Looking forward to your responses.  Thank you.

I see all of these atrocaties being committed to atheists and I hear about them all the time. How, we are being denied rights simply because of our views. We are being belittled because of our views. We are being singled out and attacked. Does anyone think that this has a chance of changing one day? Or.. will it get worse and worse? I know we need to rise up and defend our rights. But how is that possible right now when we are a vast minority? Nothing really has happened to me that infringes on my rights other than getting ganged up on in school by psuedo-intellectuals who think they know what they are talking about.

Could a Christian please explain this paradox to me..  God is perfect. He created a perfect Universe in his image. Now, the reason we have suffering in the world today is because we live in a fallen world, meaning that once adam sinned, evil(or sin) was set loose on the world. But explain this to me.. If God is perfect and he created a perfect creation then how was sin able to find it's way to Adam's heart? Doesn't 'perfect' imply without fault? How was sin able to find it's way into adam's heart if adam was created perfectly, without flaw by the all powerful, all knowing, perfect God who doesn't make mistakes?  Please enlighten me.

I'm curious. Does anyone know about the prophecies mentioned in the bible which have supposedly(according the Christians) come true?

Off-topic posts from another forum moved here.

Interesting discussions here, hope I can contribute.  I am wondering what the Atheist explanation is for there being matter in the universe.  All things considered, it seems odd that the Big Bang would just suddenly occur for no reason.  Thoughts?

The Cruelty and the Repeated Answer to Pacal's Wager

by Hellon Earth and inspired by Sam Harris and www.annotatedrant.com

***

Many artists, writers and intellectuals have deep concerns with religion and Pascal’s Wager. The most troubling thing about religion is all the suffering and destruction it causes. We have gratuitous and graphic evidence of this.

So when all arguments for religion have been exhausted, the theist resorts to Pascal’s Wager, insisting, “If god doesn’t exisit, then what have I got to lose by believing in him? If I believe I will win entry into heaven, but if god doesn’t exist after all, I’ve lost nothing.”

This is, by far, is the most selfish argument of all.

While Pascal’s wager is debunked with all sorts of rationale and is contradicted in the bible, most theists still insist they have nothing to lose.

“What have you got to lose?” the theist will say to me after all their preaching has been exhausted with no effect on me.

When the theist has finally stfu, I say this to them:

Perhaps you have nothing to lose but the rest of us have a lot at stake. The rest of us have to put up with your religious wars and fighting. The rest of us have to pay for your religious wars and then are left bankrupt and broken to pick up the pieces as you go and wage war again in another part of the world. The rest of us have to suffer because it is you that has nothing to lose in your silly gamble. As you indulge in this silly notion, you are putting the rest of us risk.

Well, stop asking because the rest of us have a lot to lose. The rest of us have lost the right to live in peace and are unable to live in a world with less violence. Religion is destroying what we have left of this world with all your war mongering for your god. Innocent people die in suffering. There are children living amongst copses until the gunfire has died down so they can quickley bury their mothers and fathers before you come back with more guns. Are you sure there is nothing to lose?

Many are forced to go to war because of you and your religions. You send our fathers, brothers and sons to die for a (worthless) cause you are too cowardly to do yourselves. Our fathers, brothers and sons come back with their hearts broken, their spirits lost and with suffering that will poison their lives forever just so you can continue to ask that question to the rest of us again and again, over and over. We are cursed with wars driven by your twisted morals and it is the rest of us, and not you, who are paying for it.

How dare you insist I follow your god as you murder and rape innocent people? How dare you impose your violent religion on me when children are suffering because of the wars you create in the name of your god? How can you justify continued genocide and atrocity in the name of your god? And then you have the audacity to ask the rest of us what we have got to lose by believing in your god. With cruelty, you insist with such arrogance that there is nothing to lose and that nothing is at risk.

Perhaps you don’t care about the rest of the world because you live in the safety of ignorance and with the comfort of your heavenly wager. Or maybe you're too busy asking everyone, “What have you got to lose?” to care.

So, I have to ask you this:

Do you not care that your children and your future generations have so much to lose? How arrogant and selfish you are to leave a shattered world behind for them to inherit. How dare you force your children and your future generations to live in the violence you are guilty of creating in the name of religion? Is this what you want to leave for them? Do you still have nothing to lose?

You may justify your gratuitous and selfish motivations by saying you are fighting for your children’s future but are you aware that you are leaving them to deal with the hatred you will leave behind? You have condemned them to answer for your crimes. You have condemned them to face the consequences of your murders and killings. You have condemned them to living in a world devastated and ruined by your wars. Your children will be looked upon as the spawn of evil by the children of those you have murdered in the name of your god. You have condemned your children to a life of hatred created in the name someone else’s god. You have sentenced them to live out their days in the hell you have created on this earth.

And yet, many of you continue to ask, “What have you got to lose?”

You may want to selfishly send your family members to their deaths, even proud because they are part of this mission to dominate the world with your religion but the rest of us have to deal with your stupidity by mourning the deaths of those we love who have been murdered in the name of your god.

Your mission to convert the rest of us is killing us. Your mission to impose your religion on the rest of the world is destroying us. You are murdering humanity and perverting values and morals to do so. It is sick and shameful. It is pathological and selfish. How can you continue to ignore this when people are murdered because of your “faith”?

And I guess you are right. What have you got to lose? When you have so little compassion and so little love there is not much to lose and so you continue to use this worthless argument to justify your violent belief in god.

