Just had to say, I was at a party and this atheist, silly little guy, found out I was a Christian and got in my face.  He also brought up that corny atheist joke on religion with the spaghetti monster, (whoever made up that thing really couldn't come up with something better?) and I decided to engage him in a debate.  At first I was being nice, but he started getting a little aggressive, and wanted to really debate hardcore, so I just took him apart in less than five minutes.  My favorite part was when I landed a point on him that was so solid that all he could say was, "well that's wrong because.... it's GOOFY TO BELIEVE IN GOD!" hahaha! What a dingus! It was so embarrassing! He made the mistake of thinking that all Christians throw out their brains in order to embrace the concept of a personified God, little did he know! hahahah!!!! One C. S. Lewis quote and a basic lesson in epistemology later, we were rolling out the bounty to wipe his brains up from off the floor.  Then he sputtered some ridiculous crap about Occupy Wall street!! 

IT WAS A RIOT!

It was an atheist smackdown.

Hope you enjoyed the story!

God:  Take my son Jesus as  your savior and you will live forever in eternity and rule with me.

Mafia Don:  Take this offer you can't refuse and you will be well taken care of, nobody will mess with you, and you will have plenty of money.

God:  Reject my son and go to Hell.

Mafia Don:  Refuse my offer and you will end up in the bottom of the river wearing concrete shoes.

Which one is extortion?

A common argument I get is when religious folk say that by bashing on their religion you're also bashing on their culture. I was told by Muslims, Christians and Jews that their religious lifestyles are also cultural. So if you were to bash or argue with a muslim for women wearing a veil they can easily say "Well you're just insulting our culture etc etc" and that there are a lot of cultures whether religious or not that have irrational standards, laws points of view. So I tend to hear "If you're against our culture why aren't you against the other cultures that have irrational ways of living?"


So basically how do you try to argue with someone about their religion if they use "their culture" as a shield? I mean sure we could also just say "Well your culture sucks too"

any thoughts ?

We spend a lot of time tossing around questions on biblical (and other scriptural) accuracy. We indulge in rants and raves over literalism vs allegory. We discuss the science pro and con of creationism vs naturalism.

I contend there is only one question that need be answered, one topic for discussion that supersedes the others.

Is there life after death?

Even if god can be shown to exist, or not. Even if Jesus walked the earth or Mohammad chatted with an angel, unless it can be shown that our consciousness survives our mortal demise, none of the rest of it matters. Doctrine, dogma, scripture, morality, history, myth and legend are all moot points.

This is my contention.

There is no life after death.

Who we are, our consciousness, our personalities, our memories arise from and resides in the physical structure of our brains.

This is textbook personal intellectual dishonesty and lack of logic.

It just occurred to me that the overwhelming majority of Christians (in particular) really, really, really don't have any proper critical thinking skills, nor the actual strength of their convictions.

It should not be considered a myth or a fallacy anymore, because it's a fact.

We can reject their premises because they are complete fallacies.

This is why we have so many former theists becoming atheists. This is why there are so many atheists worldwide. We're closing in on 1 billion self declared atheists, according to some stats.

Christians really haven't staked anything they valued much by 'hoping' there is a Sky Daddy who loves them.

Imagine if they would agree to jumping into an active volcano if they failed in a logical debate with atheists in defending the 'truth' of their god.

I think it would be a 'win/win' situation if we could get them to agree with those stakes.

They get to be with Jebus sooner, and we sort the wheat from the chaff and get those that really never believed, to concede and profess their atheism so we could move past these myths and legends and agree that they will only deal with reality in a proper logical and scientific manner.

Somebody has got to be better than Mitt Romney...Anyone...Please anyone...

I like Mattyb88ful comment

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_9so26OgD8

Why God makes sense to me.

I start with a pre-bang perspective. What is before the big bang??? The end of another universe?? Multiple Universes bubbling up??? Well...still no matter how far back you go you're still left with something created the conditions necessary for the first big bang. Or the first bang of the first universe. It makes sense to me that a mind or perhaps a spirit is the only entity that could exist in that state. Therefore a mind/spirit created the big bang. Add an anthropic principle perspective to that and a rational perspective emerges.

Not only did the right conditions exist for life, the right resources for prosperity were available. Wood, oil, water, minerals, etc.

 Can Christianity exist only as a religious philosophy, like Theravada Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism do? No God, just the teachings of Jesus, and the things you can learn from reading the Bible?

My take on this is that most of the stuff Jesus said had already been said by Confucius, Thales, Plato, Khrisna (did he even exist?), the Tao Teh Ching, and Christianity seems to have nothing else to add.