I've been thinking on the idea of God as a supernatural being pretty intensely for the past several months, and I've arrived at the conclusion that if God exists, he is natural. The posts of deludedgod, Hambydammit, and Todangst have compelled me to reexamine my beliefs - which is something I try to make a habit of anyway, but albeit more intensely this time around. So guys, I humbly thank you for correcting me.

In hindsight, the entire idea of a supernatural realm is pretty silly. The thing is, I don't think I ever believed in a supernatural realm once I really started thinking about it, and I think quite a few Christians would eventually agree with me if they in turn thought about it for a while. For instance, my dad is really big into the string theory, more specifically his spin on it - that God exists in the 6 remaining spatial dimensions of ten total as outlined by Michio Kaku in his book Hyperspace. I don't know how much respect Kaku and the different variations on the string theory have garnered on this forum, but that's not really relevant to my post. The point is, my dad has sort of unwittingly stated that he doesn't believe in a supernatural God, which is incredible to me.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article2368534.ece

EARLY half the British think that religion is harmful, according to a poll carried out by YouGov. Yet more than half also believe in God “or something”.

The YouGov poll commissioned by John Humphrys, the broadcaster and writer, found that 42% of the 2,200 people taking part considered religion had a harmful effect.

“One reason might be the publicity attracted by a handful of mad mullahs and their hate-filled rhetoric,” writes Humphrys in his new book, In God We Doubt, an extract of which appears in today’s Sunday Times News Review.

Hey,

Brian, Kelly, since it appears you've completely dodged me on that talk we were supposed to have, I'll take your advice and post some questions here that I would have liked to discuss.

#1  You guys are evolutionists, since that's the only viable option for an atheist.  However, creationists are often derided for their lack of credentials, their lack of evidence, their weak arguments, their rejection by the mainstream, etc.

However, pretty much all of this fits the bill of the Christ Mythicist.  Its rejected by the mainstream, its not taught as fact in any public school, it relies on outdated, or uncredentialed "scholarship" and the arguments are either ignorant or weak.

So I am later today going to be debating with a strong Christian friend of mine about his beliefs and he is going to try to prove to me that God does exist.  We started last night but it was late when we started and he was using a book to help him out (it was called something along the lines of I Don't Have ENough Faight to be an Atheist or something of the like) while I was sitting there from everything I know from memory.  He stumbles upon his words a lot, but that's fine.

But one of the arguments he might have me on (since I am not well educated in this field yet) is the one of the Big Bang.  I use the thought of well, maybe the Universe is here for enternity and that it is matter and it cannot be created nor destroyed (forgot which law that is).  But then he uses the second law of therodynamics and says that everything loses energy and so there has to be a beginning and end to the universe if it is running out of energy.

http://www.thoughtware.tv/videos/show/392

this short clip from a radio broadcast will help demonstrate the question better.

Hello, RR community. I am the immanent incarnation of the supernatural realm Limbo. I have taken physical form to tell you science geeks how to save the world from religious fundamentalism and extremism before humanity blows itself to bits. You see, I have a plan.

But there's good news and bad news. The good news is it's something even you nerds can do, if you try. The bad news is it has nothing to do with your precious science, so most of you will be out of your element. Think you Einsteins can handle that?

We shall see. I bet the Dream Realm 20 souls that you guys are up for it. Don't let me down...I don't have 20 souls to spare.

Wherever someone debates a Christian, either on a forum,  IRC, or television the arguments are pretty much the same, and it is hard to see some atheists (not always) falling into Christian/Muslim arguments again and again. It'd probably happen to me as well. Then again I rarely debate Christians, it is a waste of time.

Anyway, here are some of the arguments Christians make and my reply to them:

 (1) If God doesn't exist, then who created the world?

This one comes in many shapes, but they are all variations of the same argument: "Everything needs a creator." "Everything
around us is evidence of God." "If you find a watch, there must be a watchmaker", etc, etc, etc.

