Are the people in the bible belt to dangerous to be allowed to vote? What makes them dangerous? It's probably their religious faith. The same faith you profess.

I once heard an xian state that it was immoral to impose a life sentence on someone, it is more human to kill them, which is what god is going to do to their soul on judgement day.

In the following quote:

"Plain and simple, the gospels are historical in that they write about a historical figure with a message and was executed as a criminal, but its really 'sacred history in sacred time'. The gospels were written so that you and I would believe. They say it themselves"

I see where the foundation of your belief lies. One of the foundations, at least. A 'sacred history in a sacred time'. You arbitrarily declared it sacred. It was actually compiled around 400AD which, by most historical measures, was a rather ugly time.

The logical fallacy is larger than that, though. What makes a time sacred? Why this one era of five thousand years of recorded western history? Well, mainly because a great many people agree that this time should be sacred. It feels good to agree with a lot of people about something as fundamental as this. It felt good for a great many Germans to agree with their blonde-haired neighbors. It is a natural human instinct to seek community, especially in these fragmented and isolating times.

But that's all it is--human instinct. There is nothing inherantly sacred about that era or your sacred text. It is a consensual delusion agreed-upon by a billion human beings to reinforce each other's denial of the void inside. And I am not saying that your bible or the man and times it depicts or your faith in some of your fellow people isn't sacred. All of those things are sacred. But so are a great many other things. Waterfalls are sacred.

The springs that existed for millions of years, the springs that watered a field that sustained life for billions of creatures for millions of years that are now nothing more than fodder for the name of the town Bart Simpson lives in--those springs are sacred, too. And the fields that no longer exist. And all the forgotten animals. Those things are sacred, too. They are even more sacred now that they have vanished down the memory-hole.

Did you know that Fortescue, New Jersey was one of the world's top caviar-producing regions a hundred years ago? Well, the christians that lived in the area did not think sturgeon were sacred. And that is our complaint.

We can see the beauty and the 'sacred' in the myth that sustains you. Most of us, as atheists, are not immune to the charms and seductions of having faith. Faith in anything is a very, very nice feeling. But we insist on seeing all of the sacred in all things. And christians, but really religious people in general...well, it is a human trait, not a religious one. But the mindset that rapes the delaware river of a magnificent fish the size of a buick is encouraged by a refusal to respond with reason to dire human predicaments.

Sacred is a luxury. Allowing yourself to stay vulnerable enough to see the sacred, to see god in all of his creation, requires that you deny his existance entirely. Atheists are not angry with christians for their preachiness or for george bush. george bush represents greed, not religion. Everyone but the fundamentalists can see that. Atheists are just tired of watching people respond to strife, the emotional stress that occurs because they are poor and hungry, by denying all of the sacred, all of the beauty, except for a small and narrowly defined piece of beauty. Atheists view religious people as fools walking through life with blinders on.

Do you know what blinders were? I'm not talking down to you, I just have more education than most people and sometimes use refrences they may not understand. Before there were cars, people rode horses. Everybody knows that. But as people got more prosperous overall (due to advances made through rational thought and usually against the wishes of the clergy, I might add)...but the overall amount of wealth people as a species are able to produce has been steadily increasing since forever. Due in no small part to christianity's influence, a few people kept most of the wealth and gathered in cities. Eventually there became enough horse-drawn carriages that traffic became a problem. Not traffic accidents, per se, but the horses had to walk too close to each other and were always scared. And scared horses are dangerous--horses are large, powerful animals. So men invented 'blinders', something to take away the horse's peripheral vision so it couldn't see the world around it and therefore could work in a city environment that horses were never designed for.

Atheists view religious people as powerful animals that need to be shielded from most of the beauty in the world lest they panic and hurt people. So aside from the track record of almost utter failure at uplifting the human condition and legitimate responsibility for some of mankind's most depraved ongoing behaviors, atheists take umbrage at the christian insistance that everything else is not beautiful, is not sacred. With no god at all I can see the sacred in a cockroach or the AIDS virus or a reeking pile of dead mussles washed up on a beach. And I know you can't.

Before I go I'd like to point out another thing that christians fail to see the beauty in: women. Christianity has no goddess. It is a stretch to claim that all christians hate women, but you obviously hold them in lower regard than men. And that, more than the lost forests and freedoms and sturgeon, is why I write here.

Damn. I had a whole lot of writing vanish when I accidently hit a link button. You know I'm dedicated, cause I'm going to write the whole damn thing again.

Actually, the new testament came about when a bunch of priests put it together centuries after the supposed churches in question. Yes, there were pockets of early christians in Rome, but the "church" didn't organize until well after the books were supposedly written.

This is, to my knowledge, a very generous estimate of when Mark was written. Let's just agree that it was decades after Jesus supposedly lived. Even if it was forty years later, that's a long time. Neither here nor there, really. I just think you're being a bit disingenuous in trying to produce reliability.

Plain and simple, the gospels are not historical. They are full of inaccuracies and internal contradictions. Check out the forums here. There are several good posts about the historical inaccuracies, as well as pointers to the exact verses that contradict one another.

You admit that the bible contradicts itself. Combine that with the lack of historicity, and you're skating on thin ice trying to push it through as a valid document to base your life on.

No, he is not derived from historical analysis. He's derived from wishful thinking. The other non-biblical sources are virtually non-existent, and they admit no historical accuracy, only the legend. Maybe he existed, but there's no historically verifiable evidence for it.

Pascal's Wager is a pile of poopy!! See any of the dozens of refutations of this tired and haggard argument.

Now you're making sense.

You have a gift for understatement.

In other words, it all comes down to believing despite evidence to the contrary. That's just plain silly, if you ask me.

You've got your facts wrong. Lots of animals can reason. Abstract reasoning is relatively limited, and seems to be common only in the higher animals... dolphins, chimps, etc...

Well, science has already explained the bible. It's a made up story that lots of people believe for irrational reasons. Science is working diligently on the brain. We're making a lot of progress, too. Have you heard of the remote controlled rats? Neato stuff.

Nah. Comes off pretty well, I'd say. I hope you'll respect that I'm not trying to put you down, either. I only want you to check your facts and examine your logic. Both are somewhat flawed.

I say less praying, more rationality. That would be a good start towards peace and unity, if you ask me.

Cheeky monkey. Don't be silly.

Cheeky, cheeky, cheeky. I'll give you a dollar if you go to Palestine and try to sell that on a street corner.

You take care, man. Don't let us run you off. We like it when you answer our criticisms (provided you bring new evidence! We don't like for you to repeat what we already read.)