The main reason I'm an atheist

[TheRocketSurgeon]

I can see pretty well that here people do not actually want to learn anything, you have proven to be very aggresive to the views you do not agree with, and did what you knew best, as I see, mockery and ridiculizing. Collectively in this post I have seen that you have very wrong ideas about christianity and, the worst of all, you do not plan on learning about why they are wrong but rather shield yourselves against everything that will go against your beliefs. It is very curious, in my opinion, that you show exactly the same behavior as your fellow "christian" debaters, but that doesn't seem to bother you.

If you say silly things, yes, we will mock you-- especially if you say them with the sort of certainty that only a brainwashed fanatic can muster. We do the same with Little Rik, whose ideas about his little sub-cult of Hinduism would make you laugh out loud, if you read them.

All of our ideas about Christianity are "wrong" because there are so many variants of Christianity. We can totally copy what the last Christian who came here said about the religion (or in most of our cases, what we were brought up believing), and you or the next one will claim we have it "totally wrong", and blame our atheism on a misunderstanding of the Bible even though it's exactly what the last Christian said was True Christianity™.

The german philosopher, Wilhelm Hegel, held an interesting idea: You have to be very attentive at the ideas that are contrary to yours because they, most likely, hold a truth inside them. It is very clear to me that your atheism show all the "garbage" that protestant and roman-catholic theology begot, and your atheism is the refutation of the God that is a product to said theology, that is why aggresiveness is shown in every each of you when talking about this said God.

I concur with Hegel about this. We do carefully read from multiple sources, listen to numerous witnesses, and have studied the Bible carefully, in most cases. We show "aggresiveness" because we're exhausted from having the same conversation, over and over again, with each new variety of theist telling us we're totally wrong (see above) and that THEIR version is correct, and then telling us totally false things about atheists/atheism. We'll get to that in a minute.

Some of us are more polite than others. I tend to be in that category, or at least I think I am. However, I've avoided engaging you because even I doubt I could hold in my temper as I watch your arrogance and ignorance splatter the screen, time and again. I am not saying this to insult you; this is what I have observed of your behavior, since you've been here.

I have the suspicion that men today believe in God more than at any other time in human history. Men know the gospel, the teaching of the Church, and God’s creation better than at any other time. They have a profound consciousness of His existence. Their atheism is not a real disbelief. It is rather an aversion toward somebody we know very well but whom we hate with all our heart, exactly as the demons do.

You hate God, that is you we ignore Him, overlooking Him as if you did not see Him, and pretending to be atheists. In reality you consider Him your enemy par excellence. Your negation is your vengeance, your atheism is your revenge. But why do you hate God? You hate Him not only because "your" deeds are dark while God is light, but also because you consider Him as a menace, as an imminent and eternal danger, as an adversary in court, as an opponent at law, as a public prosecutor and an eternal persecutor. To you, God is no more the almighty physician who came to save them from illness and death to you, but rather a cruel judge and a vengeful inquisitor.

"Atheism is not a real disbelief"?!? What. The. Frak. Is. That!?

We do not hate God any more than we hate Lord Voldemort or Darth Vader. I have read nearly everything in the StarWars canon and all of the Harry Potter books. I can discuss them at great length and in great detail... but I do not believe they are real, even when I'm pointing out to fans of Darth Vader that he slaughtered children and thus is not a good role-model or hero for them. You saying "you atheists just hate God" is as stupid as saying "you just hate Darth Vader". Nope. He's still a fictional character, and my only anger is directed at people who try to tell me that the SW books are real, and that I should/must base my life-decisions on the attitudes and philosophies of a Sith Lord.

We reject your God because we are moral people, and we find your Lord Yahweh of the Israelites to be a monster that makes Lords Vader and Voldemort look paltry by comparison. (Okay, Vader comes close, with only a shade less genocide and sexism.) Our enemy is not your sky fairy or anyone else's sky fairy, no matter what they call it. Our enemy is anyone who thinks that magic exists and dictates our lives, that their particular sky fairy has plans for my life that they must "help" enforce or pressure me into, and who fails to grasp why the Scientific Method of thinking is the only thing that will pull humanity out of the Stone/Bronze/Iron ages, in which such magical thinking was the norm.

You see, the devil managed to make men believe that God does not really love us, that He really only loves Himself, and that He accepts us only if we behave as He wants us to behave; that He hates us if we do not behave as He ordered us to behave, and is offended by our insubordination to such a degree that we must pay for it by eternal tortures, created by Him for that purpose.

Who can love a torturer? Even those who try hard to save themselves from the wrath of God cannot really love Him. They love only themselves, trying to escape God’s vengeance and to achieve eternal bliss by managing to please this fearsome and extremely dangerous Creator. Do you perceive the devil’s slander of our all loving, all kind, and absolutely good God? That is why in Greek the devil was given the name diabolos, “the slanderer”.

Other than the fact that you just compounded our laughter problem by adding a new fairy to your fairytale, I actually agree with you about the second paragraph. Those who worship only because of a "carrot and stick" approach are not really worshipers, but self-interested people. I would be interested to hear you explain your "hell is not real" theology, there, to a few of the other fundamentalists we get in here, so I could sit back and eat popcorn and watch the sparks (brimstone?) fly.

If you will note my signature line, that's exactly what I'm talking about in my rebuttal to one of your kind who tried to tell me that because I was a Christian (and thus "saved") for the first half of my life, I can't lose my salvation. But please keep in mind that even in that signature line, I am only reacting to your fairy tale story as if it was as real as you claim, not claiming I think it's legitimate. We reject your stories not out of anger but out of understanding. We compare the various versions, find their adherents to be equally fervent in their belief (and their reasons for same), and yet totally contradictory. We start to look at other religions and find the same. You cannot all be correct. We conclude that the most likely explanation is that it's ALL made up, and none of the god-fairytales are anything but the invention of humans.

Again, and I want to make this very clear: if people were going around living by Sith principles (I would argue that's what followers of Ayn Rand do, but that's a whole other conversation) and declaring that others should do the same, time and again, I'd be pretty pissed-off every time I met yet another of those Vaderians, in their myriad varieties, telling me that I'm not a Sith simply because I'm angry at false portrayals of Vader and that if I really accept that Vader is real (since, they say, I secretly DO believe in Vader), I will feel the power of the Force "in my heart" (etc). How would you react to a society that endlessly barraged you with that method? Be honest.