As much as I'd like to change gears and just start arguing with the guy who said he hated Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights, I'll continue on with the main subject here.

1. As a few people have already tried to point out, those of us who say they "hate" the Jehovah of the Old Testament are referring to someone they believe to be a fictional character. Edison, you opened by saying that you also believe that no particular religion's scripture is literally true, so this distinction should be clear to you. I think everyone on here would sign off on the statement "If it turned out that there was a God, it would certainly be nothing like the God of the Old Testament, so what I say about that character has no bearing on what I would think of the God who turned out to exist."

2. You say it's hard to figure out what God wants you to do. I can see how that would be hard, but here's what I can offer: If you believe that God is all-wise and good, then you can figure out what it wants you to do by using logic, reason, and science to the best of your ability, the same as you would if you didn't believe in God. If you don't believe that God is all-wise and good, then why should you care what it wants you to do, since not believing this is the same as admitting that God could be wrong?

3. Since you have described yourself as basically an agnostic deist, I'm confused as to why you are concerned with reconciling yourself to Christianity and the Christian Bible. You seem hesitant to close yourself off from different ways of looking at things (which is admirable), so why assume that if there is a God, it must be the Christian one, and leave out Hinduism, Buddhism, etc.? It's not like your only two options are strict atheism and literalist Christianity.

4. In case you care, I was raised with no religion, and am an atheist because no-one ever gave me a good reason why I should stop being one. Since a lot of people on here are ex-theists, maybe hearing it framed this way will put a new spin on things for you. I never even really thought of myself as an "atheist" growing up--I was just a person, and only realized I was an "atheist" when it became apparent that there were people who did believe in God and got in my face about it all the time. If someone who was never given any religious instruction never got confronted by religious people, then he or she would never start thinking of themself as an "atheist," would they? What was it you heard first, and how credible do you think the people who told you that were?

Perhaps I should look to myself for the answers to life.  It usually seems to work when I do.

I was raised as a Christian, and I have been homeschooled all my life.  While I consider it unfortunate that I was raised as a Christian, I am very glad that I was homeschooled (read - not brainwashed!), seeing as how bad the public school system is doing.  I have moved away from that as a result of personal experience, but am seeking answers to it.

I don't like to assume that Christianity is the way, but it seems to hold more truth in it than other religions do.  If I find that it is too hard to reconcile my mind with the evident problems (such as the existence of evil), I will move on.

If you have no belief about God, then you are indeed an atheist, for as the atheists around here like to say, atheism is a disbelief in God, (i.e. no opinion, similar to my position on whether the president of China can cook a good omlet).

It never ceases to amaze me how many times theists use that fallacy, "Since you havent been in every nook and crany of the universe, you dont know that a god doesnt exist"

Right, and by that logic Thor must exist because you havent been everywhere in the universe. How do know my purple snarfwidget doesnt exist, after all, you havent been everywhere in the universe.

Why is it theist insist on mistaking a speculative sentance for hate. We cannot hate fiction, we do hate the fact that people buy such fiction as fact. Just like you would recoil if a 60 year old man litterally believed that the tooth fairy was real.

NOW, get this through your head:

"IF" for arguments sake ONLY..........One were to believe that such a being existed we would hate it. Why? Because of the "omni" atributes of being "all loving" and "all powerfull" compaired to the reality of the brutality of humanity combind with the brutality of nature. What kind of parent would put their kid diliberatly in such an invironment and then blame the child for something it created?

The point in asking these hard questions is to demonstrate the absurdity of the logic. If you are asking us to assume your position(which we dont) we're simply saying "If".

I hate your god like I hate Bigfoot and Loc Ness Monster and Ouiji Boards. I do hate the fact that people buy these things as fact when they are nothing but useless fiction people like believing.

Certainly we hate individuals and we do hate the global tribalism that theism causes in dividing humanity. But we do not hate all religious people. Get it out of your head that we hate your God. We cannot hate fiction, but IF IF IF IF IF IF IF IF assuming your position for argument's sake ONLY....IF IF IF IF, we would still hate this being because of it's arbitrary incompetance when it has the power to "clue us in" and be consistant on protecting us.

Nature explains life tons better than myth. Bad things happen, not because we want bad things to happen, but because they do. If we want to minimize the harm of bad events such as crime, desease, famine, war and disaster, prayer is about as usefull as crossing your fingers or praying to Thor and as usefull as a rabbit's foot, it is a useless placebo at best.

