Ahh, but the OT has a man living inside a big fish, a man being made out of dirt, a woman turning into salt... Deffinitely a tough call.

I'm going to have to go with the OT, mainly because of creation story, noah's flood, giants, plagues, evil god, babel, super old people, super bears, supermen, burning bushes, bread falling from the sky, big fish that eat people and spit em out alive after seven(?) days, people turning into salt, supposedly holy men screwing their daughters, heaven is in th sky (ascend), talking snakes, flaming swords, physical angels, etc, etc, etc. 

Old testament, easily. See all above posts.

Your definition of what "irrational" is leaves much ambiguous. I personally see no irrationality, of course, but I see no reason to say that the virgin birth, or hell, or the possibility of resurrection is irrational, per se. A virgin birth could happen by God's fertilization of an ovum by a miracle. There is no absolute logical contradiction. Likewise, hell is absolutely possible. No logical contradiction. Whence the irrational?

Yours In Christ, Eternal Wisdom,
StMichael

First, there is good reason to believe that these articles of faith are true from miracles that support the one whose authority reveals them.
Second, God's existence is a matter of natural knowledge that does not need Revelation. You can read my blog post on that.
Third, no contradiction exists in the statement that an all-powerful, all-knowing, and benevolent being exists.

Yours In Christ, Eternal Wisdom,
StMichael

I think the NT is more irrational. After all the OT is more like a combined racial history / set of laws / literary hero cycle than a simple religious text, recounting hundreds of years of half-remembered events, stories, laws and general mad shit.  It's like a combination of the Odyssey, Socrates' teaching and Hessiod, if the Greeks had been monotheistic and chased around the desert for a thousand years, losing some parts, making up others etc.

The NT on the other hand was written well into Roman times, when real civilization was properly established: concrete buildings, libraries, running water, astronomy, trade, representational art, the rule of law (albeit at the point of a Roman spear), medicine, etc was widespread across the Mediterranean and Near East.  That large numbers of people actually fell for it shows the extraordinary power of delusion that zealots / con men can tap into.

Christianity was swept to power in the Greek and Roman world by the military conquest of Constantine, not the strength of their arguments. If not for Constantine, you'd probably be trying to convince us we were fools not to believe in the god Jupiter instead of this Jesus character.

I'd say that the god of the OT was more irrational, saying and doing things that just don't make much sense for a god. At least in the NT they had figured out that if a god were to exist, sacrificing people, animals, etc. to him would be just nutty.

Diosdato I want you to do something for me:

Put your hand out in front of your face - and now bitch-slap yourself as hard as you can for misrepresenting evolution and misusing the word "theory."

Did you ever think about actually learning about the theory of evolution before comming in here and saying it's irrational?  I would really suggest that you go and learn about it from an actual scientific source rather than some creationist propoganda site.  When you do that, feel free to come back and show us your evidence for a designer. 

I wasn't claiming that hell was a logical contradiction, I was more claiming that the definition of your god was.

I'm assuming that your god is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good.  If I'm wrong in any of these assumptions, please let me know as I don't want to be accused of making a straw-man.

If you god is all good, then it should want everyone to go to heaven correct?

According to your holy book the only way to get to heaven is through Jesus.

Your god has the power to make sure everyone knows about Jesus.

Your god created millions of people knowing they would never hear about Jesus, let along not believe in him.

Therefore your god is creating people knowing full well that they will go to hell and have no hope of ending up anywhere else.

This contradicts the assumptions I made above of your god being all-good.

These leads to 2 possible conclusions. 1) I defined your god incorrectly, in which case, by all means correct me. 2) Your god doesn't exist has his definition is a logical contradiction.

 You're either a liar or an idiot.

1) Evolution is a FACT. "Natural Selection" is a theory of how the PROCESS of evolution occurs. "Theory" DOES NOT MEAN GUESS.

2) Evolution is NOT random chance. Your whole "statistical improbability" statement is pure, concentrated bollyotz.

 I don't know why I'm bothering to tell you all this. Any xian stupid enough to put out that kind of argument is obviously not really interested in learning anything.

Someone needs to develop time travel technology so we can send people like this back to the Dark Ages. They wouldn't be able to cause any damage to the timeline, since they don't know anything about modern science anyway. 

