Of all of these Big Questions relevant to philosophical standards surrounding life, the universe, and the whole thing, the realms of theology and religions and the nature of deities retain to fascinate. Opinions proliferate in books, articles, motion pictures, conversations in bars and pubs, and fact, everywhere and anywhere, two or more human beings are in proximity. There’s the seasoned side; there is the anti-facet. There are not too many fence-sitters. I’m nevertheless inside the anti-camp, as the subsequent bits and portions illustrate.
Regarding Religion
*The Bible just HAS to be actual. God just HAS to exist, and so does Jesus. How could such a lot of humans be so wrong to see you later? Yet how could so many human beings be so wrong for so long approximately notion in different religions and deities? People get matters wrong. Deal with it.
*How insecure do you regard your religion if you get up in your hands over different humans refusing to say “Merry Christmas”? Like, reflect consideration on it. How a whole lot of a weak, pathetic man or woman you make yourself out to be whilst you get angry with the aid of something that silly. (via Ana Kasparian – “The Young Turks”)
*Regarding Women: Ephesians five: 22-23 22 (“Wives, put up yourselves unto your personal husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the pinnacle of the wife, at the same time as Christ is the pinnacle of the church: and he’s the savior of the body.” and 1 Timothy 2: eleven-12 (“Let the female analyze in silence with all subjection. But I go through now not a woman to educate, nor to usurp authority over the person, but to be in silence.). Now relate all of that to your mother, grandmother, sister, female friend, wife, or different woman friend. Then run like hell.
*How is it that extraordinary religions can use the same form of arguments for the existence of a god yet consider special gods?
*With a plethora of gods on offer, how certainly do you select one as THE god? And having selected that unmarried deity, how do you show your deity is THE deity; how do you prove all the other gods are false deities?
*The True Believer’s role is that their role is the default function and all people who won’t be given their position has the whole burden to disprove their default function.
*Even if any unmarried faith could show that every one different religion had been fake, that all other holy books had been fictional, and that all other gods were nonexistent, that also does not make their religion genuine.
Somehow this isn’t always unexpected.*Religions arose whilst the first-rate unwashed held beliefs in omens and taboos, ghosts and goblins, magic and wizards, astrology and an earth-targeted cosmos, here-be-dragons (and unicorns), and all things bizarre and perhaps no longer-so-splendid had been regular. The query arises, if faith had by no means up to now existed, could it stand up from scratch in this, the 21st Century?
*One motive religion has survived into current times is that it tells the awesome unwashed in a one-size-fits-all fashion what to suppose and what to do and while to do it, for that reason saving the populace from having to assume and act using themselves and for themselves.
*The authority of Scripture rests at the authority of the Church, and the authority of the Church rests at the authority of Scripture. The argument is coherent; however, it’s also circular and accordingly proves nothing.
*Religious Truth in Advertising: Some laws require that advertising and marketing not proclaim falsehoods and give out deceptive statistics and guarantees that can not be saved. The exception is of path religion. Religion can promise a real, everlasting afterlife, a heaven or a hell, and so on. There are no legal guidelines that require nonsecular ‘advertising’ to be spot-on and to produce the products they promise they can produce.
*Religious Hypocrisy: I’d bet that not one in one million Christians or True Believers comply without fail or without exception all (roughly) 613 Biblical Commandments as directed from On High. Religious hypocrisy is rampant! That consists of assisting in part or incomplete, even collaborating in blasphemy, divorce, adultery, homosexuality, contraception, stem-cell research, and abortion. Further, you get intense right-wing Christian evangelists and fundamentalists continuously taking place and on and on approximately the evils of equal-sex relations and marriage equality, giving the same tired antique Biblical passages that reference marriage as between one man and one woman (in no way mind that polygamy is rampant within the Bible and inside Biblical instances). However, those same individuals definitely forget about violating those other Biblical commandments, say what you ought to or shouldn’t consume, drink or wear. Not a peep. That’s probably because they themselves pay no interest in what their God needs with recognizing ingesting, ingesting, and apparel. However, because God is also a do-as-I-say-and-now not-as-I-do hypocrite, a practitioner of the theological double standard, perhaps we mere mortals may be allowed a hypocrisy or that can not be held in opposition to us.
*Religious Morality 101: I do not love it; therefore, you might not do it – otherwise!
Obey! Big Brother is watching you!*Religious Morality a hundred and one: Religion has all the solutions – and enforces them!
*Religious Morality a hundred and one: The Eleventh Commandment: Thou shall NOT mock God for God shall NOT be mocked; thou shall NOT ask questions of God’s nature; thou shall NOT reflect consideration on God’s nature for yourself. Just Obey!
