Posted on the Sam Harris Reader Forum by:
stardusk
Joined: 01 Jun 2006
Posts: 644
Location: Ulsan, South Korea, Sewer Pit
within the Greater Sewer Pit of Asia...

Posted: 1329 3 Mar 07
Post subject:
Religion 101 Final Examination

..important!

This is the final examination for the course. Anything below 60% will be treated as an F. The essay at the end is optional. Writing it will add an automatic 10% to you total grade based on the mutiple choice questions. Good Luck!

Although I'm a theist / Catholic, I've NEVER been angered by anything I've read on this site. In fact, it's usually just the opposite - much of the time, I'll have a good chuckle re many of the posts - i.e. belief in God is a form of mental illness (if only mankind could be as "mentally ill" as Mother Theresa) or disappointment in a political candidate i.e. Barrack Obama because he expresses a deep belief / faith in God / Christ and therefore you're not going to vote for him - pretty naive stuff in my opinion.

Deleted

I wrote this for a separate topic, but it's so wonderfully concise, I have to repost it for further comment.

This, guys and gals, is what Christians believe. This is the story of the bible in an extremely condensed version.

All I want to know is, why wouldn't I believe this is a myth?

Without further ado, the Hambydammit Condensed Version (HCV) of the bible:

Once upon a time, an invisible being named God, who can do anything he wants, and who knows absolutely everything there is to know, including everything that will ever happen anywhere in the universe, decided to make the universe.

(note: this is a short essay I wrote last year; formatting has been partly removed to be compatible with the forum; the essay was part of a bigger project for a University topic roughly translated into English as "law logic and argumentation", so also please note that this is a translation, do not burn me if my English isn't perfect at times)

We are currently witnessing what no animal kingdom would have ever thought would be possible: the days wehn nobody is a stranger. The days where everyone can learn about anything anywhere. The days when ignorance is simply not excusable anymore. It is simply not possible that something really big happens in one part of the world, and the rest of the world doesn't find out about it. Hurricanes, storms, earthquakes, pollitical turmoil, everything that one can imagine possible is publicised all over the world, if it happens.

As the title says i have been an atheist for my whole life.

To get a few things out of the way, reasons i don't post is that im not very intelligent biblical wise. So i read things and get lost. I don't care for the bible because my arguments and reasons for not beleiving in god is reality. 

I ask  the real simple questions and common sense things. The simplicity of my arguments may seem elementary to some of you. If god is real, and i never seen, heard, tasted (YUCK), felt, smelled(YUCKx2) him why would i beleive something i have never come in contact with? If he is everywhere why can't i see him, how can he been invisable? How does he live in the clouds, i was looking all day and didn't see anything. *sigh*. If god is all loving why does he choose to kill millions. I could go on about jsut simple realistic things i see everyday against the mythological fairytales that is described as 'God'. 

I was thinking of a new argument for atheism that I will dub the: "FANTASTIC EXISTENCE ARGUMENT". Theism is an extremely desirable belief. Human Souls. Everlasting Life. Angels. Easy answers to the toughest questions of life. All of us WANT a fantastic existence, but it is merely FANTASY. A fantastic existence is something everyone wants, but atheists want the truth. (Consider that by fantastic existence, I am implying fantasy, not a synonym for “great” or “exceptional”.)

 Me arguing myself:

1. God is all powerful and loving.

2.Evil exsists.

3.God wouldn't be all powerful if evil exsisted, unless he purposely allowed it to exsist in which case would show God to be unloving.