Bingo. If some fool wants to parade around holding a sign, that's fine and protected. Cementing it into a public building is REPRESSION of free speech. Until christians accept EVERY moral and ethical code known to man to be given equal display, it is a violation of law and decency.

"What is wrong with citizens being reminded not to kill or steal, and so on? Why is a sound moral code threatening to you?"

Killing and stealing are the only commandments that have any relation to the law today. How about you rename it the two commandments and see if that works better? Why is an unsound ethical code which completely depends on the existence of the non existent so important to you when human society worked to create a better one that isn't dependant on invisible friends, and succeeded?

I've offered plenty of reasons. You just didn't lurk enough. However, since you're so lazy, I'll give you the best one:
If noone told you there was a god, and then defined god for you, you'd never have believed in one. Knowledge of your god is not a birthright, it's a lesson.

I have never believed in a god. Why? At least in part because I'd never even heard of the idea until I was in grade school. My first experience with any "god" was some old crazy lady in school yelling at me because when she asked me what higher power I believed in I just looked at her, not comprehending her words.

So there you have it. Why believe in a human delusion created to sooth those who are incapable of comprehending their existence, and its inevitable end?

I don't know if there's a god or not, but I do know that it has no bearing on my life. I also know that he/she/it never introduced itself to me.

I need proof. Without proof I can't choose whether or not to have faith.

Firstly, you don't know that this is true.  For all you know, I could have been born with an innate predisposition towards theism the full elucidation of which would be fully realized by adulthood.  

Secondly, this has nothing to do with the issue of morality.  How we come to know certain moral truths has nothing to do with whether there actually are moral truths.

I have no proof that 1 + 1 = 2, or that other minds exist, or that all bachelors are unmarried males; however, I choose to believe these things anyway.  This is a choice you're making, and you'll realize that it has bearing on your life as soon as you face God on your day of judgment.

There you demonstrate your clear misunderstanding of the distinction between deductive and empirical/inductive systems, between definitions and deductions.

"1 + 1 = 2" is a logical implication of the Laws of Logic and the definitions of "1", "+", "=", and "2".

Similarly, bachelors are defined as unmarried, so no proof is required.

Those comments demolish any credibility you may have had to understand the nature of Logic and Reason.

Yes, language. The fact that we are able to communicate in any meaningful way means that accepted definitions must have been accepted to be true definitions. If this were not the case, no two words would necessarily have any different meaning, and communication would be impossible through that medium.

That definitely is an overgeneralization.

Did you mean to say that the child would have no reason to believe his real parents existed? That would be the most obvious reading of such a scenario. The child clearly exists, so I can't see how your scenario makes sense otherwise that by a mistake on your part. 

Quite reasonable to require some proof that you were adopted, since most kids aren't.

In the absence of evidence, they have more reason to believe in Santa than God - especially if their parents put gifts under the tree at Xmas.

Perfectly valid not to assume something exists simply because someone tells you so, especially when it doesn't seem to you to fit in with everything else you have come to accept and/or experience.

"I was simply saying you can't assume something doesn't exist just because you're not aware of it."

funny that - it seems that the Christian contention is that "If you aren't aware of something then it must exist (especially when it comes to God)".

Sigh. I'd forgotten about caposkia. He must live in these massive old threads like a hermit.

"Ok, so let's see, by your explanation above, any child born of parents that handed them off to another pair who played their parents from before their memory till present would not exist in real life because the parents playing the childs real parents never told them about their real parents."

WOW. Fortunately I read ahead a bit and saw the clarification.
Sure, the child would have every reason to believe that the fake parents were the real parents. At least for as long as there was no evidence to the contrary presented. But in the case of an adopted childs real and adopted parents, there is always evidence to support the existence of the real parents. So there is a likelyhood that eventually the child will find it.
If that is to be compared to the god hypothesis, then you have a god that does not conform to....

if we weren't aware of God, how could we be following Him?  

Likewise, it seems that nonbelievers contention is that "if you aren't aware of something, then it can't exist... (especially when it comes to God)".

I see what you're saying... btw, I pop in now and then and have a life outside these threads... When I see an irrationality, I pounce..  just for fun.

yes, there would be evidence of the birth parents and the child would likely find out... but when they find out, does that mean they'd accept the truth?  not necessarily and there are many documented cases where the child refuses to accept the truth in these cases...

