If God's love really was all that awesome, you would think that he would do absolutely everything it would take to convince atheists of his existence rather than letting his beloved children burn in Hell. Visions, divine inspiration, answers to every question atheists have, undeniable empirical evidence for those who require it. Yet there's still atheists. Does God really love me as much as you say he does? Why does he refuse to go looking for the lost hundredth sheep who he supposedly loves so much? Do shepherds just leave little scraps of cloth on the ground, expecting the sheep to realize it's a message from their shepherd and then determine how to follow the scraps back to the shepherd? No. The shepherd would go all the way, doing whatever it took to get the sheep to actually see him and come back to him. An all-powerful all-loving shepherd would never have to worry about sheep never coming back.

How does that prevent someone from showing up and giving you the answer that you didn't know you were looking for? Hint: it doesn't! Saying the answer will be ignored by people unwilling to believe it is just a dodge, because a sufficiently skillful presentation of the answer would give someone a reason to believe. That's what interventions are for: convincing the alcoholic that they need help, by first attempting to give them reason to believe that they have problems, and convincing them to fix those problems.

God can't show himself to the atheist? What, does atheism act as some sort of kryptonite? Is God's omnipotence nullified by the mere presence of a stubborn skeptic? How ridiculously idiotic would you have to be to actually believe that an all-powerful superbeing would somehow be prevented from revealing something as fundamental as his own existence by the mere act of being an atheist? Why can't God show the unbeliever his existence? He seemed perfectly willing to do it for Paul and others, according to the Bible. But I guess visions are passe these days. If God is a true God of love, one would think that he wouldn't care if atheists didn't believe in him, but that he would still feel it worthwhile to correct their mistake by any means necessary. Would it somehow degrade God if he deigned to actually provide evidence, instead of making everyone believe the way he wants them to believe before he will reveal himself?

It's idiotic. All of it. If God can't convince me of his existence, he has no one to blame but himself. He's the all-powerful one. He's the one who supposedly wants to save me from Hell. He's the shepherd who'll do anything it takes to get a sheep back into his flock. And yet all I see from theists is terrible arguments and no reason to believe, only the repeated assertion that reason must be abandoned, and we should just believe what we're told without thinking. That's it? Idiotic assertions from unreasoning people is the best way God can think of to convert the heathens? If that's the case, God's a total idiot, and not worthy of worship in the first place. Fuck him.

"God is not reasonable. You cannot figure God out. If you could, He wouldn't be God"

I love this quote here, you cannot figure out god, yet religious types believe they have figured out god, that god is loving, caring, wrathful, etc, etc, etc, all the attributes they give to god, but god cannot be figured out, a bit of a contradiction I say. Second of all my problems have been solved to date with patience, reasoning and logic. Actually I have yet to see any reason why god is needed to date, outside of fear and money making schemes by churches and their leaders. As for the alcoholic analogy, the alcoholic needs to apply logic and reasoning to see that he has a problem with alcohol and needs to stop to improve his life and health.

With this in mind, why hasn't this god of christians which showed himself so many times in the past and warned so many people of impending doom before, destroyed cities and committed such genoicide show himself to the unbelievers of this world? It is odd that in modern times god does not show his great power, could be because it's all in man's imagination, that all the things that was attributed to god have been shown to be natural phenomenas, like earthquakes, lightning, volcanos, etc etc etc, i mean serious, if god want's people to believe, why not show himself to people like he did in the past?

I'm glad that someone else gets it.  Congratulations.  

Uh huh. Are you glad that someone else on these forums gets it, or are you surprised that another of the world's two billion Christians is as dumb enough as you to think that argument is in any way convincing or useful?

Edit: You know, I'd love to see statistics of how many people say "God can't be found through reason" on the Internet and then within two or three days turn around and post the Ontological Argument or Argument from Design or Cosmological Argument. (Perhaps these theists realize that these arguments are ridded with fallacies and don't really consider them "reason".)

Personally, I think any time someone says "you can't use reason to find God", they should be kept track of. If their post history contains or if they use in the future any of the logical arguments for God's existence, they should be banned for inconsistency. Anyone with that much cognitive dissonance has nothing useful to contribute to anything except organ donor lists.

No I'm not. There goes your generalisation.

Your christian movement walks less in the light than these do, christian martyrdom is false and preening, atheists are far more passionate about truth and the fellowship of humans than evangelicals, I'm with them.

So that subsumes making an effort? what a waste of air - Ephesians 1, mate; Read it.

Speak for yourself. If your interest in the existence of a spiritual order to human life is not metered by a healthy dose of rationality that's your problem.

Dammit, I was agreeing with you til you launched into the 'you're going to hell you're just in denial' precursor. heard it before, take your vindictive self serving evangelical bias and have a proper look at it yourself, if you can't see for looking the pride and hubris behind this propagandistic filth i can only pity you.

Psalms 19 and Romans 1:20 say they are looking in the right place no less than you are in your scriptures..

try this study - John 5:39-40, 45-47 ; Mark 7:6-9; Leviticus 19.