We get angry because people are stuck in superstition when they could actually take their heads out of their asses and stop depending on a fictional nipple in the sky. We think humanity can do better than that and is squandering it on inmature tribalism. We think humanity can do better by studying NOT PRAYING.

Our anger is justified but that doesnt mean we hate YOU personally and it doesnt mean we hate all religious people. It just means we think you got it wrong and we're being blunt about the claims you make.

For the same reason you reject Scientology and Hinduism, we reject your theism as well. If you dont believe that David Copperfield can litterally saw a woman in half, what makes you think that "POOF" the entire earth's trillions of goolgles of atoms magically in a nannosecond, formed the earth? All you have is "God did it". That is a claim, not an answer, and a pathetic claim to boot.

If you believe that you might as well believe that Harry Potter can really fly around on a broomstick. 

Get over yourself, we dont know you personally, you could be the nicest person. But on the issue of deities, you are dead wrong and we are not going to sugar coat it. I would hope you are mature enough to seperate YOU the person from the claims you make, they are two different issues.

So for the last time, WE CANT HATE FICTION, but if we were to buy that position our ansewer would be YES, we would not worship such a inept tyrant IF IF IF IF, one were to assume your claim.

Since we dont buy that they only thing we actually hate in reality is the use of logic the theist uses to justify clinging to such absurdities, both scientifically and moraly.

You'd be justified in hating the claim if someone litterally believed it as fact, "I can fart a Lamborginni out of my butt". What if someone litterally believed that? 

If someone is trying to tell you you have a booger on your nose, do you shout, "YOU HATE ME"

Or do you look in the mirror?

Having a booger(using bad logic) on your nose, does not make you a bad person, we are just trying to get you to think about the claims you make. We treat all theistic claims the same, and yours is no more special than any other.

 

The Bible says God is the only true God.  So Thor, as a real god kind of Thor, cannot exist if God exists.  Same for any eternal Buddha, whatever Scientology teaches, Hindu gods, etc.

So why are you pontificating about things you JUST ADMITED you know nothing about? Sounds to me you simply like what you believe so you make up shit to justify it.

And once again, what you fail to see is that you use the same reason that we do to reject the claims of other religions. YOU would rightfully reject a Muslim's claim that Allah picks the sex of the baby that comes from a clot of blood. You would rightfully say that it is a naked assertion without merit and absurd since we know that the XY cromisomes do that and a baby comes from a sperm and egg, not a clot of blood.

If you can accept that the writers made up the claim that Allah picked the sex of the baby and come from a clot of blood, then it should be obvious to you why we are rejecting this claim here as well. Just as you would rightfully reject claims of multiple armed deities out of the Hindu religion.

Could it be, just like Muslims and Hindus, you merely like the idea of a super hero in the sky? 

 

 The Quran also says the Bible is true, but goes on to say that either the Quran is false (because it contradicts the Bible) or Allah is not the real God (because it says God has no son, while the Bible says it is Jesus).

Are there evangelistic Hindus?  (A slight variation on my earlier question)

Sura 32:23 attests to the veracity of the Old Testament.

Sura 19:88-89 says that the notion of God having a son is an abominable assertion.

Again, says you.

First, if I baught this like of bullshit, it would boulster Jews, not Christians. "OT"

Your second quote also shows that you arlready presume that the God of Jesus exists, so OF COURSE it would prop up your presuposition. AGAIN, SELF SERVING AND CIRCULAR.

"The bible says Jeusus is the divine son of God. The Koran says he isnt" How convienant for Christians.

And once again,"The bible says" SELF SERVING AND CIRCULAR! 

Both the Christians and Muslim books stem from the OT, so if we are going to give credit to the original then you should be Jewish. The Jews came before Christians.

You are merely being arbitrary about what you have already built up in your brain as true. Go try to convince a Muslim or Jew of the exact same bullshit you are trying to sell me here. Maybe then you will see the absurdity of it. 

 

So any book which makes contradictory statements cannot be completely true, so presumably cannot be the 'Word of God". Similarly, if there are any contradictions in the Bible, which many people have pointed to, it also cannot be the "Word of God".

Of course there will be differences in what the various 'Holy Books' claim, so that they cannot all be completely true, and there is no evidence that any of them are true, even if some statements in them may be true.

And what would be the point of that question? Different religions, and countless sects within each religion, do vary in the degree to which they encourage things like evangelism, but most widespread religions will have some exhortation to their followers to 'spread the word', because that is typically how they spread.

In fact, a religion which is successful and does not have a strong evangelical element must have something else going for it, so that may be a point in its favour.

