quantum) physics
- christianity sparked and sustained the evolution of modern civilization (including science)
- cosmic linear evolution, everything seems to be "directed" in a certain direction

You can substitute the word jesus with santa clauss, zeus, thor, buddha, the flying spaghetti monster, jeova, etc. ... and still have exactly the same amount of evidence (which is zero)

I think the most reasonable position is to be an agnostic, I simply don't know....

I am also agnostic towards santa clauss, in the sense that I cannot disprove its existence.. but from not being able to disprove, to actually believe in it...

The healings done by Jesus and His apostles as listed in the Bible are eye witness records of thing that we can't do very easily today. Nor were the peoples of the world before the time of Jesus able to do them... easily.