Bill o'Reilly threw this one at Richard Dawkins, and Kirk Cameron and his partner in crime (whoever he is) threw it at
the Rational Responder Team during the ABC Debate. The idea that God always was completely overrides the
idea that everything needs a creator. Saying that something always was means not everything needs to be created. If I say
the universe always was, or life always was, or energy and matter always were, I win because I have an advantage over
the theist because I can easily prove life, matter and energy, and the universe exist.

Furthermore, the argument is nothing more than "ignorance" put on an altar and given a name. We don't know how everything
came to be, so we are putting a creator where science has no answers (yet).

 
(2) Look at the world around you. The sun comes out in the morning. Look at the sunsets, the birds, the trees, etc, etc.

This argument is nothing more than a variation of the "lottery ticket" argument. If I buy a lottery ticket with 11 numbers
in it, and I win, I'll conclude a God helped me win because the chances of me winning equal 1 in 100,000,000,000.
The problem here is that there are millions of people who bought lottery tickets and lost, just like there are thousands of
planets that have no life, and thousandsof suns that may lack planets, and perhaps we are living in a universe out of a
million universes. The Banana Argument Kirk Cameron is so fond of falls into
this category. He is ignoring the coconut, the lemon, the cherries, the watermelons, etc, etc.

If we didn't have one nose, we'd have no nose and breath through our mouths. Then Christians would say that God is a perfect
engineer because he made a hole we can use to eat and also breath. If men didn't have two testicles but one, then Christians
would say, look at that testicle, it must've been engineered by an engineer.

(3) There are thousands of Christian charities. Where are the atheist charities?

Laura Ingraham tried to get Brian Sapient with this one. First of all, you can't have something called "An Atheist Charity."
It'd get attacked by everyone. Evil atheists can't be charitable, that's the idea. First of all, the best form of charity
comes from stopping people from being poor or miserable in the first place. Birth control stops women from being barefooted
and pregnant, and in many third world countries, they are, thanks to Muslims and Catholics.  Prosthetics allow amputees to
have lives that are close to normal. And quite frankly, I don't see prayer making people grow back missing limbs, and I
don't see religions creating better forms of birth control or better versions of prosthetics. It is science that does
this, and science, last time I check, isn't exactly religious in nature.

And I don't see christians helping HIV victims much. In fact, I see them helping HIV by saying condoms don't help and
creating abstinence programs that don't help, and blaming homosexuals for the spread of the disease. Once again science
seems to be the one coming to the rescue.

Second of all, if I help someone in need, it won't because I have something to gain from it. Neither will I give money
or food to someone in need and then try to turn that person into an atheist. Christian charities do their best to force
people into being christians, and some of the money received by these charity services usually end up being used to build
more churches and temples, as in the case of Mother Theresa (watch Penn and Teller's episode about her).

(4) I get my morals from the Bible. Where do you get your morals from?

This one does make atheists brainstorm for a while. First of all, let's define morality:

The term “morality” can be used either

   1. descriptively to refer to a code of conduct put forward by a society or,
         1. some other group, such as a religion, or
         2. accepted by an individual for her own behavior or
   2. normatively to refer to a code of conduct that, given specified conditions, would be put forward by all rational persons.

Morality changes according to a society, but eventually every society learns that killing people is a major no-no, and
stealing is also a major no-no. The rest of our moral behavior changes with the times. If we never questioned our morals,
slavery would still be legal (the Bible supported it), women wouldn't be allowed to vote, and it'd be illegal for a
member of one race to marry a member of another.

Atheists usually get their morals from the society they are living in. Many of us get them by questioning what's right
or wrong ourselves.

(5) Every scientific achievement, every movement that changed the world had a religious element to it.

Laura Ingraham said this to Brian Sapient. A Christian once told me that the Catholic church was the one behind the
Renaissance. If I decided to write about this one, I'd need a bigger hard drive.