A multitude of various beliefs. And these beliefs were not purely "pagan." Most of it was considered to be allegorical, if you knew much about paganism. Vast numbers of folks were Stoics and Epicureans in Rome and Greece at the time of Christ. They were philosophers, not idiots.

Yours In Christ, Eternal Wisdom,
StMichael

THe idiot part is debatable........Let's compare ACT, SAT scores, W-2's or anything else that you would use to determine someone's level of intelligence.

Touche, I agree that the process of evolution is constantly at work. What is not FACT is the origin of life.  Sorry for mis-wording my statement. If you believe that the origins of life are accepted as fact you are the idiot.

Once again, you're right. Man you guys really pick a part a sentence. You're not only rationalists, you're literalists. My statement of statistical improbability was directed towards the theory of biogenesis, not evolution. I can see how my wording was errant.

That wasn't very nice. The sad thing is, I was once like you. I was lost in the darkness of unbelief. As I have stated before, my beliefs are not the result of religious indoctrination, but by the providence of God when I was a freshman in college. I didn't believe in God until I researched the scientific evidence for both evolution and creation. I read The Blind Watchmaker among other books and couldn't get over the same hurdle Stanley Miller ran into. Life cannot be duplicated nor created from the materials available in the early atmosphere.  This discovery led me to first believe in an intelligent designer. This was the first step in my theist walk. The argument for which god to follow is a whole other tale which I will be more than happy to expand on if you like. 

I'm a theist who agrees that some of the most heinous and disgusting acts in history and recent times were and are done in the name of religion. I agree with you that people must be freed from the concept of fear that drives most religions. My bible says:

"There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love." 1 John 4:18

Furthermore, John goes on to say:

"We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen." 1 John 4:19-20

Those Christians that spread fear are wrong!! God doesn't want us to choose Him out of fear, but out of love and admiration for his Creation. I am truly sorry for the "religion" of hate that American Christianity has become. God will have a severe punishment for those "Christians" who go about doing things in Jesus' name, yet turn and kiss the devil in private. 

The problem with the indoctrination of America is that man has twisted the message of God to fit their personal desires and wishes. I go to church, teach Sunday school, work with the youth group, but I maintain a certain level of doubt when it comes to a man's modern interpretation of the bible. My personal view on the bible text is not something I try to impose on others, rather, I find it more interesting to study the facts and history surrounding biblical texts. My Sunday school teaching is more of a historical perspective than a interpretive study. My prayer life and my personal time with the bible is when God uses his Word to speak to my personal situation.

Religion is not supposed to be a outward thing as far as running around and forcing others to agree. It is my duty, to share with others what has been a true blessing to me, just as I would share a tip for a great restaurant or tv show. Those people that run around condemning others will find out the hard way that God's message is love not fear.

I never claimed that evolution had anything to do with abiogenesis. I don't think I've ever seen an atheist make that claim, but I HAVE seen it made on NUMEROUS occasions by Xians.

Arguments relating to statistics are just as irrelevant when applied to abiogenesis.

Considering your replies here, I apologize for my statements. You have demonstrated that you are more intelligent than I gave you credit for. I hope you can understand my reaction, considering the "evidence" you presented is usually presented by the ignorant who have no idea what they're talking about.

Well, I'm just the opposite. As a child my mom used to drag me to church every Sunday. For a while, I bought into some of it. As I grew up, though, I began moving away from it, through Deism to Agnosticism and, finally, deciding that belief in any form of gods was ridiculous.

There IS NO "scientific evidence" for creationism. If there were, the religious community would have written papers on it, and they would have been published in SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS.

Unfortunately, I don't have the link. But I do remember reading some time ago that some scientists were able to generate some form of amino acids (If I'm remembering correctly. I admittedly may not be) in an artificial environment which simulated what is believed to be the conditions of our planet in its early years. Maybe someone else here remembers this and still has a link to it?

I don't think there's anyone here who will deny that there is SOME good in the Xian bible. We contest, however, that it's goodness can exist independently of it.

1 John has a number of quotes about it being bad to hate your brother. And yet:

Interesting, no?

#4

Once again, I appologize for being rude in my earlier post. Unlike some Xians I have dealt with in the past, I am more than willing to admit when I've been wrong.

Oh, Snap!

Another thing to make the New more irrational - Revelations. This chapter was obviously written by either a psychotic or someone under the influence of halluncinatory drugs.