*More Religious Morality 101: Don’t worry about the state of world affairs next week (i.E. – just like the environment) due to the fact the End of Days is the following day!
*Modern Christians, especially evangelists and fundamentalists, pass on and on approximately how Christianity and Christians at the moment are being verbally and legislatively persecuted by way of humanists, unfastened thinkers, atheists, and by way of the courts. That’s quite rich considering that they – Christians – bodily dished out persecutions in droves as soon as upon a time through all manner of tortures, burning heretics on the stake, and so on. A Christian these days is close to infinitely better off than a heretic at some stage in the Inquisition generation.
*Why do not Christians who constantly froth at the mouth and rail in opposition to folks who violate God’s commandments towards saying LGBT sports, abortion, the exercise of witchcraft, adultery, etc. And who needs to, in my view, deal with those people – and no longer in a loving Jesus / Christian form of way either – just leave such “dealings with” alternatively to God Himself. After all, it is God who’s pissed off and what God’s annoyed about on the dealing of other humans are none of your commercial enterprises.
*While religion is probably comforting to the person, faith has now not proved to be so comforting to societies and cultures as a whole (i.E. – think Northern Ireland, Iraq, Syria, Israel-Palestine, Sept. 11, the Crusades, and many others.), or even many individuals have suffered grievously on the arms of religious lovers and True Believers (like the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials, etc.).
*One of these things that religions want to find are mysteries or unknowns, which they could then positioned a nonsecular spin on.
*The mental gymnastics that humans undergo to make excuses for their religious beliefs are not just horrific, they’re unhappy, and they are risky. Somehow, religions manage to get people to sacrifice their humanity, dignity, self-respect, and self-esteem on that religion adjust, making them slaves to an ideology. (Matt Dillahunty)
*It is said that faith gives comfort to human beings; however, too, so does any network of like-minded people. A teddy endure offers comfort to a young toddler, but the infant finally grows out of it.
Regarding Religion vs. Science
*No rely upon the number of unknowns you’ve got, which does not lead you to a recognized, as in God do it.
*If you’re a theist, then conclusion first – then try and give you arguments that help that conclusion.
*Theists don’t have proof; atheists do not have faith.
Really?*You’re not presupposed to be skeptical of supernatural occasions as associated in a holy text written over lots of years in the past by unknown authors, yet, you are supposed to be skeptical of supernatural (or paranormal or anomalous) occasions that show up during your very own lifetime. Clearly, if incredible claims require super evidence these days, the first-rate claims of the Biblical era also require excellent proof. There isn’t any such high-quality proof.
*A declare is only a declare. A declaration is not real evidence for that claim.
*Arguments are all well and true; however, you need to offer demonstrable evidence in the end.
*Scepticism is not the identity element as cynicism.
*Religion is static; technological know-how is dynamic.
*The supernatural is the bucket you toss the whole thing into, thereby explaining all formerly unexplained phenomena as being of supernatural foundation!
*This is my theological rationalization. If your non-theological clarification isn’t better than mine, then I am right!
*My loss of a systematic answer would not make your theological answer accurate.
*Be inclined to mention “I do not know” whilst you surely don’t know.
*Even if everything of the Theory of Evolution using Natural Selection had been tested the completely incorrect day after today, that also wouldn’t say whatever approximately the real lifestyles of God (or any other god for that be counted).
*Ridiculous ideas are deserving of ridicule.
*Theists generally tend to run around claiming to be expected detectors of all things theological supernatural.
*Assume not anything; question the whole lot; begin wondering.
*One needs to teach children the way to suppose rather than what to think.
No proof is required from Mr. Clergy or Mr. Priest, or Mr. Rabbi.*If I tell you that the Greek Goddess Aphrodite is (as an instance) my female friend, spouse, round the corner neighbor, barmaid, or college trainer, you’re going to demand some real proof be coughed up. But if Mr. Clergy or Mr. Priest or Mr. Rabbi tells you that there may be an invisible magic man inside the sky, nicely, this is in some way exclusive.
*Truth has nothing to do with the power of your conviction that your reality is sincerely proper.
*The failure to disprove something does not imply that the contrary is by some means authentic.
*It’s no longer a question of does evolution agrees with the Bible; however, as an alternative, does the Bible agree with evolution? If not, a lot for Biblical ‘reality.’ The Bible is NOT a technological know-how textual content by any stretch of the imagination.
Regarding Faith & Belief
*The very truth that someone would not agree with what others accept as true can literally freak out the different humans. Why? Because of the unexpected, they may be forced to confront and guard their position and notion. That’s uncomfortable.