Likewise, there is evidences of God and the majority of the world is at least aware of the Judeo/Christian God, many accept Him, many do not despite being aware of Him and each to their own reasoning.  

You go on to explain how you can't understand love if this God truly loves His creation and yet allows X to happen.. X being something negative.  That goes into a whole different topic than the discussion of God existing.   

God could fix any problem, sure, but what kind of life would that be?  Think of it this way, if a parent sheltered their child so much that they were not allowed to have any hurt or pain... they'd likely be deemed abusive due to the fact that they have locked their child in a padded room with no hope of escape.  God wants you to grown and learn, but also allows you to have natural consequences to your choices.  

This of course will go to the whole what of disease and innocent people dying here and there... as to which I'd respond that you understand what will happen in the future as a result of their death.   Also, was it God's fault or someone elses that they got sick or died?  What would have been?  is death really it, the end?  of course Biblically no, physically yes, do they get to come back?  who knows.  To go there we'd both have to make a lot of assumptions and ultimately the conversation will get nowhere becasue neither of us is going to buy the others conspiracy theory.  

so what now?

*edit.

btw... not only are there present claims of God communicating with it's creation, but the Bible details it many many times... and not only that, but this God allegedly came down in the flesh to be with its creation through His son.  despite your lack of understanding or knowledge of God, you can't claim that this God claimed by the Chrsitians did not communicate if in fact this God exists.

All of these deities had followers who fervently believed in them, and all of them started with someone who turned a personal experience into a full blown communicable religion. None of them has any argument against the others, because they all have the same foundation. Religions that died simply suffered from an inability to spread, and finally perished when the core culture which believed in it either failed or was consumed by another.
The prevalent gods today have followers who maximised the ability to communicate their religion, and squeezed all the others out. They won their masses through the communication that their god punishes failure to believe and follow, and rewards success.
A child that refuses to acknowledge its birth parents as being its birth parents isn't necessarily going to be rewarded or punished for that refusal. Belief in a god supposedly is. That is where the analogy fails.

I'm not even concerned with disasters or disease here, because they aren't relevant, which would surprise many atheists to hear. What is relevant is knowledge of god, which does not exist. If it did exist, then all the ways to die wouldn't matter, because we'd be born with the knowledge of god, and would be personally responsible for our beliefs and actions. BUT WE AREN'T born with the knowledge of a god. Worse, when we finally become old enough to be told about and understand god, we are confronted with multiple gods!
So YES, I can claim he failed to communicate. I can claim it 10+ billion times over and counting.
The bible was written by men. As were the quran and korah. Where is the message from god?

Lot's of words.  You claim the only support for gods from followers is belief.  yet if you have nothing to base belief on, you have nothing to believe in, so in fact, belief has nothing even to do with why we believe, only that we accept what we believe.  

To put it simply, belief of course is not support of God and therefore isn't my defense, belief is only what I claim, from there I must have reasoning or just call it denial or fantasy.  

When you are old enough to be told about God you are confronted with multiple gods!  Why is that?  is it that God failed to communicate, or that we are so concerned about our own ajendas that we forgot to listen?  This is the perfect example really, because I was there... the bombardment of knowing god in so many different lights or knowing of so many different gods is exactly what made me question everything to begin with... Most people at this point would pick a side and say either this God is real or there is no god... but I didn't just question religious perspectives, I questioned everything... what makes people think they know what they claim to know?  and so my investigation began.  What I've been finding out, is both believers and non-believers really have no clue why they think they know what they do, only that they know it and no one else can convince them otherwise without smacking them up side the head with a clear cut, indisputable reason.  unfortunately, such reasoning is subjective and therefore cannot ever be universal with such a topic as this mainly because you cannot grab God and put him in a box, then get a non-believer to open the box and get his face clawed off by the once believed to be non-existent God. (or vise versa for the believer)  Instead, the process takes time and research along with self investigation and commitment to discovering the Truth, whatever that truth may be... and instead of this one indisputable reason smacking someone upside the head, over time the realization comes.  Subjectively, both sides can claim this process as well.

