Hey! I agree with you, except for the math, science, and physics stuff. You know, all that stuff that requires 'FAITH!"
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Because i’m not 7yrs old and believe in utter bollocks.
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You need a dictionary very badly. You’re doing the “badly” part already. Work on the rest.
Pretty sure @Cognostic was being ironic. 
The tone of voice didn’t carry over.
This place has its own individual sense of humour. Took me a little time to learn about this. 
Unfortunately I don’t think we have an “ironic sarcasm” smiley in the set …
It depends upon your definition of “faith.”
If I’m to have faith in God, then why should I choose the Abrahamic God over the Norse gods, the Greek gods, or the Hindu gods?
Yet science and mathematics seem to work just as well if someone is in Jerusalem or India. We can even establish that science and mathematics work just as well many billions of light years away when we analyze data from radio telescopes.
It has been approximately 2,000 years since Christ was born, and we always had plague, warfare, stravation, etc. in spite of Christ’s birth.
Yet I ask you to think about Christ’s miracles. He healed the sick, he multiplied the loaves and fishes to feed the hungry, and he returned from the dead. We should have faith that he represents God because of these miracles . . . right?
Well . . . science heals the sick via modern medicine, science multiplies the loaves and fishes to feed the multitudes (modern fertilizer, pesticides, irrigation, and crop rotation), and CPR and defibrillation can reverse death (under special and restricted circumstances).
How are these things any less miraculous?
And we accomplished these miracles (in part) by questioning religion. We hit these milestones by questioning people who say “it’s God’s will” when a child dies from diphtheria.
Where should I really put my faith?
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In yourself.
20 characters
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The God I have grown to know, since 1996, tells me i dont have to worry about whether you believe or not, what I’m telling you about him. He’s the one who makes the decision to save you through the blood of his son who died on the cross for mankind sins.
I walked in front of a Church in 1996 and gave my Heart to Jesus. I didnt see any Angles, no thunder and lighting and no fuzzy feeling on the inside, but i knew something was different on the inside. Its something you cant explain away. He tells me to tell you about his son and leave the rest up to him. So I have zero burden on my shoulders. You can mock me, blaspheme me or my God, who has many names in the bible, but the one i like is Iam that Iam. Ive gotten carried away a little but he is the one and only God, who sent his only son (Jesus Chirst) to die on the cross for mankind. Once i became one of his children he let me know he truly exist. We all have an appointment with him
It appears you are not responding to David Guthrie, but addressing the denizens of this website.
But why? You’ve not indicated what you would like to discuss - only stated what you believe. I hope you realize that others have different beliefs. That appears not to bother you, so I don’t understand why you posted.
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Well, not to worry. Nobody is perfect…
In the complete absence of any objective evidence, that claim just sounds like simple confirmation bias ot me.
Since there is no objective evidence any deity exists, or is even possible, the claim he had a son means nothing to me of course, but this hypothetical deity you’re imaging here, sounds cruelly indifferent, keeping people in the dark about its existence, so it can torture them forever when they die, when they inevitably find the claim dubious sounds pretty fucked up to me.
I’ve broken my left clavicle twice, what’s your point?
Some people claim to know the world is flat, others that a deity entirely different from yours is the one real deity, if all they have is a bare claim, it is meaningless to me.
It’s bare claim you’re making, any explanations are for you to make, not anyone else.
Tell him he’s wasting his time, if all he can give you is superstitious second-hand hearsay.
On the contrary, you have cone to public debate forum to peddle your unevidenced beliefs, the burden of proof is entirely yours. The idea you’ve come here to an atheist debate forum, just to tell us you don’t care that we don’t share your beliefs, is demonstrably untrue.
Good to know, but it’s the unevidenced claims you’re reeling off, that are most likely to be mocked, since this is a debate forum, not a pulpit for you to preach at us from.
Yeah you’re going to have to offer something beyond bare assertion. What specifically did you want to debate?
No thanks, I find the notion of vicarious redemption morally repugnant, and the idea that anyone needs to be tortured to death for any reason equally so.
I don’t believe either claim, as again they are entirely unsupported by anything approaching objective evidence. Now once again, what is you wanted to debate?
