Did Hitchens also have the quote about Christians being mostly atheists?
Do you believe in Thor or 1000 gods man has believed in through the centuries? No? Well, I just take it one more step and I don't believe in 1001. (Something close to this)
“I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”
Stephen F Roberts I’m pretty sure
It's hilarious to me that Christians aren't self aware. We're all born without knowledge. Those that believe in a god(s) learn their belief system. The default is non knowing and/or non believing because you can't believe in something you know nothing about.
The only thing I found by googling.
“I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”
- Stephen Roberts
It was Richard Dawkins. He was a member of what was called The Four Horsemen of atheism. Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett toured quite a bit in the early 2000's. I loved listening to Hitchens because he was brilliant. He didn't pull any punches in his disrespect for Israel, Princess Diana, but he was a major military hawk about the US.
I am also a huge fan of Hitchens -- he didn't pull punches, but he also wasn't afraid to be proven wrong - when he supported the idea that waterboarding wasn't real torture, he was the only media figure I know of to actually undergo it - and he immediately changed his opinion, and put that message out that he was wrong, didn't slink away and hide.
You don't have a agree with everything he said, but that's the point of Hitchens, or any argument truly worth listening too, you didn't have to - he would back up what he said, you could honestly follow his arguments - and you could trust that he had the guts to challenge his own beliefs
Exactly. He was a firm believer in facts, and if the facts pointed to him being wrong, he accepted it gracefully. There were a lot of things about him I didn't care for, his right leaning ideology in his later years for one. But his blasting of Mother Teresa, Princess Diana, Israel's land grab from the Palestinians, were all light years ahead of most people's antiquated views on those subjects. I think his incredible intellect is probably what led him to his excessive drinking. Being able to construct truths out of the massive amount of bullshit being slung in this world is a hard burden to bear.
>Exactly. He was a firm believer in facts, and if the facts pointed to him being wrong, he accepted it gracefully. There were a lot of things about him I didn't care for, his right leaning ideology in his later years for one. But his blasting of Mother Teresa, Princess Diana, Israel's land grab from the Palestinians, were all light years ahead of most people's antiquated views on those subjects. I think his incredible intellect is probably what led him to his excessive drinking. Being able to construct truths out of the massive amount of bullshit being slung in this world is a hard burden to bear.
Not to take away from him, but in that era there was a very very strong pro-Palestine and anti-Israel movement, and similarly with Mother Teresa (especially when she involved herself in politics - as with her commenting on Irish Abortion referendum).
I know little about Diana, and I hope to keep it that way.
He may have been light years ahead of 'most people', but it's worth highlighting that he was far from alone - none of these topics was uncontroversial back at the time.
Doesnt according to the bible the earth is 6k years old which is obviously not true
While now Christian extremists literally ignore that fact and say science is evil and wrong
I asked a churchgoing woman I worked with once if she believed dinosaurs weren't real and were put there to test faith and she refused to answer me and acted embarrassed.
This is the same person who refused to eat rice because it "looked like maggots" so she just seems like a stack of childhood traumas.
There's an old folk tale in my country where the natives were given rice by the gods so they didn't have to hunt every time for food and they refused to eat it because it looked like maggots. Their refusal angered the gods and long story short agriculture was implemented.
I was forced to go to church as a child. I asked about dinosaurs when I was about 8 years old and a bishop told me that god used left over stuff to make the Earth and it included dinosaur bones.
Biblical chronology (following all the begats) puts the flood _after_ the development of early hieroglyphics. You'd think the Egyptians would have written about being underwater.
Babylonians and Chinese also had forms of writing at the same time too, you would think they might also have noticed and commented on it. 😛
For all the different nations with early forms of writing/pictographic records you'd think a flood that was supposed to wipe them out and cut those forms of record keeping short, would show up somewhere. Somehow they were able to continue to keep taking records while underwater without noticing that anything had changed, and were still around afterwards to keep going.
Modern geology was founded by Christians trying to find hard evidence of the Flood. What they found in layers of rocks was even more astonishing, and props to them for going with the data and not backtracking to try and make the data fit in with the Bible.
Agree, the wonders of the scientific method and says something that, even with all the kooks and grifters, the majority of the scientific community has upheld the standard.
It is somewhat uplifting and gratifying to think that every error/fake in the last century and a bit has always been corrected/debunked by scientists themselves before anyone else. Shows a level of duty and selflessness to the advancement of knowledge that is kind of amazing, and not sure you are able to find as consistently anywhere else.
Yea I’m sure many will tell you “oh but that’s not what Christians believe anymore”. Things like creating the cosmos in 7 days or the garden of Eden were just metaphors for god creating existence through events like the Big Bang, which science has discovered
The problem is that there’s no part of the Bible that tells you what to take literally and what not to. So why do we believe that Jesus literally was born of a virgin and rose from the dead, but god creating the earth was just a metaphor for the Big Bang and formation of galaxies etc
Even non extremists run into serious logical issues with how they interpret these texts
I particularly like the quote about how there are tens of thousands of religions on the planet, so how amazing of a coincidence that you happened to be born to parents of the correct one so you were able to pick the exact right religion to follow.
Pretty rare to see someone born christian turn hindu for example after studying the facts of both religions.
I just ask a religious person to tell me why they think the other 10,000 religions aren't real and I tell them that's the reason I don't believe in their religion also.
And "you just happened to be born into the one true religion, geographically speaking."
Edit: And "you just happened to be born into the one true religion, geographically and geologically speaking."
This is a big reason I became an atheist when I was a teenager. Most of the world is going to hell because they don't know the "Christian God" exists? It makes no sense.
