[Foxfyre]

Quote by: Lullaby Chainer Why I lack belief in God. 1.There are dozens of pre-Christian gods and messiahs that were born on December 25th, of a virgin, who had 12 disciples, performed miracles such as healing the sick and walking on water, crucified and resurrected three days later, and are known, by their inventors and followers, as such things like the Lamb of God and the King of Kings. Jesus is the most recent of a long list of plagiarized gods and holds no credibility. In fact, the entire Christian myth is taken directly from Egyptian myth. For instance, the 10 commandments are from the Egyptian Book of the Dead. The founders of Christianity acknowledged this but offered that Satan crafted the Pagan world to discredit Jesus. This explanation is still held by many religious leaders today.

Since you have been rather vigorously adament that other members support their opinions re Christianity/faith/religion, perhaps you would care to support this statement with some credible evidence from a reputable scholar on comparative religions rather than from some posted fuzzy 'facts' made by somebody who wants to believe this? You might start with actually looking up how many of the various Chrisitan traditions believe Jesus was born on December 25. Hint: there will be darn few if any.

2.Out of the 40 historians or so that lived during or soon after the supposed life of Jesus, none of them document any Jesus figure. It is ludicrous to think that a man who did all of the things ascribed to Jesus in the Bible would go completely undocumented by the many historians of the time. The Bible itself was written decades after the supposed life of Jesus.

Here's another one I suggest you support with a authoritative source as I'm not sure, but I think I can come up with a dozen or nearly a dozen non-Christian sources who clearly or almost certainly mentioned Jesus of Nazareth.

3.The Christian justice system is a barbaric, idiotic, and ridiculous bifurcated mess of extreme bias and lop-sided foundations. Christianity takes crimes as despicable as murder, rape, cruelty, genocide, and so forth and deems them forgivable by an act as trivial as accepting Jesus as your savior. What moral foundations are there that back up the forgiveness of horrible deeds by simply accepting something that, demonstratively, does no statistical good at reversing these evil behaviors.

Support for the opinion please? I suggest you also report the differences in opinions of "Christian justice" as demonstrated and practiced among the many different traditions within Christianity.

4.Furthermore, on the topic of a deranged justice system, the Bible condemns those who want to believe in God, but can't, with Hell. Many atheists and deists would love to believe the Christian story, and even attempt so regularly, but reason, logic, science, and rationality enslave them from believing in nonsense. The crime of intellectual honesty harms no one, but the Bible sees it worthy of eternal punishment. In fact, if I may ask, what finite sin is deserving of infinite punishment? Any sin that leads others to Hell is not a reasonable example of a sin deserving of Hell because that, in logic, is circular. The conclusion of the argument is assumed in the premise.

Are you presuming that all Christians are teaching this particular doctrine? Would you care to back that up with some evidence? The same Bible that talks of hell also talks of peace, love, justice, compassion, forgiveness, atonement, and a God who would take on human form to demonstrate these very attributes as well as eternal life offered to all. Seems to me intellectual honesty would require acknowledgment of this.

5.No Christian has been able to sensibly defend why the means of enlightenment, the story of Jesus, is so poor of a method of conversion that the room for conflict is not only vast, but invited. A test of faith is not an acceptable answer. There is no test of faith worth the infinite damnation of billions.

Support for your convictions here please. You have told other members who could not support their opinions to not post here. I presume you are a fair-minded individual who applies your edicts to yourself?

6.No Christian has been able to sensibly defend why the Bible is completely scientifically wrong as well as logically contradicting. This problem leads millions away from the Christian god, and once again, a test of faith is not an acceptable answer. There is no test of faith worth the infinite damnation of billions.

While I have not tried to defend why the Bible is completely scientifically wrong, as I believe nobody can prove that--you are certainly invited to try--I presume that you will acknowledge that billions of people over the last 2000 years or so have not been driven away from the Christian God. I suspect most were not quite as intolerant and uninformed as your rant against the sins of Christianity here. But again, support for your statement?

7.I can't worship a God that supports slavery or the stoning of children.

Me either. And Jesus directed some of his harshest condemnation at those who would mislead or harm children and one of our most beloved Christmas hymns quotes the Biblical image of "chains shall He break".

8.Christianity, and religion in general, is a proven cancer to society. It has been shown that the more secular nations, in general, experience far less rates of violence and are more charitable in that they give more foreign aid to struggling countries. Atheists, being a moderate proportion of the USA population (about 8-16%) are disproportionately less numerous in the prison population (0.21%). Why would the holy works of a perfect being be so ineffective if not hazardous?

Oh a proven cancer to society. Goody. At last something is proved. Finally we will get some scientific evidence. I eagerly await it. And I of course also want some evidence that secular nations are less violent and more charitable than are Christian nations and there are fewer Atheists in prison than people of faith. I will tell you in advance, however, that I don't accept evidence from anti-religion/anti-Christian sites but will expect statistics it is obvious that somebody didn't make up.

Look me in the eye and tell me.. "you deserve Hell."

Technically, probably everybody deserves hell since we have all done things that are despicable and which have hurt people and that we cannot take back. It has been my observation that some people are so hateful they would even attempt to destroy the faith of believers who find strength, hope, and comfort in that faith. Of all religions, however, Christianity is probably among the most obvious in that it does offer unconditional forgiveness for the worst of sins that many other religions would use to consign somebody to hell. In fact, one of the cornerstones of Christian teachings is that Christians are commanded to forgive.

You must be addressing at least one of the above 8 when posting in this thread. No going off-topic.

So how did I do? I tried very hard to stay on topic. I trust that you will apply the same rules you have made for others here to yourself.