Oh look, another mythology fanboy has turned up here to engage in sanctimonious panhandling. Time to break out the ordnance again …
Correction … the cartoon magic man from a Bronze Age mythology about which you have chosen to accept uncritically blind assertions …
Psychiatric hospitals are littered with people who think that the voices in their head are real.
Poppycock. Again, all of this is merely asserted to have happened, within a mythology that itself is littered with nonsense assertions.
For example, one of the more hilarious pieces of cretinous absurdity to be found in the pages of your Bronze Age mythology, is the assertion that genetics is purportedly controlled by coloured sticks. This assertion was found to be a risible lie by a 19th century monk, whose landmark scientific research not only taught us how genetics actually operates, but laid the foundations of modern genetics as a properly constituted scientific discipline.
Apparently your cartoon magic man, if it ever existed, was not only too stupid to present basic biological facts correctly, but was also insufficiently “omniscient” to foresee the emergence of said 19th century monk and his diligent scientific experiments.
The idea that this mythology was the product of a fantastically gifted magic entity is manifest nonsense. Your choice of mythology was scribbled by piss-stained Bronze Age nomads who were too stupid to count correctly the number of legs that an insect possesses. The above encephalitic drivel about genetics isn’t the only piece of manifest nonsense contained within the pages of your mythology - the entire Genesis 1 creation myth is known to be ridiculous garbage by anyone who paid attention in a basic science class, and the diseased fairy tale that is the “global flood” never happened. I can point to numerous cogent reasons why it never happened.
Of course, the New Testament has its own share of “derp” moments. Such as that passage in Luke 4: 1-13, where it is asserted that your cartoon magic man was alone in the desert, being tempted by Satan. Except that, oh wait, if he WAS genuinely alone in the desert with his cartoon arch enemy, then by definition, no one else was present to write down the account. Oh, and verse 5 implies that the Earth is flat, another assertion known to be wrong even by astute five year olds.
It’s elementary clusterfucks like this, and mythology fanboy inability to register the relevant idiocy, that lead me, and others like me with functioning neurons, to treat the whole business of religion as at best a farce, at worst a dangerously venomous influence.
Of course, you probably won’t bother checking any of the facts I’ve presented, but I’m used to both the indolence and the snide, condescending dismissal that mythology fanboys deploy at this point, you won’t be setting a precedent in either respect. Indeed, you’re not setting a precedent here in any respect - we’ve spent several years watching mythology fanboys turn up here, swimming in smugness and hubris, thinking that they’re going to “stick it to the stoopd atheists™”, only to discover that we’ve seen it all before, including the lame apologetics your ilk inevitably bring, and we’re ready and waiting with the artillery.
But, here’s a clue for you. Modern scientists have alighted upon vast classes of entities and interactions, that the authors of your sad little Bronze Age mythology were icapable of even fantasising about. Indee, the authors of your favourite mythology knew nothing about the existence of five major continental land masses on this planet, and if you live on one of those land masses, this should be a source of embarrassment to you. Meanwhile, the scientists who alighted upon the aforementioned vast classes of entities and interactions, then placed said classes of entities and interactions into usefully predictive quantitative frameworks of knowledge, of a sort that the authors of your mythology would have regarded as magic.
While performing the above diligent labour and adding to our body of knowledge in a substantive manner, the aforementioned scientists, over the past 350 years, have bequeathed several million peer reviewed scientific papers, documenting in exquisite detail that testable natural processes are SUFFICIENT to explain those vast classes of entities and interactions, and as a corollary, that cartoon magic men from pre-scientific mythologies are superfluous to requirements and irrelevant.
Don’t bother with any of the usual lame apologetics in response to the above, because I and others here will take a special delight in detonating a nuclear depth charge under them.
Moving on …
Anecdote does not equal data.
I’m sure I can find smoething in the cognitive neuroscience literature that covers this …
If your cartoon magic man actually exists, it’s had 62 years to present itself to me. Thus far, tumbleweed.
Obviously you haven’t bothered to appl;y rigour to any of this …
Spare us all the synthetic persecution complex. If you live in the USA, then you live in a country that panders to mythology fanboy fantasies to a sickening extent.
So you keep blindly asserting, which is all that mythology fanboys like you ever do.
Voices in your head again?
The DATA I’m aware of says otherwise.
The first DSM, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual was to have religiosity as an illness. Hissy fits followed.
