The following was an email i sent to the Rational Responders about their recent debate they had. I had one particular part to critisize and I tried to back myself up well. I guess I'll have to see what others think of the conversation. It will be interresting to say the least. btw, please, I do want to keep this respectful and there was no disrespect intended in any of this. Thank you

Email 1:

I first want to commend you for your work, and sticking to your belief especially with all the harsh friction you get. With that said, you might be surprised to hear that I'm a Christian and am fully devoted to the God you say is non-existant. I heard about a debate you recently had on a news bullitin. IT was the The ABC News "Nightline Face Off". I don't know much about you or how you normally respond, but I truely have to say that not all of that debate was approached by you in a "rational" way. e.g. When debate moderator Martin Bashir asked the atheists what would happen if they're wrong about God, "Kelly" had a quick answer: "I would rather go to hell than go to heaven and worship a megalomaniacal tyrant." now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that everyone who claims to follow my God uses "rational" means to get their point across either. I'm saddened to say that many don't use rationality. e.g. "im serios i luv GOD and he luvs me an done day i will see him rein up and destroy all of you you dumbass!!!!!!" I would like to try some rationality. That is what I believe my God would do. Now he was called by someone of your organization a megalomaniacal tyrant. If you've ever read the bible, He only has a view of supreme Soveregnty because of his just and upright ways. Before I lose you, I know you don't see him as just and upright. There are parts in the bible that talk about how his ways are just and upright. I don't believe you have the time to read through all of that. If you want I can present that to you in another email or in other ways. God was even reminded by Moses about how a certain reaction that God was thinking of may not make him seen as just and upright, so God changed his approach. But besides being just and upright, if he truely is the God he claims to be, e.g. he created heaven, Earth, the universe, Time and everything in between, and also put in place the rules and morals for our lives, then how could he not claim to be the Sovereign Supreme being that he is? He was also called a Tyrant. Using the comparisons of "Paintings and their painter" If a painter screws something up, if it's not perfect in his eyes... then does he not destroy it and start on a clean slate or paper or whatever you want to use? With that view, we are a "creation" of God according to the bible. in Noah's time, everyone had "not come out the way he intended them to be" so he destroyed all of it, except for the part that worked. For one to claim that God was unjust in doing that, they are also claiming it is unjust to punish a murderer, a rapist, a theif, etc. Basically making murder, rape, molestation, stealing, fraud, etc. all legal and ok. If you're not seeing the connection, those reasons listed above were the reasons why God destroyed those people. Another viewpoint to consider. If God is real, then he made us physical beings on earth. It is also mentioned that we have souls. So death on Earth (if God is real of course) isn't exactly death. it's just being seperated from our fleshy bodies. So to "kill" people because they were not doing right, isn't actually mass murder, but a just punishment, because they could still change their ways. Revelation talks about 2 resurrections, one of the people who were followers of christ, and the other of everyone else. Everyone else gets the chance to change their lives and do what God put in our hearts to understand as good and to follow Christ. By the way, following christ if you have an issue with that is a whole other topic that i again can get into in another email or in other ways. So in conclusion, with that understanding, to call God a megalomaniacal tyrant would not really be a "rational" conclusion about my God. If God is real, all the rules of the Bible have to apply, if God is not real,

I think that the seriousness of religion is really proven by people who choose to convert to another religion that their spouse espouses. LOL, I'm such a funny pun-maker. Anyways, this proves that religion is not actually how these people see the world, but rather it is just another thing they use to describe themselves. You know when you have to fill out a form and it asks your race and religion. The first time I filled out a form like that, I put down protestant as my religion. Why would I do that? Because I was a little kid and I thought, as apparently many people still do, that it was just another attribute of my being.

God is a dog. Jesus is the son of a dog. The Virgin Mary made it with a dog. The Bible doesn't belong in the schools because it is too easy. The dog that god is probably is Spot from books about seeing Spot run.

BOOBS! Not that I'm complaining, boobs are glorious indeed. It just kind of caught me off guard, and all I could do was type "BOOBS!" like a kid. LoL... How sad of me.