*From the attitude of the True Believer, they’re the enlightened one and also you, on the other hand, the non-believer is a fool!
*Beliefs are NOT a choice. You haven’t any actual manipulate over what you believe, so that you can’t definitely faux-it-till-you-make-it.
*Do you without a doubt consider or do you simply agree with inside the very act of natural believing?
*Is there any cause I must be satisfied simply because you are convinced?
*I’m ok with believing that you had a private experience applicable in your religion/theology, but that does not mean that I agree with your supernatural rationalization.
*Believe first, then attempt to retrospectively cherry-choose proof that fits that notion. Alternatively, conclusions first, then provide you with assertions what point for your conclusions. In different words, if you start with a notion, then you’ll discover (or make up) evidence to support that perception.
*If you cannot deliver me any correct motive to trust you, I may disagree with you.
*The clever guy (or girl) prepositions their belief to the proof this is presented.
*Faith is a great manner to be incorrect.
*Faith can be an excuse to consider whatever and the whole lot; something you want.
*You can have confidence that the Bible is true. You can have faith that the Bible is not true. Therefore, it’s miles apparent that religion is not a pathway to reality.
*Just because an idea (like Santa Claus) is coherent does not make it actual.
*Religious faith does now not rest upon human rationality however upon human emotions. We talk of religion whilst we desire alternative emotion for real evidence.
*It’s not that I’m cozy no longer knowing. It is that I’m greater uncomfortable pretending that I know.
*If you believe that it is possible that a God exists and has accomplished X, Y & Z, how did you exactly arrive at that conclusion that a God who did X, Y & Z is truly feasible and, in fact, exists? Cite your proof.
*My beliefs are based on proof (i.E. – the Sun will upward thrust the next morning), now not on faith.
*If you can not show it, you don’t know it.
*A sensible man proportions his belief to the proof. (David Hume)
*Faith is the excuse humans deliver once they believe something and do not have an excellent cause. (via Matt Dillahunty)
Regarding Prayer & Miracles
*If you consider prayer, why could you have trouble with medical insurance and visits to the health practitioner?
*Miracles are the specified methods and means on the belief that God works at pass purposes to natural causality (which He Himself mounted) as opposed to thru natural causation – which under the situations is an as a substitute irrational issue to do.
*Take two aspirin and then pray that your headache is going away!
*If there is an all-effective God, there’s no want for miracles when you consider prevention is higher than remedy. And if there may be an all-knowing God, then there may be no need for your prayers.
*Even if your prayer is replied to, that doesn’t suggest of necessity that God replied it. Perhaps it was a paranormal pixie – how may want to you tell?
Regarding Morality
*The theist argument that you can’t be moral AND be an atheist is exercising pure bigotry. The identical applies to some legal guidelines that prohibit atheists from standing as applicants for public office.
*Sin, like splendor, is in the attention of the beholder, and if there must be sufficient beholders, then such sin is legislated against and becomes a criminal offense of the land. But what a sin is to one person might not be a sin in keeping with their round corner neighbor. Something might be taken into consideration in this context but no longer in a few different contexts. What’s taken into consideration a sin today won’t have been so taken into consideration the day before this and won’t be so taken into consideration the next day. What constitutes a sin in one tradition is not, of necessity, a sin in some other’s lifestyle. So sin has honestly not anything to do with deities pontificating absolutes from on excessive.
Regarding Heaven & Hell
*If you are in heaven, you are happy. But if your loved ones are in hell, then you definitely are sad. There’s a contradiction inherent in this commentary.
Regarding Prophecy
*How can you verify that any Biblical prophecy changed into made before-the-reality; before the event prophesized? People aren’t constantly sincere in their claims, and a Biblical relationship is much less than a specific technology.
*Are prophecies excellent or mundane? If you predict a twister in Tornado Alley – no massive deal. If you expect one in Antarctica – nicely, it’s one of a kind.
*How long do you need to wait before a prophecy loses its validity? However, if you expect something to leave the quit date open and the prophecy finally takes place, does it matter as a “hit”? So, no open-ended predictions are allowed.
However,*Prophecies should be public so that someone can not deliberately act to deliver that prophecy to fruition. Prophecies aren’t allowed to be manipulated.
*Prophecies have to be falsifiable.
*Coincidences happen. Deal with it.
*Proposing God because the fine reason for a fulfilled prophecy requires you to demonstrate that, beginning with an indication that God genuinely exists. Even if a prophecy does come, actually it does not suggest that there’s a God or that a God is in reality accountable.
*Make enough prophecies, and a few will come authentic, specifically if they’re vague and open to interpretation. Also, to elevate your popularity as a prophet, file all of the “hits” and do not mention the “misses.”
