You think we solely pick on Christianity? Certainly it is what we run into most, but we treat all superstitions the same, be it yours or anything. It could be claims of psychics, Loc Ness, UFOs ect ect ect.

Christianity at a minimum  poisons science (as do al other myths believed to be fact) because it's followers buy unfounded naked assertions. It is a lie that invisible  beings in the sky get girls pregnant. It takes a human sperm and a human egg to supply 2 sets of DNA to produce a zygote.

We also know that human flesh cannot survive rigor mortis.

That's just the willful ignorance that Christianity spreads about science. Globally it poisons, just like other religions, politics, in that it creates division between religions, and division within Christianity as well.

You want to demonize us because we challenge people to think about the claims they make. We are not out to force religion out of existence via force of government. We are trying to present humanity with healthy skepticism by presenting them with things they may not have thought of before, in the form of the flaws they fail to consider.

We do the exact same thing for all fantastic claims. For the same reason you reject the claim of Ouiji boards actually work, I reject the claim that a human being "poof" popped out of the dirt in a nanosecond.

If you were a passenger in a car and the driver were about to run a stop light, would you sit back and say nothing? Or would you at least try to show them the mistake they were about to make?

We are not negative  like our theists counterparts try to make us out to be. We are positive that when people challenge claims and don't merely blindly buy them, they have a much better chance in life of making better decisions.

Incognito, your list gives an awful lot of credit to Christianity it doesn't deserve, for example:

• The great universities exist as the result of the attempt to control knowledge, not disseminate it. They later evolved to be inclusive rather then exclusive.
• The founders of the major branches of science were not only not all christian, of those who were had to be because being otherwise was a death sentence.
• The principles found in the Constitution are based on Greek and Roman legal ideals, which predate Christianity.
• The claim that Jesus never been born there'd be no America is ludicrous.
• Cannibalism still pops up now and again even today, and I don't think wiping out tribes (genocide) is something to be proud of anyway.
• Alexander the Great did more to spread education than Christianity. Christianity's focus is to spread itself.

Any religion is just a dogma that often gets in the way of social change and the ongoing discovery and understanding of the cosmos. Even for those things that can be attributed to Christian dogma, the dogma itself isn't' necessary for those things to come about. Humans can be good to other humans without some imaginary creature demanding it of them.

And more importantly, the unquestioned dogmas of religion have a very dangerous side effect: Good people do good things, bad people do bad things. But, thanks to unquestioned dogma, religion can make good people do bad things.

Ask anyone who participated in the purges of Rome. Or who helped find heretics during the inquisition. Or anyone who helped disfigure someone during an exorcism. No one does evil in their own eyes. They were all saving souls. Every person killed, maimed, or tortured suffered for their own good. That is how religion poisons everything.

These are always fun.

This is a fallacious accreditation. In order for this to be a positive attribute you must assume that the Biblical decrees are in accordance with the highest moral standards (in otherwords, you're using circular reasoning).
 

Oxford?

Nope. Oxford University was founded in the township of Oxford in the 12th century by a variety of scholars whom had been expelled from the University of Paris. The township itself was already established as a center for education and represented a very broad spectrum of cultural backgrounds and religions.

Cambridge?

Nope. Cambridge was formed as a result of scholars from Oxford University having a disagreement with some of the townsfolk of Oxford, around 1209.

Now, the Ivy League schools in America you perhaps have an argument for - but even so, are you arguing that it was through treating blind faith as a virtue and dogma as unquestionable that education arose? If not, then it's hardly the exclusive province of religion to establish universities.
 

What's your point? Again, you seem to be alluding that education would not have arisen without your religion - a demonstrably false claim (Look at the largely secular Asian countries. Y'know - the ones that consistently rank top of the charts these days for producing educated & literate youth, while America sits... what? 3rd from the bottom? Ouch).

'The major branches of science?' Care to list them all so that your claim has even the remotest chance of being verifiable?

Einstein ('founder' of modern physics) was not a Christian. Freud ('founder' of Psychotherapy) was not a Christian. Galileo ('founder' of astronomy and many core methodical principles) was not a Christian. Etc, etc, etc.
 

How could you even begin to qualify this statement? It's total garbage (likely copy/pasted from a source like AnswersInGenesis)
 

*Sigh*

No, they weren't. In fact, it is implicitly spelled-out in the Constitution of the United States (which you've clearly never bothered to read for yourself) that it was not founded based on the values of any one particular religion. As Jill stated, it's primary influence was perhaps Greek in origin (though I myself tend to prefer Carl Sagan's hypothesis that the founding fathers were largely inspired more directly by enlightenment-era Holland).
 

