Most personally convincing reasons you don't believe.

[emjay]

I knew you were gonna say that... I remember you saying it in another thread, to Losty I think. It's a tough one because I do appreciate all these posts, and they all are offering different perspectives which is what I was asking for. But I am trying to reply to as many as I can, though it's taking some time, so hopefully my kudos should show in that as well as it were.

What interests me, is why the act? You must be really arogant to suddenly behave like you're better than everyone else, so I wonder what made you think that.

If you wanna be a dick EP, you be a dick, but I'm not in the mood to fight you. If you don't think I was being sincere then that's your pejorative, but I was.

[emjay]

All I can say is what the fuck just happened?   Can't a guy write one thread... probably my first one in months... without EP coming along and taking a shit on it for no other reason than his own bloody insecurities? I don't think I'm better than everyone else... in fact quite the reverse. I was enjoying this thread and now he's ruined that. Rest assured EP, if you do come back I won't kudos or reply to anything you post, if that's what you want. Perhaps that's the best way, then there'll be nothing for you to misconstrue.

[TheRocketSurgeon]

All I can say is what the fuck just happened?   Can't a guy write one thread... probably my first one in months... without EP coming along and taking a shit on it for no other reason than his own bloody insecurities? I don't think I'm better than everyone else... in fact quite the reverse. I was enjoying this thread and now he's ruined that.

Don't worry, the rest of us adore you! 

*hugs*

[IATIA]

No evidence other than a poorly written book of contradictions referencing an impotent warmongering tyrant and crazy people with voices in their head.

[Losty]

Because it's an idea that people talk about, not something I could directly observe in nature or even validate on a philosophical level.

There are lots of irrational ideas you could entertain and suspend reason for, if only for entertainment purposes, but this one isn't even interesting. It's disgusting on a moral level and terrifyingly banal. It makes my mind gag.

I'm a drama queen and I'm just here to be mean and stir up trouble.

I'm a drama queen and I'm just here to be mean and stir up trouble.

I'm a drama queen and I'm just here to be mean and stir up trouble.

*All quotes edited by Losty to show my interpretation and are not actually real quotes*

[Losty]

There now that that's over. I wish I had some cool interesting thing but I don't know anything convincing. My only convincing thing is a lack of convincing reasons to believe in god.

[emjay]

All I can say is what the fuck just happened?   Can't a guy write one thread... probably my first one in months... without EP coming along and taking a shit on it for no other reason than his own bloody insecurities? I don't think I'm better than everyone else... in fact quite the reverse. I was enjoying this thread and now he's ruined that.

Don't worry, the rest of us adore you! 

*hugs*

Thank you, that's sweet 

I don't know why I ever thought me and him could set aside our differences and move on. I'd be a dumb fuck not to learn that lesson now. There's just too much bad blood between us, too much of a history, for him to ever trust me and no real reason why I should ever trust him. He'll always see me as trying to one up him or whatever. So I think it's best I just call it a day, for keeps this time.

[Silver]

The lack of evidence should be every atheist's reason for not believing.

[TheRocketSurgeon]

The lack of evidence should be every atheist's reason for not believing.

Frankly, for me the problem was the opposite. It was the presence of evidence of things my church had specifically told me literally could not be because of the Bible... or at least, our reliance of the literalism of the stories about talking donkeys and snakes, and the other magical thinking that comes from that worldview. I was already a sci-fi nut, and it wasn't much to really start enjoying my search into the details of and ways of knowing the actual nature of the universe. The evidence was everywhere! Turned out, everything I thought I knew was wrong, and it was not only obvious that the evidence for the claims of science were everywhere, it was testable-- and science actively taught you to question, to be skeptical, to not believe and to find out for yourself what is true and false.

Didn't take long before I realized, "Hey, not only can we test that science stuff to know if it's true or false, we can test this stuff, too!"

One, two, and a right hook. Down goes religion. Man spends next decade studying science. It makes me physically nauseated to hear a Christian try to tell me that they "reasoned" their way to Jesus after considering all the facts, and to listen to them butcher what I worked so hard to understand, and to know why we understand it is the way it is, into a caricature of pseudoscientific garbage they felt could muddy the waters with a, "yeah, well we may have talking demonic snakes and mud-man/rib-woman magic, but your stuff's not any better!"

Yeah. It is. And anyone who thinks the world was created in six days a few thousand years ago and then completely flooded is out of their minds. I'm so glad the memetic virus that is Christianity was purged by my brain's "skepticism immune system" before the virus destroyed my ability to realize I was no longer able to even approach objective thinking.

P.S. - To any non-insane Christians reading this, who have actual knowledge of history and science, and who isn't anti-intellectual (etc), I deeply apologize. I refer simply to the fundamentalists, the literalists who must believe in magical talking donkeys because they can't recognize a myth when they see one, and who reject science because they're really enamored with the idea of a mass-genocidal deity. These guys:

[Silver]

In the end, it's the same difference.

Whether taken literally or not, the bible offers zero evidence.

The bible literally screams faith-based belief, because one cannot logically be in the correct frame of mind to accept its contents as either literal or metaphorical.