It's a common one (ergo not a delusion, lol). Plenty of christers think that their religion is behind cute kittens and the space program and sliced bread. No one in their little echo chamber tells them otherswise, and they been stealing anything that isn;t nailed to the damned floor (and most of the shit that is) for centuries, stamping it with a big fiery cross, and calling the rest of us degenerates.

Business as usual.

Hospitals have existed in ancient Egypt Greece Persia well before Christianity and the Hindus were likely the first to have organized medicine . All these cultures also had universities as for slavery how about civilization that never practiced it of which Christianity can't boast .As for morality there is nothing Jesus said that the ancients had not said better in fact Jesus message is rather substandard really .

Neo's hero St. Tom was cribbing pagan and...gasp, atheist traditions when he came up with his natural theology. To hear these folks tell it, though, history started yesterday.

There is exactly as much evidence for God as there is the Tooth Fairy. And no, belief in an entity, no matter how widespread, does not count as evidence.

Until such time as evidence is forthcoming, I will compare the two as and when I please.

(January 12, 2017 at 7:19 pm)ignoramus Wrote: Tooth fairy bullshit!  He he...  No arguments there...

Let's see:

Tooth Fairy: tale invented by adults to comfort children.
God: tale invented by adults to indoctrinate comfort children.

I know I'm stupid, but can someone please explain to me any real differences.

There is no difference.

Fun fact, a good number of the things we call faeries and pixies and this and thats -were- gods, before christianity was brought to the areas where those people lived by the sword and the pyre.  For their own good, ofc. Yet another place where christers have their heads buried so firmly up their own religion's ass that they can't see the sunshine. Before leprechauns were peddling cereal and engaging in general paddywhackery, according to one legend, they were being used as a derogatory and diminutive form of a fairly important god in a pagan pantheon.

(January 12, 2017 at 3:45 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: Secular organizations could have started the first Universities but they didn’t until after Christians did.
Secular organizations could have built the first Hospitals but they didn’t until after Christians did
Slavery has been abolished worldwide, but only after Christian nations did so first.

Christians did not start the first Universities, the Greeks did.
Christians did not start the first Hospitals the Greeks did, (that I can find).
Christians were not the first to abolish slavery, The Secular French Republic did.

(January 12, 2017 at 10:10 pm)Mr Greene Wrote:

(January 12, 2017 at 3:45 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: Secular organizations could have started the first Universities but they didn’t until after Christians did.
Secular organizations could have built the first Hospitals but they didn’t until after Christians did
Slavery has been abolished worldwide, but only after Christian nations did so first.

Christians did not start the first Universities, the Greeks did.
Christians did not start the first Hospitals the Greeks did, (that I can find).
Christians were not the first to abolish slavery, The Secular French Republic did.

The French republic that's what I was thinking thanks Mr Greene

(January 12, 2017 at 11:16 am)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: Those who compare God to the tooth fairy are douchebags. I’m sorry but that is truly how I feel. Without even an ounce of shame they ridicule some of the best and brightest thinkers who take up a problem serious and came to serious conclusion. Kierkegaard, Hegel, Kant, Buber, Kripke, Plantinga, Newton, Leibnitz, Putman, and Godel are/were theists. That list doesn’t even include theologians, like David Bentley Hart, or physicists, like, Francis Collins or Max Planck. All brilliant.

Okay? Brilliant people can still be wrong on trivial matters. Appeals to authority aren't rational just because you feel strongly about them.

I guess the real question is, would it be possible to produce the same effects you describe here- the inspiration and so on- with a modified tooth fairy story? In essence, is this "great thinkers spent reams of paper and ink justifying belief in X, and being inspired by X," exclusive to the christian god? It'd be hard to argue for that, given all the other religions purporting the same effects to gods you consider imaginary. There are people out there who are being spurred to precisely the same actions and beliefs, based in a character you'd consider equivalent to the tooth fairy... just because you place a- let's be serious about this for a moment- rather chauvinistic and unwarranted importance on the Western thinkers you happen to like, doesn't make their beliefs some untouchable edifice.

There's actually an interesting question at the heart of this. Too bad you're too busy being self-righteous as always to even consider it.

Quote:Maybe you don’t realize this but it is possible to be an atheist without acting like an infantile little snark. It’s astonishing to me how such ass-wipes will disrespect the legacies of truly great men and women like Dr. King, Bonhoeffer, and Catherine Booth (founder of the Salvation Army) by pretending that their religious convictions did nothing to motivate and inspire them to change the world.

And yet you'd disrespect the living by wildly simplifying our views in order to have something to get mad about. See, this cuts both ways.

To the OP, please don't conflate being inspired by something you believe in (which is real), to the cartoon characters of the bible (which most certainly are not).

Other authors have been inspired by Lord of the Rings, and have subsequently authored their own fantasy novels.
The authors are under no illusion that the contents of those inspirations are fictional.

Sir, I believe you've overdosed on the koolaid.