Atheist vs Atheist

[pocaracas]

Hi Folks,

I came on this forum a few months ago and I have learned allot from both the Christians and atheists. A Good friend of mine is a Christian and his father is a Pastor.

You know what the word "pastor" means in most latin derivative languages?
Shepherd.

Yes... the people seem to enjoy being called sheep directly to their faces.

So In-order for me to strengthen my Belief -> UnBelief I am going to propose a few topics that I would ideally like to be challenged upon.

Strengthen?
You either believe what other people tell you about the afterlife, or don't.
Do you believe them?

I know deep down that the arguments that people here make will be correct. But I would like to see the tought pattern and process so I can learn from it.

Don't believe unsubstantiated claims.
Try to understand what makes those people come up with those claims.

My First Statement:

With all the wars / famines / earthquakes and tidal waves going on alongside all the Doom's day prophecy that seam to have stepped up a gear.

A few million years ago, some 90% of life on this planet was annihilated...
more than once!
A few thousands of years ago, there was an Ice age... and it seems there have been quite a few before that...
Weather has these cycles...
Wars are caused by human greed... famines exist because there are too many people and too little food... earthquakes have always existed... maybe there ware even more in the past than now...

What is to say that we are not indeed living in the end times according to several religions. The argument you can make is that this happened through out history however the undeniable truth is that for the Christian Bible account to be rendered true it must happen in several places and most importantly Israel and Palestine.

For some reason that I can't fathom, that particular geographical location has become a hot bed.
Perhaps, it's because there's oil around there?
Or it's part of the traditional silk road? Access to the far-East?

Many of these events have occurred so does this prove God Correct?

Your Rebuttal:

It proves that history repeats itself, and if you write enough guesses, some are bound to be relatively accurate, as long as your guesses were minimally sound.

Don't make the jump from keen observation of human nature to god... that's not how it works... but it is how they make you think... they know human nature, they know how humans respond particular stimuli, in a particular sequence...
Enjoy this example:

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Answer the first two questions below out loud, and then blurt out the first thing that pops into your mind in response to sentence 3:

1. What continent is Kenya in?

2. What are the two opposing colors in the game of chess?

3. Name any animal.

Roughly 20 percent of people answer "zebra" to sentence 3, and about 50 percent respond with an animal from Africa. But, when asked to name an animal out of the blue, less than 1 percent of people will answer "zebra."

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