The "morality/love therefore god" argument was idiotic, every time he brought it up or referenced it.  Apparently he doesn't comprehend social contract, and is completely ignorant of work in secular objective morality.  Reason can explain all morality, and justify social systems in itself.

He might as well have said "Morality goes in, morality goes out. Never a miscommunication. You can't explain that."

There is something to be said about the lack of any "kill people" prescription in atheism, but otherwise the rest was pretty much just an opinion piece.

I just skimmed it but I only saw 2.  I'll add another one.

All Christnuts must convert or be executed.

It reads like it was written by someone between the ages of 17-22 yrs old, who really isn't that profound a thinker.

That was 5 minutes of my life that I'll never get back....

Before I read the article, is one of the things we can all agree on, the global elimination of the Speedo?

I didn't think it was that bad, overall.

I found that article a few weeks ago and left some comments. They all got deleted the next day, leaving only the "I'm a christian, and it's tru what he sez about athiests !" comments.

*shrug*

And for most hear reading this, we are familiar with the back peddle of "No he won't torture you, you will just miss out on the utopia party in the eternity".

That STILL misses the point that this alleged god has the final say without the ability to consent to the outcome. You cant boot this god out of office.

You didn't consent to be born. You don't consent to disease or violence that he has watch over and selectively gets involved. You don't have the option of blaming him if things go wrong.

Funny how in western secular governments, if we don't like our leaders, we can get rid of them by voting them out of office. They cant force us to submit to them. They have to consent to us to be given power and that power can be taken away from them. That is how rational societies find common ground.

The god of Abraham can only be defined as a dictator. Even if you want to try to downplay it by saying he is not violent,(coulda fooled me with the stories of the OT and revelations). He still has the absolute power of final decision. In reality in secular pluralistic societies, the decision makers are not set in stone and they consent to us as much as we consent to them.

There is no give and take or checks and balances with the god of Abraham.

We should at least get a vote on-site to decide if they have to go back to their car and change.

"Sorry dude, you've been voted out of the speedos. Do not return until you have less dumb swimming trunks"

Yeah what an idiot there are probably hundreds of people whose deaths have signified something great for alot of people. It strikes me that the writer is a closet Christian, cause no one does the Black and white thing like they do.

 Mine too! Speedos are horrible no matter who wears one.

I would just like to send my sincerest apologies to ALL of the athiest in this forum for you have absolutely have NO IDEA what awaits you if you die rejecting Jesus. I am quite sure you have already heard this deplorable rhetoric numerous times so i will keep my spiel to a minimum. I know Jesus is real because He has actually appeared to me. I was on the verge of killing myself. He said TRUST ME. Do I have proof to offer the scientific community, of course not but it was proof enough for me. My thing is why do athiest only attack Christians? Why dont you ever see athiests back talking Mohommed or Budda. Are you afraid that some Islamic extremist will come and blow your house up. You attack only Christians because Jesus taught us to Love and Pray for our enemies so you know there will be no retribution. I would love to see an athiest go on national television and say something sarcastic about Allah. I do not think athiest have BIG enough ba--s. I also find it ironic I have never seen an athiest's of america truck pull up to a disaster site and start handing out food or supplies. Why is that? You only think of yourselves. You live for yourselves. Jesus has taught me to put other people before myself and that is something an athiest cannot or will not do. You love only yourselfs. How pitiful. Have you ever talked to former athiests and asked them what actually made them give there life to Jesus? It has been said most athiests did not have a good relationship with there father growing up, that is why they reject there Heavenly Father. I f you truly want to know if God ( Jesus ) exists, ask Him, He will prove it to you with out a doubt like He did with me. Because by rejecting Him you are making a decision that will hurt you for eternity and I really do not want to see anyone go to Hell until they have ALL THE FACTS. ASK HIM IF YOU TRULY WANT TO KNOW IF HE EXISTS, HE WILL PROVE IT TO YOU. BELIEVE ME YOU DO NOT HAVE ALL THE FACTS. I always questioned whether God existed and when I needed Him to prove it to me, He did. Please dont reject Him until you have truly asked Him to prove His existence to you. .......Ron C 

 Personally I'd like to see more criticism of Mormons because most Christians may not consider them to be part of the group. They may need special attention.

Ron's theology:

"I have no proof for my assertion but if you do not agree with me it will torture you for all eternity despite the fact I don't want it to".

Ron, why don't you hitch your knackers a bit higher in your budgie smugglers and try to show moral consistency for a change. That's right - killing and torture are wrong - even when you're god. Oh, and fuck off Jesus, Allah, Buddha and any other imaginary friends there might be hunched outside the universe watching me pee. I think it's high time we stopped being nice to religious fanatics who hitch a ride on secular tolerance. 

P.S. BTW, Ron, I'm glad you didn't kill yourself. I guess that's something good that came out of your private Damascan moment, though most of what you are saying here is nevertheless thoughtless, unprovable crap.

Yep your rhetoric is pretty deplorable. But every time that I hear garbage like this, it reinforces my atheism all the more.

