Why do you care?

[Erinome]

I am a single mother of 3. I don't really party that much. I am a pregnancy crisis counselor by day, and I have been a stripper for 10 years. Not a biggie. I've never been much into partying like the other girls with whom I work alongside. No, they're much worse. All of them party their asses off with coke, alcohol, and pretty much whatever they can get their hands on.

Worse? I thought sex, drugs and rock and roll was your answer to life? By what standard are you judging them.

They also all claim to be Christians, and many of them have told me that they ask god for forgiveness all the time, and believe that he forgives them.

If they do, He does. And if they believe in Christ they will have a seat of honor at His banquet table when they come into his Kingdom. Life is hard on people, and they are trapped in it. But it doesn't last forever that way--thank God.

I think they are stupid little fucktits, who have never even taken the time to think about it, but that's just my opinion.

Yeah, you got it all figured out.

Sex, drugs, and rock n roll are not my answers to life, so as usual, you thought erroneously. Those are just a few of the things I enjoy that whomever wrote the bible thinks I shouldn't enjoy. These mindless little bitches strip for money to buy heroine, meth, and coke. I started doing it to put my sisters through college, which I did, and continued doing it to put myself through school, and from doing it, I already have almost enough to send my kids to college.

Most of these girls have kids, whom they neglect horribly, and that's if they don't they use abortion as a form of birth control. It sickens me. What sickens me more is that the ones who do neglect their children, raising them in meth labs, and around gun wielding drug dealers and pimps think it's all okay because god will forgive them, and they'll have a fucking seat at his banquet table when they die. I wonder how their minds would change if someone reminded them that they won't be able to smoke meth from a broken fucking light bulb in heaven..

[LarissaAnn]

That's God for you.

A murder, albeit fictional one, and you're choosing to follow him...a murder of millions, innocent children included, and fanatical enemy of more things than he can even count.

Any decent person would turn their back immediately on someone who murdered even one child. Let alone countless children because he was angry at their parents.

Take the God title away, would you follow a person like that? Absolutely not. Just because one is "God" shouldn't he try to be a "good" God and not kill at all and instead teach and be merciful through and through instead of threaten hell fire for one meager offense? What's the line....with great power comes great responsibility. That kind of God is one who hasn't exercised his power in a very responsible way by spreading that much hatred, violence and murder. Should we teach our kids, the way that God teaches his followers? Threaten to beat them, threaten to kill them if they don't listen, threaten to kill anyone who messes with them?

If God was a person here on earth, he would be in prison, death row even.

[Ace Otana]

That's God for you.

Then I'm greater than him, morally and rationally. In this case you could be believing in the wrong god or...perhaps there are no gods.

So, if we have a sense of what is truly moral, but God does not, and we are contingent beings. Where then does moral consciousness come from? Looks like we've just pushed God back one more step in the chain.

Our sense of morality comes from us. We're social animals and social animals by nature look out for each other. That's how they survive as a species. God is our invention, because unlike other animals on this planet, we have an imagination but sadly it can cloud our perception and does so in many.

It's God's universe. He can and does kill every living thing, ultimately. He's the God of life; He's the God of death. But then "God" would have to be, wouldn't he?

If that's the case, wouldn't you prefer a universe where there is no evil all powerful god and that we are in charge and can decide our own destiny.
God is your creation, you can feel him if you want, hear him, make him angry or happy. Your imagination, your in control of it. But for you, I guess the first step will be the hardest.

[thesummerqueen]

Bleh. All right, I've just made my eyes and mouth up and I'm almost done curling my hair...time to put on this clingy black sweater dress and join Mrs Heather for a night of booze (drugs) and music (don't know necessarily rock n' roll). No sex though - at least not yet. I have to get to know any boys we meet because unlike the crap Egor keeps talking about, this is one of the moral codes I live by:



People...seriously. Quit arguing this ignoramus and go have fun. Make some music. Fuck someone - maybe even just yourself. Go make a scrumptious dinner. Play skyrim. Whatever.

[blows a pouty kiss]

Night y'all. If NC comes up in the news, I SWEAR it wasn't us.

[LarissaAnn]

Our sense of morality comes from us. We're social animals and social animals by nature look out for each other. That's how they survive as a species.

Exactly and not to mention mankind's morality has evolved (gasp, yes I said evolved) over the years. Yes we still have fanatical idiots and bombs that could wipe us all out. BUT we used to burn each other at the stakes, execute people in cruel ways for political reasons and put their heads on a spike for all to see (the Tudor era), hold slaves, etc. etc. If God is the authority on morals shouldn't mankind have not stooped that barbarism from the get go?

[Ace Otana]

Egor may have some working brain cells. Perhaps he'll wake up and see the delusion of religion. I'm ready to give up and abandon the guy, but you never know.

[LarissaAnn]

Hehehe it is a fruitless effort I think, as with most religious fanatics.

[TheDarkestOfAngels]

I wonder why atheists are so anti-Christian? I mean, really, if you believe God doesn’t exist, then why trouble yourselves with what Christians believe? I notice no one complains about Islam, Hinduism or Buddhism, and no one complains much about cults, just Christianity.

Many atheists are anti-christian because many christians use their beliefs to peddle their blind human ignorances, hatreds, and various prejudices upon people and attempt to pass it off as noble and the truth of the universe despite the discrepancies, plot holes, spelling errors, false logic, and gross defiance of evidence and scientific understanding of ourselves and everything around us.
The proof is in the pudding, of course, see the arguemetns against climate change, creationism, the 'intellectual elites', vaccines, palentology, geology, physics, and pretty much every major field of science. Evolutoin is the obvious one, but far from the only thing that the religious community has cruisaded against for entirely religious reasons.

Then there are also people like the westboro baptist church (or whatever the proper spelling of that ichor-filled place is) and their hatred of gay people, Reverend Pat Robinson's comments on Haiti (and likely thousands of other equally racist and ignorant comments).

How about all of the stupid wars ignited under the religious banner spanning the entirety of human civilization and prior? I don't recall any people going "Let's murder those [insert people here] bastards in the naem of Atheism!" but I'm pretty sure there have been plenty of wars started and fought in the name of Jesus or God even in the modern era.

Then there's the child molestation of the Catholic Church.

The short answer is this: Religion seem to be an excuse for people to control other people and exert their own influence and opinions as opposed to any kind of universal truth or revelation of any kind and the more we research about the world, the more ridiculous religious beliefs seem to be. As such, we don't really like to see more of this get spread around, especiallly at us or people who seemingly don't deserve it (like all the vitriol against gay people from religious folks these days.)

I also wonder why there are rules in this forum against saying you are going to hell for your beliefs, and yet it seems you post continually about the injustice of Hell, or the fact that God is responsible for evil. Again, what do you care? If there is no God, why do you get so hot under the collar about it? No pun intended.

Two reasons:
1) It's an atheist forum for an atheist community, so the forums are biased in that direction.
2) Some religious folks tend to just come here for the express purpose of telling us that we're going to hell and otherwise preach. The forums are moderated as such that discussion is favored and preaching is forbidden, so that's why 'telling us how we're going to hell" is forbidden because it's basically both preaching and trolling which are also against the rules.
BONUS: It's also just rude to go to a group of people and tell them how bad they are. It's one thing for a party of atheists to talk about religious people on their own forum badly, but it's another when a religious person goes to a group of athiests and starts pointing fingers.
Whiel we enjoy differing viewpoints here and we have our favorite christian pets we like to chat with, this is ultimately our party. I can't even begin to say how badly atheists are badmouthed on FOX News and other reliigous programs and forums and atheists get banned there for the same reason a guy trolling us about how we're going to hell will get thrown out here. Fair's fair.

And if, to you, the evil in the world proves there is no God, how do you explain all the good?

I've always hated this arguement, because every time it's brought up, it makes the assumption that your fantasy Djinni that created the universe is responsible for all the good.
In reality, all the "evil" and all the "good" come from all the same places.
That's people and life and the laws of physics.

When a cancer patient is cured of cancer? That's people - both the patient for fighting off the cancer and the medical people who shot him up with chemotherapy and kept him alive.

Babies are a miracle of the human reproductive system, biology, and evolution.

Rainbows are a miracle of refraction, water, and light.

Beautiful sunsets are a miracle of the earth's atmosphere and chemical composition, the sun, light, gravity, the earth itself, and the laws of thermodynamics and probably lots I'm forgetting.

Point is that good in the universe is good of the universe and can exist quite independantly of your beliefs that are likely considerably less than 2000 years old - particularly since the universe is 6,850,000 times as old as that and will be around long after you're dead. (I plan on being immortal).

Be that as it may, God is God. He's your God, too, and God can't be defied. It's not like marching with Ghandi or protesting Wall Street. When faced with absolute power, you can only do what that power allows you to do. In our case, he's allowed us to accept or reject his revelation to humanity, Jesus Christ.

So are mafia bosses and dictators. They have all the power and I might have to do what they tell me because they could squash me like a bug, but only a delusional man could pretend that what they're doing is moral, just, or even sensical.

The god of the bible is an evil, murdous bastard and the New Testiment, even if it were a better sequel to an otherwise horrendous novel, does nothing to fill in the plot holes or "reveal" anything considering that the whole thing is entirely unnecessary considering that god could have simply changed the rules without torturing his own son/himself in the process. Not to mention the fact that it has its own gaping plot holes.

When you know what Jesus Christ is and what he stands for, anyone rejecting him is worthy of hell. That's my take on it anyway.

So for rejecting something that was never really fully revealed (considering that no one person believes in exactly the same "word of God" or "Revealed Truth") then that only means that for the actions of our finite lives, we are condemned to TORTURE FOREVER.

Let me allow you to grasp what that means -
If I die as a 1 year old child who neither understands nor cares about Jesus, I'll burn in Hell for
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000+ years (actually eternity, but for arguement's sake, let's just use this portion of time).

To give you an idea of how much time that is, protons (the thing that keeps all atoms together) will have decayed at the end of that period of time and the only things left will be photons with extremely long waves with an energy so low on the light spectrum that their energy will basically fade into the quantum jitters. Electrons and positirons will also remain and each one of these will be seporated by a distance greater than the entire expanse of our current universe and during that time, in hell, a baby will be tortured for a crime committed in a miniscule fraction of that time with the human lifespan being only slightly less insignificant.

And you call this "deserving"?
I've seen that same language used by people with far more monsterous reasons and similar consequences on the real world. Think about what you just said and think carefully. You just dismissed an entire portion of the human population into being deserving of something far worse than death. That makes me sick.

In what way was Christianity bad for you? Frankly, I would love to be brainwashed by Christianity. In fact, I would say that's my life's goal (real Christianity of course, not somebody's sectarian ideas of it).

I think you just summed up another issue with religion quite nicely.
After all, how many people are in your particular faith? Not the generalized whole that's as co-operative with one another as a bag of angry cats, but your particular "true" denomination of christianity.
And of the considerably fewer people involved in that (as opposed to any other denomination or other non-christian faith), how many of them have their own takes on the bible or word of god?

You see, the problem here is that if any of them were true, there would be precisely one religion and all seven billion of us would be a part of it. Instead, there are dozens that are split into thousands of denominations - some of which are far older than christianity and some are far newer.

Whatever you've done to convince yourself that you've picked the correct one is certainly brainwashing of a sort but largely ignorance of geography, history, and especially human nature.

Tell me, what will sex, drugs and rock and roll mean to you when you're 50, ugly, addicted, looking back on a lifetime of "partying" because you "thought for yourself," and your music is out of date? You think you can win against God and the plan He sets out for our lives, but you can't. You think your rebellious attitude has some nobility in eternity when it doesn't even have nobility here in this life.

This appears to be a rant against something, but there doesnt' appear to be an ultimate point. I'm amused, however, about how you couldn't resist pointing out that we're rebelling against god, but you failed to remember that you're talking to atheists.
Who are we rebelling against?

In the end we all "choose" what we believe. And we all believe, even atheists. You cannot look around you and say there is no God with reason. You say there is no God, because you want to party with sex, drugs and rock and roll. And you know it.

Sure. We all get to 'choose' what we believe in. I've chosen to not accept the "God Hypothosis" because it's ridiculous and not based on any evidence whatosever and the religious claims made by the bible and other religious works is easily refuted by scientific progress (big bang vs. creation, evolution vs. creation, ellipsoidal earth vs. flat earth, etc).
I do this because I don't like believing in things without reason and I do bother to quetion and scrutinize things before I choose to accept them.

As evidenced by the Catholic Church, the Westboro Baptist Church, and numerous others both present, past, and very likely the future, even those who actually believe that crap doesn't actually practice what they preach. Though I can understand the difficulty gievn how self-contradictory the bible often is. They seem perfectly willing to engauge in all the sex, drugs, and rock and roll regardless and make a tidy profit off of people's ignorance in the process (see: any megachurch or faith healer.)

As to choosing to be an atheist for the sex, drugs, and rock and roll, I chose to reject religion because it didn't hold up to scrutiny. No more. No less. If you look at many of the atheist introductions here who have talked about why they became atheists, you'll soon understand why you're absolutely wrong.

[Erinome]

I requote myself from another thread:

God's son was killed by mankind according to his own will, God sent his son to earth to die for mankind...basically by proxy murdering his own child, even when said son prayed to be delivered...and as a result decrees that anyone who doesn't accept his son's forced sacrifice is going to burn in hell forever.

That's God for you.

A misogynistic, slavery advocating, murderous, disgusting shit wad... among other things.

So, if we have a sense of what is truly moral, but God does not, and we are contingent beings. Where then does moral consciousness come from? Looks like we've just pushed God back one more step in the chain.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r58f3wfplHQ

It's God's universe. He can and does kill every living thing, ultimately. He's the God of life; He's the God of death. But then "God" would have to be, wouldn't he?

No. If I was a god I would end suffering. If I had created human beings, I wouldn't be a fucking asshole and condemn them for their own humanity. I would never torture people at all, much less for eternity. I wouldn't do something so wretched as not leaving a scrap of evidence that I exist. I wouldn't make endless torture a consequence of questioning me, and denying my existence. I would not allow evil. I would be all powerful so I would smite Satan and end that problem. I wouldn't be so much like an ancient, psychopathic, amoral person with a penis. I would be compassionate, loving, and forgiving. And I wouldn't send myself as my son to be born, live, and be strapped to a cross to die so that sins may be forgiven. I would just forgive sins.

[The Grand Nudger]

I think what Egor means to say here, is that if he doesn't propose a god which is indistinguishable from the natural world sans god, he'd sound even more ridiculous when he spouted off at the mouth about his fairy friend (if that's even possible). God's kingdom is in heaven, for example, because he knows he can't find it here. Utter garbage.

Your god must be a god of both life and death only because you see both life and death around you, and in the absence of any actual knowledge on the subject whatsoever you've supplied your own idiotic explanation. If you were to believe in a god that did not command, order, wish, or otherwise push the death button, you'd have trouble reconciling that with the fact that things die.