A 'God' who so hid himself so thoroughly would seem to be completely inconsistent with the God of virtually any religion - isn't He supposed to be manifest everywhere we look? If he is busy answering prayers and watching over us, then we shouldn't have to look beyond earth to find evidence.

IOW, if it is impossible to find some evidence for a God interacting with the world we inhabit here, then his existence in some far corner of the Universe or another dimension is irrelevant to us.

The messiah must fulfill many prophecies. One of those is being a descendent of David. Without the genealogical records, that cannot be proven. I'm not trying to be mean.

It doesn't matter what we think. Only what is true will matter.

Sure. And it could be these other traditions are corruptions of the truth. Or God used and filtered the correct aspect of these ideas into the Bible as accurate descriptions of Himself. If we are speculating, we can speculate anything...

Do you believe that more than 90% of the universe is made up of something we have no experience of? That an electron has only a speed or a position (not both) at the same time? These are modern scientific ideas. We accept them because they seem right according to what we know.

I wasn't claiming the truth of Christianity. I was giving rational reasons that Islam is false, and that Jews need Christ.

Now you are flat out lying. Why would you claim that Jews need Jesus if YOU didnt believe that Christianity was the one true religion? 

Once again, you claim Jews need Jesus because you quote the bible CIRCULAR REASONING!

"The bible says" blah blah blah.....so what.

You dont see that a dead man on a stick is just as silly as a man in a Leotard with an "S" on his chest flying around NY City. Sorry, cant help you out of that delusion if you dont want help. 

 

I suppose this is technically true, but I'm sure you'll agree that there are a great number of things about which we have no belief because we simply haven't bothered to consider the question because it is irrelevant. If it mattered to me in the slightest whether the Chinese premier can cook an omlette, I'm sure I'd make some effort to find out. God beliefs, on the other hand, are around us all the time, permeating nearly every aspect of society. Atheists (in general) don't lack belief in god because it seems irrelevant and they haven't really thought it through or bothered to inquire. They have (usually) actually looked at the question and decided that there are not sufficient grounds to hold a rational belief.

I think this makes a pretty big difference in the kind of nonbelief we are talking about. The Chinese omlette kind is based on ignorance, negligence and disinterest. The atheist kind is based on a principled holding to the tenets of reason in the face of constant pressure to believe.

To add a new wrinkle, I'm another kind of atheist, called a strong atheist, whose unbelief is definitely not of the Chinese omlette kind. I actually hold a positive belief that there is no god. I feel I know this, to the extent that it is possible to know anything. I am as certain of this fact as I am of any other fact that I know through non-empirical means. I would bet my life (actually, I've already bet my eternal soul, right?) on the proposition that there is no god.

 

Weak atheists do feel you have to have proved something in order to believe in it. They feel that their senses are revealing Reality and their reason is revealing Truth. Therefore the theist's argument that you must admit the possibility of god because you cannot know everything is persuasive to them. So they treat the question of god as an open question. However, they can still point to the fact that no evidence for god has ever been produced and rightly note that believing in things for which there is no evidence violates parsimony and exposes the believer to accusations of inconsistency. After all, do believers believe in all the other things for which there is no evidence? Of course not.

As a strong atheist, I feel that the question is closed and that people who insist it is open are doing violence to the proper use of the word "know." There is a limit to what information we have and can process, this is obvious and provable in a million ways. Therefore, there is no such thing as "knowing" in the sense in which it is normally used, ie being in possession of the Truth. We don't even know if there is such a thing as Truth; personally, I think it's an urban myth. Knowledge is really a probability threshold. If it is sufficiently probable that a particular proposition will not fail, we hold it as true, and say we know the facts springing from that proposition. This is how people actually arrive at "knowledge," and it is quite sufficiently rigorous for our use in all aspects of life - except religion. For some reason, when it comes to god, we are always referred back to that son-of-sasquatch known as the Truth. We aren't allowed to say we know god isn't there unless we can somehow transcend the veils of perception that cover us all and come up with a proof that is better than proof. Well, I say bullshit. I'm taking back the word know and insisting that people apply it the same way to god as they apply it to everything else in their lives. They know damn well that there aren't unicorns and fairies, and they know there isn't a god, too. I know there isn't a god the same way I know the sun will come up tomorrow. Do I Really Know that? Of course not. But, then again, I really do. I know it firmly enough that I would never consider any course of action that would assume that the sun wasn't coming up. I would bet my life on the proposition.

That's the difference between weak and strong atheists. We have different standards of truth.