BE Holy; do not engage in aggressive capitalism (Lev 19:9); don't spread slander about each other (put down that tabloid junk!); do not do anything that endangers your neighbours life (go figure, voting for bigger miltary complexes at the expense of health care for the poor and destitute seems to fit this category) ; don't seek revenge or bear a grudge; treat immigrants as you treat your native born; use honest scales and fair judgement.

Moses is your accuser and BE Holy is LAW! Do you really believe your traditions of men supercede these words?

As will atheists and humanists, the like, to bring some misled theist out there to the realisation that there is more.

indeed.

how right you are.

That's the point of this site. The fruit is speaking loud and clear about how rotten it is.

 If this logic holds true then what do we say of all the atheists that have become Christians? If you did not receive what you were expecting through your faith you never had any faith.

    faith ? in which god are you speaking ? You, us, this, or something separate ????

just mabey religion is anti "real" god , ummm god praying to it self ????? ok , so it's true, God likes God !

Whats with the capitalized He? If God can't be figured out, how can you claim to have figured out that God is male ?

Great, welcome to the forums. Let's see if your ray of light hits me. 

So, in a nutshell, you have agreed that your belief in a god is irrational. You have no reason to believe in your god other than "just because". Is this a very good practice?

 Take this analogy: I tell you that there is an enourmous diamond buried under your house, but if you dig for it, it will just sink deeper and deeper until it disappears. Should you take my word for it and believe in this diamond? Suppose you took a sonogram and looked into the ground and found nothing quite as dense as diamond. I tell you that it is deeper than the sonogram can reach, and in fact might even be a "super diamond", which cannot ever be detected. This, of course, makes the diamond even more valuable. I tell you that if you pay me $5,000, I can remove the diamond using a fantastic machine and sell it, giving the proceeds to your children after you die. After all, a diamond this difficult to detect and remove must be extremely valuable!

 Your god is exactly like this. You claim we cannot find evidence of him,  and our only garuntee is to wait it out and believe that he exists. It's an utter scam.

So, in other words, God only proves himself to those that already believe in him? Very convienient, for something that doesn't exist. 

Again, god can only be found by people who already believe in him? That's insane. It's like the emporers new clothes.

Idiocy and lunacy come from revelation. Revelation is nothing but people entertaining wild fantasies and acting on irrational fears and delusions. Reason provides results. Science creates predictable results that can be retested and reevaluated. Revelation does not. 

The mark of a bigot is to call a group by a singular.

 So Jesus came to give you a life of abundance? Do you suggest that rich people are thus more moral and godly? And that poor people are being punished by god?

 You seriously must be delusional, if your insane religion promotes bigoted thoughts like that.

I think I was born agnostic but really got into the fundie thing when I was a teenager.  I dilligently sought god but not for rewards.  I prayed for others, not for their salvation, but for their lives and wellbeing.  I prayed for those less fortunate, for the ill and the dying. I prayed for people I knew and those I did not know. None of those prayers were answered. 

I remembered being told that god could not be fathomed by mere mortals.  Then I realized we can't figure him out because god was merely a figment of the deluded and corrupt imaginations of a bunch of nuts and conmen centuries earlier.

You're right, revelation does not come through reason, but it certainly doesn't come from god. It comes from the suspension of rational thought and belief in fantasy.

   the first verse of the TAO , about says it all .... we have not as humans got it yet .... and never will ....

supid still rules ....

geezzz, religion , hey , be absolutly quite for a long minute, meditate .... get out of your own way , just listen , to the thunder of silence ....

Really? It seems to me you've got it all figured out. After all, you've already applied these attributes to your god without evidence:

1. You assert that he exists.

2. You assert that he has the power to inspire people to write about him.

3. You assert that these people did indeed write his unadulterated word.

4. You assert that others today cannot possibly be inspired by god and must be crazy.

5. You assert that those who were supposedly "inspired" by god were in fact not crazy, a special pleading fallacy.

6. You assert that god is male.

7. You assert that he cares about humanity.

8. You assert that he is good

Since when has cancer been cured by faith in Christ? Sorry, but I'm going to have to put my faith in science and medicine on this one, the same science and medicine that cured polio and smallpox. Even if I got terminal cancer I wouldn't start believing in an almighty invisible skydaddy to come whisk me away and take away those nasty ultra-divinding cells. 

Give an example of god "showing himself" and prove to me that it is indeed a supernatural occurance worth believing in a particular creator of the universe. Then prove to me that this "showing" applies only to your religion and not to the 6000 others on the planet that have just as much bullshit "evidence" as yours. 

God is showing Himself all the time. You refuse to see it and you refuse to hear it. Remember that the devil is god of this worls and he will do all he can to distort the message.

    So god isn't that powerful that he can stop the devil from distroting his message? Ok if that's the case how can you be sure that those that were inspired by "god" weren't in fact inspired by the devil, you don't. If god is showing himself to me or speaking to me, it isn't that good or that loud, heck he must be hiding and silent until i believe in him, which is not how it works for me, I go with evidence, logic and reason, I cannot believe that which shows itself to be irrational, illogical and non evident. 