My friend Simon was right, Kelly's boobs can win all debates. When he watched her debate with Cameron and that other nut, he said, "I have no idea what she just said, but I agree 100%." Hah, all after staring slack-jawed while she spoke. Kelly's boobs will overthrow the Earth.

I just watched the unedited version of the Nightline debate. I wanted to pull my hair out, as I always do when I see a debate with a theist, or myself try to debate with a theist. Why? Because they refuse to realize that you cannot prove the factuality of a book with that book itself. The bible is not proof of its reality, just as Harry Potter does not prove that Harry, Hermione, and Ron et al really exist. It's like when we were little and learning to define words. The first rule of thumb: you cannot use the word in the definition. To do so renders the definition worthless. If you didn't know the definition of the word "fast," and you looked it up and the definition read "to go fast," you'd have an utterly worthless definition on your hand and you'd have no idea what the word fast meant.

I am probably going to far with this thread but it's been really iterateing for me as of late. What really sparked this was somethings I've heard in my class and read in my book. In class people use faith in the trust way all the time, i personally think it should be just uses as a religious term. We have a perfectly good word for what they mean and it's trust. This cannot be misconstrued to mean religous faith at all it means what it says trust. Inside the book with in the same paragraph it talks about trusting one's self =faith and having belief without evidence =faith. This seems to me to be a very ambious way of using the terms when we have a way of differeanting them as i said above.

Let me preface this by saying that I do not believe in god, but am not by any means an atheist. I believe in nothing. And by even classifying myself as an atheist, or an agnostic, or a satanist, would imply a belief in something. I don’t believe in believing in anything. I have no desire to be associated with the Rational Response Squad, and no desire to ever be labeled an atheist. I offer my insight on this topic simply as a fairly educated, reasonable individual capable of observing the world around him and using his own intellect to form logical, rational conclusions and opinions. I do not depend on the media or pop culture to dictate how I think. I do not claim to be an expert on religion, god, space, philosophy, history, or science. However, one does not need to be an expert in order to form reasonable, rational conclusions on this subject. In the mortal words of Ray Comfort, all one needs are “eyes that can see and a brain that works.”

Evolution simply cannot account for all the evidence.

Younger fossils being burried under older ones, long extinct animals being discovered to actually still exist, canyons forming in weeks, C14 still found in coal and diamonds, an increase in the amount of C14 in the atmosphere (which was supposed to have already reached equilibrium), sedimentary rock layers that were apparently formed by water, concentrated bone graveyards scattered over the world, polystrate fossils of animals and plant life, suboceanic cities and artifacts, fossils and evidence of human giants, unexpected radiometric dating results being dismissed as error, human fossils and man-made artifacts found in stone and coal that was suposed to have been formed long before the existence of humans, fossilized artifacts known to have existed less than a hundred years ago...

I have been discussing athiesm with my brother on email, he is thiest i am strong athiest. I post this because i know that in becoming an athiest is sometimes hard and traumatic but it is for the better.

For me coming to terms with the nonexistence of an after life and and finding a reason to go on as a living being was exceptionally difficult. A person cannot really be an athiest and believe in an afterlife, they also find it difficult to find purpose in life.

If you can make it through the "Agnostic" or middle ground position, without going insane
and realize like i did that there is no god/or after life then you will be ok, but what helps is to have a purpose. I have a beautiful wife and a genius one year old son, they keep me going.

To me, Plato's 'Euthyphro' still gives us the quintessential outline of why any God must have been made up by humans. The idea is that, unlike all other objective facts that we know about the world, for some reason it's up to humanity to specify all of God's attributes a priori, or by definition. Although Socrates was talking to Euthyphro about 'piety,' any suggested attribute of God can be equally called under question in the same way. We define 'the sun' to be something like 'the fiery ball in the sky,' but this definition is always open to revision based on further investigation in a way that the concept of God is not. And the (epistemic) difference between these two concepts is very important. Consider the following: