If you accept this as universal morality, you will reject God.

http://blog.ted.com/2008/09/17/the_real_differ/

God does not follow the first rule at all.

The bible says that Jesus "was crucified from the foundations of the Earth," that is to say, God planned to crucify Jesus as atonement for sin before he even created human beings or sin.

This shows that what many thinks is our number one moral value was completely ignored by God.

Is God immoral or has man gotten morality wrong?

If God was right, then are we to believe that fathers are to bury their children instead of the way people think in that children should bury their parents?

John 6:44
"No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.”

On earth as it is in heaven.

If you had God’s power to set the conditions for atonement, would you step up yourself or would you send your child to die?

Regards
DL

Are there any human transitional forms?

I have heard in the past that the transitional
forms that were found were proven to be false.
for example :

Nabraska man
Lucy
And others

Are there any transitional human forms that
Are proven to be real? If so, please name a few.

 so...here we GO!

This is huge news, which is made even more wonderful since it comes from such a tiny object. In an excavation in the City of David (the most historically important area of Jerusalem), a tiny bulla was found imprinted with the words “Bat Lechem,” the ancient name for Bethlehem. (A bulla is a seal, usually made by imprinting soft clay.)

This is what the inscription says:

http://silverskeptic.blogspot.com/2012/06/pete-and-zaqs-excellent-wager.html

Become an Atheist and you could save a child from eternal torture.  Sure it's a stretch, but it's still possible.  And since a saving a child's soul is an infinite reward, shouldn't we all become atheists?

There are many ways this is wrong. The usual claim of believers is to introduce very large numbers as probabilities. Let me show you how easy it is to have very large numbers.

You exist because a particular sperm met a particular egg. By the most recent studies at least 10 million, 10^7 sperm trying to be the first to the egg -- ignoring the 100 million or so others which are also produced.

That means the odds against you existing in the simplest case is ten million to one.

But wait! There's more! A Ronco toaster-broiler oven!

You father and mother are also the product of those same odds. So the odds against them just being your parents is 10^14 to 1. But they also had parents at 10^14 each or 10^56 just to produce your parents who produced you at 10^7 to 1 for 10^63 just to get you from your grandparents. If we go back to eight great-grandparents we get 10^14*8 + 10^7 just to get to you. That gets us to 10^129 to 1 against you just looking at grandparents.

As life is an unbroken chain by definition and just for moder humans at a minimum of 100,000 years old and 5 generations per century that is 2000 generations and I leave the math to the intersted student. It is a very big number far larger than any anthropic universe nonsense claim.

And the odds against you are this trivially small only if we ignore all sexual reproduction back to the beginning of sexual reproduction as well as everything that made ejaculation exactly when it was so that a different sperm did not get to the egg first.

I've noticed that most of the arguments coming from theists,particularly fundamentalists are more about the rationality of the argument itself rather than evidence vs. faith. I've grown very bored with this, but it's easy to understand why so many choose this path. Many theists, particulary Bible Belt fundamentalists come from legalistic backgrounds. Many pastors I know were former lawyers and judges and many seminaries offer some classes in law. That's one reason why the "good Reverend Phelps" from Westboro Baptist Church (godhatesfags.com) and his ilk aren't in prison for some of their shenanigans, many of them are lawyers and know how to wiggle out of charges.

The biggest difference between arguing science in a lab and arguing law in a courtroom is the purpose and methodologies. A lawyer just has to convict or exonerate based on the rules of constitutional law and presented evidence. This is not the same as say, defending evolution vs. creationsim and ID or the supernatural aspects of Christianity( such as the resurrection). For one thing, eyewitness accounts count for a lot in a courtroom, but they don't count for much in a scientific argument. If 4 people saw someone commit a crime and all the testimony agrees, the chances are good that the defendant is guilty. However if 10,20 or 1000 people saw a UFO, a ghost or Bigfoot, and they all agree that's what they saw, the claim is still suspect because there's no proof that what they thought they was in reality what they saw.     

Interesting post on the CARM site on whether or not we choose our beliefs. Some good points that I would like to expound upon, yet I still don't agree with the position that beliefs are not chosen. They are on many other levels besides one.

The mind has many levels. Many choices are made below consciousness. I once read abook about adult children of alcoholics and how they "choose" certain things such as mates who they will have difficulty with and projects that they will eventually not finish and abandon. Now who in their right mind would choose a mate that they knew they were going to have trouble with? Who would choose to fail at something?

These "choices" are made well below the conscious level. The mate choice is influenced by the ACOA's unstable background. The family's difficulties are what the person knows growing up and down on the subconscious level, the person believes this is "normal" often despite evidence to the contrary (they may not vocalize this, but they will invariably choose difficult relationships and such). Automatically the ACOA is attracted (attraction isn't a choice) to a person who they will have difficulty with. They will possess traits that they find attractive, often mistaking things like arrogance for confidence. They can choose to ignore warning signs to the contrary, even ignore observations from friends about how sorry their choice was.

Often on here and other religious forums, Christians and other theists have gotten upset with me for suggesting that their beliefs aren't rational, but the product of something pathological. I don't mean this to be offensive and I definitely don't mean to suggest that Christians and other theists be locked up in mental institutions, the way the Soviet Union did with all dissidents. One fundamentalist poster who was a mental health professional said that if his beliefs were pathological, it would manifest itself in other behaviors and he would be deemed mentally incompetent at some point. Yet is this really true? What really constitutes a "rational" vs. an "irrational" belief, especially in a subject that can be debated? I know plenty of people who hold what I would consider to be irrational beliefs that are by no means mentally ill, at least not enough to be intitutionalized or even medicated. I've already posted youtube links to the opinions of my Christian quantum physicist friend, Ben Schumacher and I can attest that Ben is one of the most rational people I know, yet I disagree with him on what I would consider to be a rational belief. Here is what he says on the rationality of his belief system and worldview.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEZ_dQGF_GQ

I was a little dissapointed when I interviewed my old friend about this. He brought up the same issue that I've heard so many times before and I still don't buy it.Basically, he said, and it's mirrored by so many here, that atheistic thought, when accepted at large by a given populace, leads to a totalitarian regime such as what we saw in the Soviet Union. I've sat quietly and patiently through debates where folks have tried to prove through historical quotes such things like, a) The Founding Fathers of the US were all Christians working to bring about "One Nation Under God", or some such rhetoric, or b) the former USSR's horrible regime was caused by the rejection of God. or c) Hitler was an atheist and atheism,material, (or of you're Ben Stein, scientific) thought leads to despotism and genocide.I would like to point out some fallacies in this line of thought.