    You may have a hard time solving an AIDS or cancer (etc) problem with patience, reasoning and logic. As I say, while you believe you are OK, you will not look for answers. Catch a dose of incurable cancer and maybe you'll consider giving God an opprtunity.

    Well considering that there have been steps forward in the war against AIDS, time, patience and logical steps are needed to find a cure, may not happen in my lifetime, it just might, many diseases have been cured, and many others haven't, but only patience, time, and reasoning (scientists doing this work require all of this plus logic to solve the AIDS problem) not praying and some non existant god, I will go to a doctor to get cured not a priest. As for a uncurable disease well I still won't believe in god, because I don't fear death at all, I accept death as part of life, my grandfather died never believing, my grandmother died without believing either, I had the unfortunate fate of dying on an operating table (clinically dead) and was revived after 3 or 4 minutes of being dead, u know what, no light, no god, no afterlife, which is what I expected, nothing at all, the end of my existance, something I am comfortable with, you may not be but I am.

    That isn't something someone figured out. That is the Word of God being quoted. The men that wrote those words were inspired by the Spirit of God. They did not figure it out. Even if you totally disbelieve if you stick to what scripture says this is true. No man knows God, no man has seen God and no man can figure Him out. Stay far away from a religious guy that says he has figured God out and kleep the scissors away from him too.

    Ok no man has seen god? You never bothered with reading the bible have you, let me give you some of the men that have seen god, Abraham, Jacob, Issac, Moses, Manoah and Isaiah. Yeah do you need the verses as well, actually here are some of them Isaiah 6:5 , Genesis 12:7, Genesis 26:24, Genesis 32:30, Genesis 48:3, Exodus 6:3, Exodus 24:9-11, Exodus 33:11, Numbers 14:14, Deuteronomy 5:4, Deuteronomy 34:10, Judges 13:22, Job 42:5, Isaiah 6:5, Ezekiel 20:35, Habakkuk 3:3-5, Matthew 18:9. Of course there in the bible many have seen the face of god, but never in modern times, go figure this one out, god was fine to show face back in the days but now, no show, you say god cannot be figured out yet men give him human attributes. Aww well you can say inspired i say delusioned but eh, you don't know your bible and it shows now.

Did you ever give you life to Christ? Did you ever receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit? This is what you need to get answer to prayer. Did you confess Christ as your Lord and believe in your heart? Do that and your prayers will begin to be answered.

You just don't get it, do you? Do you really really suppose that theists bringing stupid arguments is the best God could do? Really? Because that's basically what you're saying here. If God is truly screaming a message to me, it should be impossible for me to ignore it. God knows exactly what it would take to get me to believe, even if I don't know that myself. So why does he continue to do things he knows I won't accept as credible? Why does he refuse to go the extra mile? Why doesn't he send theists with actually good arguments? Why doesn't he just smack me with a vision on the road to Damascus?

Why should I give any credence to the notion that the one thing God wants most is my salvation and worship, yet he refuses to put the full powers of his omniscience and omnipotence to the task, leaving the important duty of saving my soul to limited people bringing tired arguments and irrational thinking that God knows I reject?

Do you understand any of this? How does the will of a limited human being like myself somehow prevent God from getting what he wants?

Perhaps God should work on making evidence of his existence unrefusable. He is all-powerful, after all. I'm sure he could whip up something.

"Not break the law"? What law is there that says "God can't reveal himself any way he wants, even ways that unbelievers can't deny"? Why would God make up rules for himself, knowing that following those rules would send some of his children to Hell?

It's always hilarious when people invent certain rules that God just has to follow, in order to get around the realization that, despite being the omnipotent omniscient creator of the universe, God still has a tough time getting what he wants. God could have anything he wants, and should have everything he wants, yet that would imply that the way the world currently is is the way God wants it, with all the suffering and unbelief and the Hell. So theists have to come up with dodges. They make up rules about what God can and can't do -- he can't violate free will, he can't interfere in the devil's world, blah dee blah fucking blah. There's no reason for these rules to exist in the first place, no reason why God would institute these rules or be forced to follow them. But without them the system crumbles.

"The devil must be given his rights"? Who's got the gun to God's head? Why does God have to let the devil run around and give him rights, when there's no reason why God should have been compelled to even let him exist in the first place? No one ever actually thinks about what an unlimited transcendent being would do. They merely project human behaviors back onto a non-corporeal non-human being where it makes no sense.

He's good, although apparently not that good, since he'd rather send me to Hell than take a millisecond of omnipotent effort to give me irrefutable evidence of his existence.

Oh, right. I forgot. There's the "rules". Which theologian made up the rules, again?

If I could figure God out, he would be the kind of God I'd worship. Apparently God cares more about maintaining his mystique than actually getting people to know his existence.

I'll say it again: If I don't believe in God he has no one to blame but himself.

You are going to regret having got into this argument:

"Beyond Logic" and "Outside Logic" are Meaningless