Hell and God cant Co-exist.

[quip]

My belief also and it offers no contradictions.  No beginning, no end, no time, it just is.

The difference is we atheists can disagree and new empirical evidence will change our minds eventually when we catch up with the present frontier of science, unfortunately new empirical evidence just makes theists use this new evidence to reinterpret their beliefs and then make out as if that was always what they believed.

Personally I presently accept that the universe didn't exist until the big bang ... I think it has gone way beyond being just a belief, though if new empirical evidence challenged that I would throw out that premise like my days collection of rubbish.

I can only guess at what was before the big bang and I am presently swayed towards multiple universes or the multiverse ....

The gap in our present knowledge however doesn't make me reach for a "God", the least likely explanation in my opinion ....

Even if the Intelligent design rabble could somehow (even though I can't see how) prove that a "God" started the ball rolling that doesn't lead to any verification of a fictional book written by semi-illiterate stone age people.

With two thousand years you could make any fairy story seem logical to people that just accept what they are told by their parents and those indoctrinating their parents.

Dog.

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There's no dichotomy. They're just metaphorical, representations of mankind's moral vicissitudes.

Same old same old .... anything a religious person feels they can't validate it just becomes metaphorical ... I don't think the semi-illiterate stoneagers were writing anything metaphorical.

But even if they were why are those interpreting the bible in the 21st century any more credible than throughout the past 6000 OT or 2000 for the NT?

It seems a bit lame to me that those stone age people wrote metaphorical stuff that only some zealot in the 21st century could understand?

Dog.

I didn't claim that the believers actualized and worshiped them metaphorically.  I was speaking as a conventional non-believer.