To bring back the child who has been introduced to their real parents and is in denial.. you can do all the DNA tests you want, but if the child refuses to look at the proof, they will never see what you know...  Then there could be a million excuses including incompetent doctors or faulty testing equipment that might cause the test results to be wrong and that will keep the child convinced.  The point is, nothing is going to convince that child that those people exist as his/her parents except for what that child will allow to be convincing.  A favorite quote is;  "the truth cannot be told to you unless you're willing to hear it".   If your goal is to prove to me that you're right, and my goal is to prove to you that I'm right, then we're never going to see each others perspective and will never have rational counters to each others reasoning.  In other words, no progress and no point to discussing.  

I try to keep as open a mind as possible in all of this.  I'm willing to accept any piece of information that comes my way that might rationalize why my following is false.  So far the best support for that is that there's no evidence of this God... which is disputable because many intelligent people including scientists, geologists, historians, etc. believe in this God and many claim to have come to the belief through their work... They would then say there is plenty of proof... (here we go with the subjectivity of evidence).  That is never going to convince me I'm wrong.  

 Cap,

Am I correct in summarizing your position as "Each side has proof but the opponents don't want to believe it"?

That you believe in God because you found evidence that you agree with/makes you feel good/want to believe?

Does your belief govern the evidence you accept or does the evidence govern your belief?

I'd better summarize it by saying each side doesn't really know why they believe, but each side has good presentations of rational thought that the other side doesn't want to hear.  If each side had proof, both sides would be right and that's not possible.  

there are a select few on each side that can actually present good rational thought for their perspective, and even only a few of those will listen to the other side.

I think you know the answer to this, but I'll humor you.  the evidence govern's my belief.   If it was the other way around jcgadfly, you and I both know I wouldn't have lasted 2 seconds on this site.  thinking of my summary above, I would say though that on both sides, beliefs govern evidence.  I've seen it a lot on here.  lately it looks like you're falling into that category, but one time I know, the evidence moreso governed your belief.  

Cap,

based on the figures , about half the world does NOT follow the Abrahamic God. IOW, there is NOT a clear majority following the one 'God'. And of course many of those who do would probably disagree with you that Allah is the same as Yahweh.

And of course all such belief is subjective, since there is no evidence that could prove, or even unambiguously point to the existence or nature of  any such being.

The reason why most people don't accept this simple fact is that people are not predominantly rational in their thought processes, and because of those inherent urges to 'see' indications of a 'higher power' in many things. Or that we prefer interesting stories over boring or inconvenient truths.

It IS easy to show and accept this IF you are well-informed on current science, not just the physical sciences, but the social sciences, and the rapidly advancing sciences of our own minds, our psychology, the way our societies interact, etc., AND you have managed to really purge the childhood irrationalities from your thinking, which may not be easy itself.

It is not necessarily inevitable or logical that you 'would have found the truth' by the particular studies you have done. It depends what those studies were, and what deeper preconceptions you still had. From your postings here, you still have false assumptions about the nature of science, as well as ignorance about the current state of our knowledge in many fields, and a poor understanding of what constitutes a proper, logical, study of a topic. 

We have told you what would constitute evidence. It is not our fault that you can't find any that satisfies our criteria, since it probably doesn't exist. Or that it is not possible to get evidence for the existence of a God being, especially if it is one that apparently has decided to make the world look like what science would expect to see if there was no God.

Really I keep asking you simply why you believe, not so much about evidence, just what are your personal reasons?

There is massive evidence, as I have said, in history, and the nature of this world, and in the Old Testament, that if there is a God responsible for, or governing, the world in any significant degree, then He is evil. Have you any evidence to counter that, and a few isolated 'miracles' in no way contradict that, they in fact reinforce the idea that He really doesn't care. Or do you not necessarily believe in a 'good' God?

A few scientists see a form of reverse ( not so much 'downward' ) causation in some interpretations of the observer 'paradox' in Quantum Theory, but there are experiments that have clearly shown that 'Quantum Collapse of the Wave Function' does NOT depend on a conscious observer, just a strong interaction with the rest of reality.

Demons are among the older ideas, like the idea of 'spirits' inhabiting various aspects of nature, that came before any tendency for those ideas to coalesce into the idea of more dominant or unified 'Great Spirit' and then into a single God (who somehow is still three parts ?? ).

What are they? Ultimately just figments of human imagination, just like your God, and the angels.

The bottom line is that no concept of God is any longer useful as an explanation for anything - instead it is a hypothesis that lacks an explanation for itself. It is no explanation at all to 'explain' any mystery by a bigger one.