I know the story's a tad old, but - despite the mighty distance between where I live and where it occurred - the Columbine Massacre still manages to get itself atop the topic pile in my neck of the woods here or there.

A question (and we'll leave actual facts, like a certain misattributed quote, out of this one for the time being): Both Cassie Bernall and Rachel Scott, beautiful young women about to graduate and move on to whatever grander exploits, were shot dead during the murderous rampage at Columbine and are, to this day, refereced to by a large number of Christians as martyrs to the Christian faith. Both Scott and Bernall were (falsely) alleged to have been asked to effectively choose between saying "Yes" as to whether or not she believed in God or being shot at point-blank range, and chose the former option.

In your opinion, Christian readers, was that a noble and heroic decision?

EDIT: Your posts, unaccredited, may be pasted into my blog on this website. Just FYI.

Something totus_tuus brought up in another thread bothered me a little. I didn't realize there was such an infantile idea of heaven in (I'm guessing) Catholicism:

I was just wondering if we would see a pattern with Atheists or Theists?

My favorite thing would have to be music! In the words of Jimi Hendrix, “music is a safe kind of high”

In a recent discussion on another thread, I was asked by Ronin-dog to explain my fear of death in light of my Christian belief in a life after this mortal one.  I hought this might be a good subject for a thread of its own.  Now that I've begun writing, I realize that the interest might be mine alone, since the materialist viewpoint is that death is it, that nothing follows this physical existence except oblivion.  So, this may end up being a pretty short discussion.

Let me bgin by saying that I fully realize that any testimony regarding the existence of an afterlife is totally apocryphal, colored by emotion, and with some compelling scientific explanantions.   My purpose here is not to examine the evidence of an afterlife, but to explain my faith in such, and how that belief governs my actions.

Oddly enough, Ronin-dog's question caught me in the midst of a re-reading of Pope Benedict XVI's encyclical letter, Spe Salvi, that is, On Hope, so this is a subject I've been pondering a lot of late.

Let me begin with a favorite Shakespeare quote, and we'll see where that gets us.  It is from Hamlet's famous soliloquy in Act III, scene I (JCgadfly, if you're readin this I'm sure you know it well, since I've heard that every actor dreams of playing Hamlet, LOL)...

OK, been mulling this one over for awhile. Plz lemme know yer thoughts, theists (fundies especially), atheists and/or otherwise...

Here goes:

You're either "with God" or your not. No in between. Accept Jesus or else. Therefore,  if you are not "with God" you cannot be "of the good" and are, in fact, evil. How then, for example, can so many in the "evil atheist" scientific/medical community be so consumed w/ helping others (extending life,  alleviating pain, etc). By the typical xian/fundy definition above, atheists simply CANNOT do good.

There it is. Am I missing something?

Thanks in advance!

In the March 19 online issue of The Economist there's an interesting article on a new study into the evolution of religious belief.

The Science of Religion 

Started in Sep, 2007, "Explaining Religion" is a $3 million study that includes research into both the evolutionary origin of religion and the biological basis for religious experiences.

Anything that brings us closer to finally ridding humanity of religion's deleterious influence gets my full support. Superstition has ruled human consciousness long enough. It's time to get out collective head out of the clouds and get back down to earth with some semblance of rational thought.

NOTE: I've been testing this argument on another forum for a while and it's doing pretty well. I'd like to see if anyone here can find a flaw in it. Thanks ahead of time.

Many Christians argue that atheists should assume the burden of proof. They argue this from the premise that a statement must be disproven before it can reasonably be disbelieved. In other words, they hold that until a disproof of a statement is constructed, the only viable positions toward it are agnosticism or belief. In this thread, I will reapply that premise to a different argument.

Let's assume that it is proper not to disbelieve a statement until it is refuted. Now, let's assume I make the assertion that there exists, somewhere in the universe, a book containing successful refutations of all arguments for God, and a successful disproof of the existence of God. It would follow that the Christian should not disbelieve this assertion.

The Christian, it appears, is now either an agnostic toward the existence of the book, or a believer in the book. If he chooses to become an agnostic toward the book, he is a fortiori an agnostic toward God as well, since the existence of the book would entail the nonexistence of God. If he chooses to become a believer in the book, he is obviously no longer a Christian.

Conclusion: The idea that a statement must be refuted before it can rationally be disbelieved is incompatible with Christianity.

So I had this argument with an atheist where he said that somebodyhad proved using modal logic that theism is coherent, I didn't understand what that meant since I do not understand modal logic, and that therefore he is no longer be considered irrational for their belief in God and since they have experienced God is names that they can rationally say that God exists.

What I said is that that seems ludicrous because what if I say that I have experienced a unicorn, does this mean I can rationally say that unicorns exist? he replied that I would only be one person and I guess rationality in numbers. 

We also talked about this weird thing that theists base their beliefs off of the fact that God exists. which also seemed absurd to me, I don't think most theists have as a premise for each of their beliefs God is real.

What does everyone think of these arguments?

Now the entire concept of christianity is based on the how god needed a blood sacrifice of his son in order to subside his wrath against us for eating the forbidden fruit. By sinning and disobeying him, god caused sin to enter the world, as to say the world was without sin prior to that event. How could adam and eve sin, if sin was not yet in the world? This can't be said to be a metaphor, because as i stated christianity is based on this concept.

Im just wondering can anyone help me with this claim by a catholic friend he claims that most religious historian even secular non catholics ones agree that Saint Peter was in Rome and that the bones they found have been scientifically tested to prove it. Is this true and if u dont know than can u point me towards resources that would tell me. Im most interested in anything that tells me what mainstream non religious scholars have to say simply coz 1) as far as im aware these people are the experts and 2) they seem less likely to be biased.

P.S. i am a long time reader first time poster and i respect the Rational response Squad very much