Well, since Jesus never was born, this statement is clearly false.

Again, how could you possible qualify a statement like this?
 

No, it did not. Cannibalism is still around, and exterminating cultures who had cannibalistic rituals was hardly a lesser evil.
 

Wherever influenza has spread, the same is true.

Oh, gee whiz - influenza must be one of the key ingredients to modern civilization! We should cherish it and allow it to flourish!
 

So do most people. What's your point?
 

Many charities have been formed by many other people of different denominations. WHAT IS YOUR POINT?
 

What a joke. Christianity was the source of slavery.
 

Look, dude, half of these claims are untrue (or, at the very least, unfalsifiable due to their vague nature), while the other half are devoid of any perspective. Do you actually have a point to make when you say, for example, that hospitals are somehow a 'Christian invention'? Are you saying that modern medicine is the direct result of Biblical teaching? Are you saying that religion & dogma are he vehicles through which health care was established? Or do you not have much of a point, and are just content to parrot what your leaders have shown you?

Funny. We were just having a discussipn in another thread about how the above tendency to submit to authority can lead you away from altruism at great speed.

So are you saying that since the idea of war predates Christianity that means its not the Christian's fault that they caused and fought wars? Then I'm sure the judge will agree after I shoot and kill you that its OK because: A) Guns existed before I was born. I'm just using them and B) the concept of homicide was around before I was born. I'm just using the concept.

Yes, but roosters don't have the power to cause the sun to rise, Christians on the other hand do have the power to cause and fight wars and have done so in the past. I'm sure if roosters could cause the sun to rise they would do it as they please. Besides that you are misunderstanding our claims that Christians have caused war. We are not talking about the general idea of war. War existed long before Christianity and will likely exist long after it. Chimps have been seen having wars so likely the concept is as old as our common ancestor. What we are saying when we talk about Christians causing wars is the individual wars that they have caused.

Where did you get these numbers from and what method was used to deduce it? I'm sure you have seen graphs like this one before:

Don't you see a problem with this?

Also try looking at it this way. These "atheistic regimes" you're talking about did there killing in the 20th century. Christians did their killing longer ago from the 3rd or 4th century up till the end of the enlightenment. During this time the world's population was much smaller so where as the "atheists" may have killed a greater number they killed a smaller percentage of the world's population.

Oh no not Christmas. Many cultures celebrate the winter solstice so why can't we just celebrate during this time anyway? Even if we didn't we'd have other holidays to look forward to like Victoria Day or Valentines Day.

It's really up to the individual how much they let it poison them. Many middle of the road religious people rationalize things in a way to mask the faults of their religion. Like when Christians emphasize the verses about "loving your neighbor" rather than killing them like the god of the old testament did. They will make excuses for the old testament by saying that was something that needed to be done under the circumstances. Personally, I think the most damaging thing religion does is that it teaches you to accept extraordinary claims without any evidence. Teaching people this does not help them develop critical thinking skills.

False. The Red Cross has nothing to do with christianity. But considering the amount of other crap you posted, I am not surprised you didn't know that.

In this breath all have posted here in retort of the theist poster, we must not give the impression that we are a lynch mob, although out of many of the posters here, my fangs do seem to come out quite a bit compared to others.

I think we can be bluntly honest with our theist detractors while at the same time giving them comfort that we have no disire to use government force to take away from them in which they find comfort. We must remind them this is merely a battle of challenge in merely proving what you claim and not a demand of forcable silence.

Many here, including me, are tough on our theist friends, not because we wish them ill will in reality, but because we think they have not considered what we know and that knowledge could help them escape the shackles of myth. We cant force anyone not to believe, but we will not back down from the challenge of challenging those to think about what they claim. We simply argue you don't need what you think you need.

So when people blast us for suggesting that Jesus did not preform magic tricks, all one has to do to see how far westernized society has come is look to one quote from the man who wrote the very right  that gives both the theist the right to say what they have to say, and the right for us to challenge what they have to say.

"Question with boldness even the existence of God, for if there be one, surely he would pay more homage to reason than to that of blindfolded fear" Thomas Jefferson.

If there is any hinderance  to inquiry the worst of all is taboo. The question not asked is the worst.