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I have seen people afflicted with religious OCD, and they are often miserable.
They go through life with a constant fear of God’s displeasure, so they manage this anxiety with repetitive prayers, which must be completed a certain amount of times and in a certain way . . . or else God will retaliate and bring down the worst punishment imaginable.
They also engage in specific religious rituals that must be done perfectly, or else they have to start over from scratch.
They are miserable, and they make people around them miserable.
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Some of my hillbilly cousins are snake handlers. Not as many as last year and more than there will be next year. They do it to show that God is watching over them. Must take a lot of coffee breaks.
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Is this Quetzalcoatl, the Aztec deity of snakes? He had many other roles of course, you know what a busy life these deities lead.
“The name means “Feathered Serpent” in Nahuatl, the Aztec language. “Quetzal” means brightly coloured bird, and “Coatl” means snake.”
I suppose it doesn’t matter who they pray to, it’s the snake who has the final say after all, but a brightly coloured half bird, and half snake, seems pretty cool, though real snakes are pretty cool anyway, the stuff they can do is wildly impressive. Unlike deities of course, as I haven’t seen any objective evidence they exist, or can do anything. hence the dwindling number of snake handlers you cited, no doubt…
Post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacies aside of course, “look the snake didn’t bite me after I prayed to a deity to protect me”…thank the snake is all I can suggest, and try not to piss it off.
If they really wanted to evidence the efficacy of prayer, some sort of double blind clinical study should be pretty easy to set up. Lets say a large test group, 10k should do it, some pray some don’t, then they line up like lemmings and jump off a very high cliff. We can measure if their prayers save any?
No shortage of theists wanting a martyrs death, this seems eminently more ethical than taking others with you out of sheer hubris and spite.
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Heh, I’d like to see them try this with specimens of Phoneutria nigriventer. Even with my background as a invertebrate zoologist, I’d be very wary of handling one of those. Goliath Bird Eating Tarantulas? Not necessarily a problem, unless the specimen is in hair kicking mood. Poecilotheria metallica? Again, possible, with care. Even Black Widows are relatively amenable if you know what you’re doing, though they’re much more docile than either of the previous two, and require fairly severe provocation before they bite. But anything from the Genus Phoneutria - that falls into the category of a suicide mission unless you’re extremely lucky.
Though I notice there don’t appear to be many of the snake tormenting brigade in Australia. Try those antics with a Taipan and you’ve saying a big “Hello” to your cartoon magic man a lot quicker than anticipated - or, alternatively, finding out that the whole ‘afterlife’ business is fiction, and you’re now simply mushroom compost.
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We have snake handling churches here in Florida . . . although they are dwindling as this particular religious practice seems to be dying out, and good riddance.
As I’ve mentioned in other posts, snake handling reveals an especially nasty form of religious hypocrisy.
The religous conservatives (mostly Republicans) have lobbied to have books banned because they want to protect the children. There is a belief that trans kids are trans because they were exposed to “homosexualist influences” because gay people recruit.
I almost got in a fistfight when I suggested that if we must be concerned about kids emulating gay people, then why aren’t these Christians protesting against snake handling churches? People take their kids to church to (in part) learn proper behavior.
So . . . I’ve run 911 calls on kids who were playing with water moccasins and rattler snakes and got bitten, as they were emulating what they saw the minister doing in church (I was a paramedic).
Why do we have the double standard of worrying about kids emulating gay behavior, yet have no concern about them getting bitten by venomous snakes because they were emulating what they experienced in church?
Are books, trans people, and gay marriage really more of a threat to children than venomous snakes?
When I make this point, everyone tells me that it’s a false equivalence and that I’m being an asshole for the sake of being an asshole. If I can’t see the difference between snake handling in church and the dangers of exposing kids to trans ideology and homosexuality, then I’m the one who’s being stupid and ignorant.
I’m socially incompetent because I’m autistic, and I’ve wondered if my autism is the reason why I see a double standard here . . . although you guys have reassured me–in prior posts–that my autism is not at fault here.
I sometimes feel like I’m the kid saying that the emperor has no clothes.
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It’s worse than the emperor having no clothes - it’s a case of the emperor strutting through the streets stark naked and demanding that everyone suck his dick.
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