Regarding the Bible
*There is more than one variation of the Bible in multiple translations. Which version is THE version, especially while we don’t have the originals?
*Many theists say that the authentic form of the Bible is THE ideal version. Alas, this is just an announcement because such theists don’t have any entry to THE unique because there are no original variations.
*But in the Bible, it says… Why can not you show your factor without the usage of the Bible?
*But inside the Bible it says… Yes, and in “Gone with the Wind” it says, and inside the “Egyptian Book of the Dead” it says, and in every ebook in lifestyles it says. So what?
*Why does the Bible have such lengthy sections on who begat who? Why must all people care? Boring!
*Contrary to popular opinion, the New Testament does not negate or argue against any of the nasties inside the Old Testament (i.E. – like slavery).
*So you study this ‘holy’ e-book written lots of years in the past and therefore because of that ebook, you can now denigrate a group of human beings (LGBT’s, girls, atheists, etc.) and deal with them as even having less really worth than even second-class residents.
*The finest story ever advised: The goat-herders manual to the Universe. (thru Lawrence Krauss)
*The Bible is authentic because it says it’s miles real: 2 Timothy three: 16.
*You need way extra justification for the supernatural than memories advised inside the Bible.
*If you read Jonah, chapter 2, you will be aware of many things that Jonah said, even as in the ‘whale’ or splendid fish. Jonah changed into me within the ‘whale’ or extraordinary fish. Therefore, who the hell turned into writing down what Jonah said within the ‘whale’ or wonderful fish?
Regarding the Exodus
*God tells Moses (who in turn enlists Aaron) to go to the Egyptian Pharaoh to permit His humans (the Israelites) to depart Egypt and out of the bondage/slavery that they had been subjected to (Exodus three: 10), which they do (Exodus five: 1). Pharaoh gives them the middle finger, so God offers the Egyptians (note: not simply Pharaoh) some plagues to deal with. When Pharaoh says to Moses and Aaron – piss off – God hardens Pharaoh’s coronary heart that allows you to ensure that Pharaoh will in no way permit His human beings to cross, in direct contradiction to what He wanted within the first damn region. God’s manifestly been smoking the good things.
Regarding God
*(A) Cats exist. (B) Pixies Exist. (C) Zeus exists. (D) God exists. Question: Is (D) greater akin to (A) or to (B) or to (C), and what is the evidence for your end?
*I no longer have sufficient motive or proof to accept as true with that Pixies exist translates into my saying that Pixies do not exist. You’ll no longer get a controversy. I do now not have enough motive or evidence to trust that God exists into my declaring that God would not exist. You’ll now get a controversy. But what is special in principle among the two translated statements?
*If you communicate to God, you’re spiritual. If God talks to you, you’re psychotic.
*What are the odds that God exists, and precisely how do you calculate that?
*God did it. Therefore there’s no need to look any in addition to an explanation.
*How can you claim or say which you have a private dating with God whilst you can’t offer any proof for the real lifestyles?
*Why do not those who allegedly get non-public messages from God get messages that certainly screen some kind of recent piece of know-how that no person knew earlier than, however, can now be established?
*How come Hindus don’t get personal messages from the Christian God?
*If God is immaterial and invisible, that’s a God who is indistinguishable from a God that doesn’t without a doubt exist. If your God would not take place Himself in truth in a detectable manner that ties immediately to that God, then His life is logically equivalent to His non-lifestyles. (thru Matt Dillahunty)
*I do not know exactly what might persuade me that God exists, but God should realize. So why would not God strut His stuff and persuade me? So both God does not exist, or God does not want me to understand He exists. In both cases, it’s now not my trouble. The dollar stops with God.
*God accomplished it! That simply codifies an explanation for the real explanation.
*Postulating that God did, it’s far just a synonym for lack of know-how.
*Either there isn’t any God, or there is a God who does not really want us to understand that there is a God due to the fact if God honestly wanted us to realize He exists, He could have furnished us with indisputable proof of His lifestyles.
*If there’s no real proof that God exists (and there’s not), and but God exists, then genuinely God is virtually A-OK with now not presenting real evidence for His existence.
*Even if God exists that does not of necessity translate right into a God, it’s simply worthy of being worshipped.
*If God desires to be worshipped, then He will stop pussyfooting around and give up playing conceal-and-are looking for. You can not worship a phantom.
*No rational being might accept at face value the usual arguments for the existence of God unless they have been already predisposed to think that the belief becomes a reality. In other phrases, conclusion first; arguments in aid of second.