(6) Atheists are criminals

This one implies that someone who lacks belief in God will kill and steal, rape, etc. Why? If I told a Christian that there's
no God, would he start stealing, killing, and raping people? If so, then I don't want to speak to such a person.

If you look at the history of the world, you'll realize that almost every war and terrorist attack had a religious element
to it. Crimea War, 1000 years war, the Crusades, the war in Kosovo, IRA, Al Qaeda, etc, etc. If religions stop people from killing each
other, it hasn't done a good job in that area so far.

Furhtermore, right now, using Bill o'Reilly's own statistics when he debated Richard Dawkins (which are probably bullshit),
there are 65% atheists in Japan, 44% in Britain, and Sweden and Finland have similar numbers. How come those societies
have crime rates that pale in comparison to that of the United States? How come their governments and societies aren't
as corrupt as those of Latin American socities, where the Catholic Church is a big influence and politicians are as
corrupt as they can be, and the Church usually backs them up wherever they can get in a position of power.

It's hard to believe that someone who is planning to kill people with a machine gun will not do it if someone tells him
the Bible is wrong. The Bible is full of murders and genocides itself, murders carried out by people who saw the act as
negotiable.

(7) Almost every dictator and genocider has been an atheist

A variation of #6. o'Reilly gave it to Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens got it from some conservative host, I forgot his
name.

Was Hussein an atheist? Was Hitler an atheist? Christians say the latter was, and they say Milosevic was an atheist as well. But why
would atheists go around killing Jews and Muslims. If anything, we would go around killing everyone who isn't religious,
if genocide was in our minds (certainly not in mine). Even if Hitler and Milosevic were atheists, they didn't kill people
themselves, soldiers did it for them. People did it for them. Hitler said Jesus was an aryan who fought against Jewish
opression. Milosevic's hatred came from a centuries-old conflic between Orthodox, catholics, and Jews.

Hi!

I just read this topic: http://www.rationalresponders.com/forum/sapient/atheist_vs_theist/9262 and

Hambydammit's question reminded me of a challenge Christopher Hitchens often offers to theists in debate: "Name one moral statement or action made by a theist, that couldn't have been made by a nonbeliever"

This addresses something, that always annoys me about theist, xtians in particular: They claim to be the moral authority and that without the bible and a godbelief there could be no moral behavior.

Theists argue, that there are so many good things done for religious reasons. No doubt, that's correct. But to think, that the necessary morality comes from the scriptures etc. isn't. Actually, the opposite is correct, I think: the basic morals of religions, e.g. some of the ten commandments, reflect the natural rules of behavior that have existed _before_ a certain religion developed and that are innate to social animals like we are and can be explained in the evolutional context

I gave a christian the "If god is omniscient and “god is love," why would he allow a child to be conceived, knowing that that child would one day reject him and spend eternity burning in Hell" Question and this is the answer he gave back.

You can't look at it as God allowing a child to be born. In Psalm 115:16 it says the heavens are the Lord's but the earth He has given to the sons of men. This alone answers most questions as to how God could "allow" so many horrible things to happen in the earth and why it seems so unjust; and I am suprised that things are not worse than they are now, because in the beginning God gave full dominion of the earth to Adam, but that dominion fell to Satan when Adam sinned. Satan is thus called the 'ruler of this world', and as it says in 1John5:19 "the whole world lies in the power of the evil one". Now this is just to show you that what happens in the earth is not necessarily all God's will, He gave us the earth to make choices and to make babies, that is of our will, but you will find your answer in John1:11-13, where is says that we are born according to the will of man, but those who receive His Son are born of God. To say it another way, in John3:6 Jesus teaches us that "that which is born of flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit". So we are born of the flesh by our parents choices obviously, but to be born of God's will is to receive His Son and be born of His Spirit (that's what the whole born-again thing is about). This is also explained in 1 Corinthians 15:44-46, which is a very good explanatory chapter to read.

http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=5216975979627863972&hl=en