What about all the other people that commit suicide daily ? Guess Jesus just ignores them but somehow CHOSE you right ? Christians do love to feel special and "ABOVE" others don't they ? You can't stand the thought that your just down here on Earth with all of the rest of us can you ? There are lots of people in the insane asylums that claim to "see" and "talk " to Jesus. Sure your not hallucinating ? Or maybe just filled with wishful thinking ? Hopefully, you fouhd reasons to live because YOU want to live and have found valid reasons to live, not because of religion.

Oh give me a  break. I hold no respect for any religious belief or superstition.

 There wasn't any real message of love in any of the teachings of Jesus. It was just insane, hate-filled garbage. Christians have a pretty violent history. I don't see the members of Wetboro Baptist Church praying for their enemies when they picket military funerals with signs that say: God Hates Fags on them. I don't see a majority of your religion teaching any love and tolerance. Would you like some specific examples ?

Plenty of Atheist and secular charities .

Wow, such hate-filled and prejudice assertions from the loving and forgiving religion of Christianity. The one that teaches you to judge not and to turn the other cheek, but I guess that you ignore the parts of your religion that do not suit you when you wish. Hypocritical, double-talk and self-contradictory, like most Christians that I encounter.

I am actually going to say that Christians only love themselves. What kind of a person could find any peace in heaven if he knew that people were burning in hell ? What kind of a self-obsessed person could waste his whole life on the hope that he was going to get an eternal reward so that he could smugly assure himself that other people were going to burn ? What kind of person would worship a tyrant ? Why does god hide ? Why do I have to be at the point of despair before he would reveal himself ? What about all the other people suffering from depression that he DOESN'T reveal himself to ? Does he not care about them ?

I'd be curious as to how you would answer that.

That first line of yours really covers it for me. Christianity and islam are selfish attempts to live forever at the expense of virtually all other life. Christians do only love themselves while paying lip service to empathy.

That is why I would rightfully reject any such God  - a god that would condemn a person to eternal torment simply for not believing in him, especially when he has apparently constructed a world that is so full of injustice to people who have done nothing to deserve being killed or otherwise suffer from natural disaster, or from some horrible disease, or simply have their minds and/or bodies decay unnecessarily as they age, a world that looks more as if it was 'designed' by a spiteful prankster than a 'loving' God.

So the penalty for people who exercise their minds, who really look at the world as honestly and widely as they can, in an effort to determine the true nature of reality, to actually gather ALL THE FACTS, and still honestly see no sign of the God described by Christianity, or any other religion, is to be condemned to a Hell?? So only the feeble minded, or those who can lie to themselves and claim to believe in this invisible creature who loves the world, despite all the evidence to the contrary, only these are to be let into heaven to suck up to this tyrant forever?

So even when you yourself say you would not like to see someone so condemned simply for ignorance, can you not see that you are admitting that you believe in a God who is UNJUST enough to do just that? So you are 'believing' purely out of fear...

There is no evidence for a God creator, and even if there was a God, all the evidence of the history of the world is that He would have to be a malevolent creature.

There are actually fewer ultimate mysteries if we don't assume a God, and the 'problem of evil' disappears entirely - unfortunate events are entirely consistent with an ultimately purposeless reality. What purpose there is is that of individual conscious beings - ourselves.

objective personal pronouns for god that shit me the most. When I see those I could scream. He may not exist but I hate Him.

We all know this was a type and dash.  This guy isn't competant enough to defend himself.

Oh and for the record, I humbly prayed hundreds if not a thousand or so times for god to reveal himself to me, eventually I stopped making the effort.  

Now be nice. I'm sure its not this guys fault that he is a blithering retard. 

I know right, or maybe I just wasn't praying hard enough.

I did that once in a forum debate against some theists who claimed God would reveal Himself to a genuine seeker.  It was rough getting myself mentally prepared to make it a 'serious' request that a potentially unknown deity reveal itself, but I *think* I manged to make an honest query to the nether.

I'm sure you can guess the result of the exercise

I can't tell in retrospect, but I'm sure that his attitude, plus the fact that we got along quite well, would have helped get me going in the atheist direction earlier than I might have otherwise.

I can only guess how I might have responded if brought up with strong religious indoctrination from my parents.

You don't say how much, if at all, your father actually tried to persuade you to adopt religion, which is really more relevant. "Hippie-ish" at least suggests to me that he would have been more open to you going your own way.

Of course I was almost certainly more rationally inclined anyway. I was never really into Theism, I was just aware that it was a set of ideas that was 'out there'. So I really had no actual 'adoption' of atheism, it was more a matter of my thoughts starting off without any strong pressure, even from my conventionally religious Mom, toward religion. By age 10, I think I was well into atheism, AFAICR.

It may be of interest that by my later teens/early twenties, I was definitely in disagreement with my Dad on political issues.

It seems to me now more a matter that on issues where we already inclined somewhat the same way, it became re-inforcing, whereas where we disagreed, it did not have any noticeable counter-effect.

I progressively became more confidently anti-theism, more as a consequence of my growing understanding of the world through Science, encouraged by discussions with my Dad, who was also strongly into science. The dominant realization seems to have been a progressive loss of respect for 'authority' as a basis for my beliefs. Lack of God belief was just that, an absence of positive belief, which became more consciously rejecting of unsupportable ideas.