This Is Not A Scare Tactic
From the description of the video:
The "Letter from Hell" is from our 2006 lake trip. This is intended for believers as it DOES NOT COMPLETELY DEPICT THE GOSPEL. This is not meant as a scare tactic.
Just remember...
God loves you.
God loves you.
God loves you.
He loves you so much that he would do this to you. It's love. Real love.
Oh, and YOU BETTER CONVERT YOUR FRIENDS OR THEY'RE GOING TO DIE!!!!!!!! GOD LOVES YOU!!!!!!! YOUR FRIENDS ARE GOING TO DIE!!!! FOREVER!!!!!!
God loves you.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
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Of course why would the devil torture those who hated Christianity and tried to deconvert Christians, hence being (although unknowingly) on "his side?"
Matt Shizzle has been banned from the Rational Response Squad website. This event shall provide an atmosphere more conducive to social growth. - Majority of the mod team
<Feel free to PM me with your answer to this>
So, if you're a Calvinist, are you one who knows you're one of the elect or are you just making your best guess? Has god told you of his predestination for you or is it still a crap shoot?
How is an adult having an Invisible Friend not irrational?
"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin
If we're going to get technical, though, wouldn't religion be more of a delusion? Delusion isn't limited to people who are mentally ill. It's simply an emotionally convenient belief. People who are grieving exhibit denial - that doesn't mean they've jumped on board the crazy train.
It would only really be a "mental problem" if it caused debilitating difficulty at work or in a person's family. The reason religion isn't considered a mental health issue is largely productivity (in the same sense that alcoholism isn't a "problem" with workaholic/alcoholic millionaires). Logic really doesn't have anything to do with it.
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
So many reasons that there is no god, so few to substantiate one existing.
It would be funny if it wasn't so bloody destructive.
On a positive note there are lots of hot Atheist chicks, so that's nice.
How can not believing in something that is backed up with no empirical evidence be less scientific than believing in something that not only has no empirical evidence but actually goes against the laws of the universe and in many cases actually contradicts itself? - Ricky Gervais
Theism is not a mental defect. It is a cultural defect. It is part of human nature, since humans are social creatures, to sometimes behave illogically in order to meet their culture's expectations and standards, and fit in. This is perfectly natural and normal. If we didn't we would not survive as a social species. However, certainly rules of a culture can be flawed. I doubt the women of the African cultures that practice female genitalia mutilation are in favor of this practice. But they endure it in order to fit in. Some cultures don't even know why the do some things any more, the original meaning of the custom having be lost generations before. But that doesn't mean they're mentally defective (unless you consider all of the human race mentally defective, but that's a different argument! We'll assume here we mean defective relative to other humans).
This was an interesting experiment I saw on a show the other day. Learning by imitation has somehow become more important to humans than learning by logical deduction. Our need to go along with things is stronger than reasoning for most people. We may be hard-wired to imitate.
http://www.hellofelix.com/childhood-social-learning/overimitation/when-are-chimps-smarter-than-kids.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/13/science/13essa.html
So rather than assuming people who follow dumb customs are mentally flawed, we need to fix the cultural flaw.
"The Bible looks like it started out as a game of Mad Libs" - Bill Maher
Because he's an ungrateful asshole who finds it fun to torture people.
I think you're making the old "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" mistake.
Sure the Christian God is a big bully, but that doesn't mean that the Devil isn't even worse.
That's how depressing Christian theology is: God is the good guy - you don't want to meet the bad!!
It's not a coincidence that many horror stories love to make use of Christian tradition!
I just got this response a "Debating Christianity":
Awwww, how sweet.
Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centuries since the Bible was written. And it is these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries and homes. I personally resent it bitterly.
Isaac Asimov