*Does God without a doubt exist is a sure-or-no question. Yes-or-no questions are decided using real proof. What’s the real evidence that God clearly exists?
*What sort of screwed-up deity calls for religion rather than evidence? Perhaps a human-invented deity created inside the picture of human beings, a deity for which no real proof exists.
*If we’ve got a herbal hassle, permit’s solve that hassle by postulating that a supernatural being has the specified characteristics to solve stated natural trouble. For example, lightning. Thor did it.
*How are you able to distinguish between your God sincerely, albeit it mentally ‘speak’ to you, versus just wondering (or hallucinating) that God is ‘speak’ to you?
*Why does an all-effective God want His mortal human middlemen to elevate cash on His behalf?
*God is defective considering that He created humans who had been so improper that God needed to wipe them nearly all out, except for Noah and family, and begin all over again from nearly scratch.
Regarding God’s Creation & the First Cause Argument
*Just as an architect can also design a residence doesn’t necessarily suggest that the architect will virtually build the house. In like style, the fashion designer of the Universe (assuming this type of fashion designer exists inside the first region) would not of necessity imply that the clothier truly then went directly to create the Universe (assuming of direction a real author).
*Theists are those making the high-quality announcement that God achieved it. The burden of proof rests on their shoulders. If God executed it, they need to reveal: 1) that God surely exists; 2) that God ought to do it; three) that God wanted to do it, and four) that God certainly did it.
*Regarding God performed it, keep in mind this analogy. An individual in one of our (human-generated) video/computer games, or even one among our software-generated synthetic ‘life’ paperwork, could finish that there was a finite beginning to their virtual world; its creation reputedly from not nothing at all. They might attribute this to supernatural deities (or deities); however, they would be wrong. Humans (pc software program programmers) are not supernatural and aren’t bonafide deities (though a few emperors, pharaohs, and so forth. Had been considered to be gods). Their digital landscape wasn’t the beginning – there was a before their beginning – and their digital panorama wasn’t created out of genuinely not anything, even though there’s no manner for them to understand that.
Regarding God Being Omnipotent
*If God is so rattling powerful, why failed to He disposes of Satan at the get-go?
Regarding the God of the Gaps
*You can not explain a thriller, an unknown, via appealing to an even bigger thriller, an excellent bigger unknown, by something this is in itself unexplained.
Regarding God’s ‘Morality
*Premise: If God no longer exists, then objective moral values and obligations no longer exist.
Amended to: If God does or does not exist, then goal moral values and responsibilities do not exist.
Premise: Objective moral values and obligations do exist. Amended to: Objective moral values and obligations do no longer exist. Conclusion: Therefore, God exists. Amended to: Therefore, whether or no longer God exists is definitely inappropriate to the concept of moral values and obligations.
*Premise: If Pixies do not exist, then objective ethical values and responsibilities do now not exist. Premise: Objective ethical values and obligations do exist. Conclusion: Therefore, Pixies exist. P.S. This makes the reasonable theological experience to me!
*God cannot be incorrect. Why? Because we anticipate that God cannot be incorrect.
*Forgiveness by way of someone you have got wrong is seemingly less crucial than being forgiven via your God.
*The common person is morally advanced to God based totally on readings from the Old Testament.
*If you study the stuff in scripture and see a loving God, you definitely have a damaged experience of morality.
*Sins are sins simply because the Bible (i.E. – God) says so and no longer due to the fact sin is of necessity going to harm anybody or society at huge.
*If you believe that God is certainly moral, might you be inclined to subject yourself to God’s morality?
*God is morally not so good as not only me, however to ninety-nine .9% of all human beings. The common human is the first-rate. God’s an immoral thug.
*Morality pertains to human well-being (or, for that matter, the properly-being of all other animals). God has tested that He does not have either human or animal properly-being on the pinnacle of His schedule as regularly confirmed in Old Testament texts.
Regarding Jesus
*Jesus loves you – proper? Well, should not you show that Jesus definitely existed first, after which speculate on what Jesus does?
* There isn’t any evidence, aside from the Bible, that Jesus and his 12 friends are any greater real than Robin Hood and his merry guys.
Regarding Atheists & Atheism
*Atheism is just an unmarried position on an unmarried difficulty.
*The cause atheists disagree with the Bible is because atheists have studied the Bible.
*Religious freedom includes freedom for individuals who don’t have faith.
*If marriages are sanctified via God, what does that say approximately marriages between atheists?
*A proper application of skepticism to faith and religious claims normally results in atheism.
*If you hate God (or Jesus or Satan or angels, and so on.), then you definitely are not an atheist.
*Everyone is genuinely born an atheist.
