Loving parents seek to do whatever they can to keep their baby safe. If they could, they'd wish away any dangers of disease or disaster that might befall their child

No theist ever asks why a loving god creates a world where such things are possible in the first place..... I like to ask theists: If you were 'god', would you create a world where any of these things could even potentially happen to your own children? ?

Before you answer, consider this: Take a look at how parents actually care for their children: We do everything we can to create a safe haven, a safe world for our children. We spend hours, days searching for ways to create a safe place, free from the dangers of electricity or poison or sharp objects or even swallowable objects that could cause choking.

You hear it from theists all the time: "Maybe I do take my beliefs on faith, but so do you!"

Leaving aside the theist's admission of what he really thinks of faith (not much, apparently!), is it true that everyone must take some beliefs on faith?

Well, here's the problem with that question: It contains a fallacy of equivocation.

A fallacy of equivocation occurs when an argument uses a word in two distinct senses. And the word "faith" has at least two very distinct meanings. One has a theological sense, and the other, a colloquial sense.

(This is the first in a series of discussions of common psychological defenses exhibited in internet forums.)

Do you know what a 'projection-identification' is?

Projection identification is a common psychological defense exhibited in adversarial situations. The defense occurs when a person projects out their own anger, or fear of anger from others, onto others, with the unconscious desire that the other will attack them. This attack is then held as the proof that it is the other person who is angry.

There are very good reasons to question the claim that the Gospels of the New Testament are, or rely upon, actual eyewitness accounts.

First, we need consider that all of the Gospels appear to owe their existence to the first "Gospel", the book of "Mark":

All the Gospels derive their basic story of Jesus of Nazareth from a single source: whoever produced the first version of Mark. That Matthew and Luke are reworkings of Mark with extra, mostly teaching, material added is now an almost universal scholarly conclusion, while many also consider that John has drawn his framework for Jesus’ ministry and death from a Synoptic source as well. We thus have a Christian movement spanning half the empire and a full century which nevertheless has managed to produce only one version of the events that are supposed to lie at its inception. Acts, as an historical witness to Jesus and the beginnings of the Christian movement, cannot be relied upon, since it is a tendentious creation of the second century, dependent on the Gospels and designed to create a picture of Christian origins traceable to a unified body of apostles in Jerusalem who were followers of an historical Jesus. Many scholars now admit that much of Acts is sheer fabrication.

"Mighty Power" VERSE:
Well, it's a mystifying mystery And it's more than a little bit odd This mighty power no one ever did see
This mighty power of god

Yeah he’s so mighty he’s “the” almighty
And you’d better quake with fright
And if he kills your kids and cripples you
You’d better just stay polite

Because even though he’s quite almighty
He’s mighty insecure
And he wants you to say nice things about him
And get down on the floor

And do we really need such animalistic
Gestures of submission anymore?

CHORUS:
I don’t see no mighty power
I don’t see nothin’ at all

Crack the Lid

In a Paleolithic camp, Neanderthals gather round
To put their beloved headman in the ground
They gather flowers, and the petals shower down
Pray to the spirits of ancestors, but the spirits never made a sound, cause

CHORUS
It was all superstition anyway,
It was all superstition like it is today, yeah hey

Now Pharaoh’s mummy lies beneath a mountain of stone
He goes to Paradise, but he won’t go alone
Cause he needs forty or fifty palace slaves to serve the throne
Compared to the soul of a king, what’s flesh and blood and bone, but

REPEAT CHORUS

Now Socrates must drink the poison at the break of day

I came up with this thought while buzzing one night in August 2005 and posted it on a forum. Noone came up with anything relevant to add to it though most thought it an interesting idea. Admittedly, I'm no physicist. There are some here with a greater understanding of the sciences than anyone at the previous forum(including myself), so I figured I'd expand on input by reposting it here.