Some of you may claim to be “different”, a moderate, liberal, insisting that you are not “that kind” of theist thus absolving yourselves from responsibility. This too is selfish and I don’t know how any theist can claim to have compassion. By standing around and being a “moderate” theist you are just helping those who have corrupted and perverted your religion by letting them represent you and your faith. You moderate theists have a responsibility to your faith, to your god and to your fellow theists to stop the violence and yet you stand by and watch them kill instead of activly persuading your fellow theists to stop the fighting, to stop the wars, to stop the violence. You have a responsibility to humanity and to yourselves to ease this violence for the future of your children and your children’s children. Is your god unworthy of your protection from those who pervert and abuse his name to go to war? Is this the cost of your wager? Do you still feel like you have nothing to lose?

Perhaps you are a Christian and believe that Jebus is returning in your lifetime. You feel you don’t have to worry about the future because god will destroy it after Jesus has come. Or maybe you are a follower of Allah and can't wait for jihad to come because you believe heaven awaits.

It is people like you who are driven to all this violence. It is you folks wanting to go to war for the welcoming of Jesus or jihad. It is you folks who are most cruel, who have no mercy, have no compassion, who enjoy the deaths and murders of those who do not agree with you. It is you folks that insist on living in a hellish world dominated by religious wars. It is you folks who promote this evil to somehow hurry your entry into heaven even though you folks are the least worthy of such grace.

Instead of wasting everyone's time asking the rest of us what we have got to lose by beliving in your god, how about you just leave the rest of us alone as you wait for rapture or jihad. How about you stop asking that stupid, fucking question over and over again because I’ve answered it a million times before. Let the rest of us live in peace so the remaining days on earth are not filled with murder and war. According to you, there isn’t much time left. The rest of us would like to enjoy that short time in peace while you are busy getting ready your ticket to heaven.

Leaving the rest of us alone would give the rest of us more time, energy and resources to help alleviate some of the suffering in the world. We could use all that effort for much more practical things than your religious wars. We could use it to save and preserve our world.

As you keep insisting that you have nothing to lose by believeing in your god, the very least you can do is leave the rest of us alone so that the rest of us can focus on the immediate issues of the day, so we can help the less fortunate, so we can help ease the suffering from disease and illness, so we can love each other in peace.

So before you start going around and asking, “What have you got to lose?” and imposing your faith on everyone then killing other theists for doing the same, leave the rest of us and our resources alone because the rest of us have better fucking things to do.

That's right, motherfucker. We got better things to do because we too are at war. And before you go on about double standards with whiny commentary like “how come we’re not allowed to go to war and you are??”

I’ll tell you why, motherfucker.

Because the rest of us are fighting for real, motherfuckers. Because the rest of us are fighting real wars. The rest of us are trying our best to win the war against suffering, disease and violence. And while you theists are running around insisting you have nothing to lose, the rest of us are fighting against the destruction of our earth. We will be fighting to preserve humanity. We will be fighting the cruelty you have imposed on us. We will be fighting for the future of our children and even for the future of your theist children, motherfuckers.

So why don’t you theists just fucking leave the rest of us alone so we can fight the real battles that are truly worthy of sacrifice, you self-rightous motherfuckers?

Is this too much to ask for?

If it is, then I ask you this:

Why can’t you leave us alone? Why won’t you leave us alone?

Pascal’s wager is the most selfish and cruel arguement you can give for joining your crusades and for believing in your god. You folks often resort to this last argument pathetically and selfishly without ever considering the real consequences.

The next theist jackass that asks, “What have you got to lose by beliving in god?” should be forced to fight in their own fucking wars with their whole fucken theist families against the next thiest asshole and his fucking theist family who says, "I've got nothing to lose by believing in god."

Oh wait, you motherfuckers are already doing that.

“What have you got to lose by believing in god?”

I’ll answer your question for the last fucking time, motherfucker. So listen up, motherfuckers, because this is the absolute last time I answer that stupid, fucking question.

I’ve got everything to lose, motherfuckers, and the rest of us have everything to lose so stop using Pascal's fucking wager argument to try to make me join your cult, you selfish bastards. While you are wasting everyone's time and energy preaching that we have nothing to lose, the rest of us are desperately trying to fix all the the destruction your religions have caused to humanity.

So take your fucking questions and your religious fucking wars and shove it up your ass, you selfish motherfuckers, because the rest of us are too fucking busy trying to figure out how to undo the damage you've done to fucking care about your god or about your stupid fucking questions.

Got it?

Submitted by REVLyle on Wed, 2007-05-16 08:54.

The question often comes up as to "are there ANY evidence of or references to the historical figure of Jesus of Nazareth OUTSIDE OF THE NT?" I plan to discuss the other possible witnessess to Jesus' existence in the first two centuries of the Christian Era. These vary in their historical trustworthiness, but are worthy of our examination. I will try to deal with ALL of the commonly advanced instances, but want to raise one or two others that are not commonly discussed (e.g. Celsus, Galen).

No. Absolutely not.

It's not murder if it's not an independent person. One might argue, then, that it's not murder to end the life of any child before she reaches consciousness, but we don't know how long after birth personhood arrives for each new child, so it's completely logical to use their independence as the dividing line for when full rights are given to a new human being.

Using independence also solves the problem of dealing with premature babies. Although a preemie is obviously still only a potential person, by virtue of its independence from the mother, we give it the full rights of a conscious person. This saves us from setting some other arbitrary date of when we consider a new human being a full person. Older cultures used to set it at two years of age, or even older. Modern religious cultures want to set it at conception, which is simply wishful thinking on their part. As we've clearly demonstrated, a single-cell zygote is no more a person that a human hair follicle.