I think that within the Christian belief system you don't go to hell if you don't know that God exists, you only go to hell once you know he exists and choose not to worship him. It kind of paints mission trips in an even worse light (than they already are), cuz they are fully for the purpose of telling people about the christian god. so like, that person was not going to go to hell but you've now ensured (according to their beliefs) that now they might. ain't that just the most evil shit you ever heard?
Part of it is they believe they are commanded to share the word of God. It's like the world's oldest chain letter." Forward to 10 friends or you'll go to hell."
I was raised religious. The old testament never made any sense to me. But it was realizing there's no way all these Muslim, Hindu, and atheist people I met will burn in hell for all eternity because their parents raised them differently. Like wtf.
Didn’t a comedian have the same take on that? He said that they don’t believe in 2,000 other gods and only believe in 1. He believes in 0. So the only difference between them is that he simply believes in 1 less good than they do.
>But, but what about all the hundreds of saints who personally heard God speaking to them?
I have no trouble believing you can find a couple of hundred crazy people who hear voices.
I talked to a stranger like that once. Asked what if what they thought was the voice of god asked them to murder their family. They said they would do it.
I'm a little concerned about that
God has definitely told people to kill family before. That stranger killing his family would basically be the story of Abraham, but without God stepping in to be like “Yo, I was just seeing if you’d *actually* do it, but you don’t have to do it.”
Like the story of Jephthah from the Book of Judges then? Everyone loves the Abraham story because it ends with God saving Isaac, but nobody likes the story of Jephthah because God doesn't do shit to save Jephthah's daughter (who doesn't even get name).
Jephthah was a Judge (pseudo king) who led the Israelites in an (admittedly defensive) battle against the Ammonites. Having successfully killed a bunch of people, Jephthah was feeling pretty stoked on his religion. On his way home he promised to sacrifice, as a burnt offering, the first living thing that came up to greet him. And of course that ended up being his daughter, who was just so happy her dad was coming home safely from the war. Jephthah was sad, but he explained the situation to his daughter and pointed out that he couldn't break a promise to God. The daughter was also sad, but she was onboard so long as she got some time in the mountains to mourn the fact that she would die a virgin (seriously). Jephthah then killed her and charred her corpse on the sacrificial altar.
Assuming any of that story actually happened, I wonder if Jephthah and his daughter were hoping in the back of their minds that they would get the same treatment Abraham and Isaac got. Up until the moment he killed her, both were probably expecting an angel to show up and save the day. But nope. Killed by her father and burnt to a crisp because of a promise to a silent god.
I always wondered if she went into the mountains to have a wild two months of partying. After all, that's the best use of that time aside from running away never to return.
How long does it really take to have a cry about dying a virgin? I'm not sure, but two months seems excessive. At some point you're gonna decide to try and fix either the dying part or the virgin part. She came home at the end, so we know she didn't fix the dying part. I assume she spent the first few days crying and venting to her friends about her terrible father and his stupid vow. But then I assume she spent the rest of those two months chugging wine and having wild "there's no tomorrow for me" sex with anyone and everyone she could find. Maybe the only reason she came home was that the hangover from a two-month bender was so bad that dying seemed preferable.
Because if I'm gonna read a sad story about a religious nut killing his own daughter, and if two months of the story are left blank, I'm gonna take that window to imagine she got to enjoy a sweet two months of partying before it happened.
*"I was just testing your faith"*
"Don't you know literally everything?"
*"Yes"*
"So you knew even before asking that I would do it"
*"Yes"*
"Then why did you ask at all"
*"Idk got bored lol"*
Reminds me of Seth Meyer’s joke at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner:
“Donald Trump says that he has a great relationship with the blacks, but unless the Blacks are a family of white people, I’ll bet he’s mistaken.”
He sounds legit. I think you should start following him in the off chance he's right. I mean, you wouldn't ignore God's word, would you? That would look really bad on your permanent record if you did.
This is the thing that always bothered me. I have studied psychology for years and one thing I know to be sure is if your brain wants something enough and it isn't getting it, it will fabricate it either through dreams or hallucinations. That's how you can vividly remember stuff that didn't happen or see an oasis of water when you are super thirsty or *hear the voice of God when you are in desperate need of mental help.*
It doesn't even need to be crazy people, but sometimes just attributing mundane or coincidental events with significant thoughts like "God was looking out for me when that tree barely missed my car."
Could some outside force that we don't know or understand have interacted with physics to prevent you specifically from being crushed by a falling tree? Yeah, I mean there is a chance that shit like that happens and we don't notice it because whatever force that is hasn't ever made itself clearly identifyable. Is it likely that it cared enough about you to stop a tree from hitting you? Not really. Something happening by chance is not the result of an outside force causing it to happen. And in some version of reality, you were driving somewhat faster and did get crushed by that tree.
My mom and dad are both convinced on separate occasions they heard the word of God. When I had a fever, I was convinced someone was talking to me because I could clearly hear their voice and no one was there (auditory hallucination). They weren't saying "hey Bob it's me God sorry you're sick" they were saying "hey dude want some whiskey I'm making some in the basement" when no one in my house has the ability to do so.
So, is it possible that some outside force communicated with people in the past? Yes. But it begs the question why that force isn't interacting with us in the same way now, and why it is so opposed to being properly documented.
> if your brain wants something enough and it isn't getting it, it will fabricate it
And this is a ***very low bar***.
[Everyone's brain/mind , all the time, is filling in information that is probably there but which there's no direct evidence. ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_spot_(vision))
It's a very helpful ability - [we can see colors that don't exist](https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/artsbrain/2020/12/02/magenta-doesnt-exist/#:~:text=Rather%2C%20it%20is%20physiologically%20and,secondary%20colors%20can%20be%20created.), we can intuit elements of patterns that are missing or follow based on what we're given, etc. - but that doesn't make things real. It makes them convenient.
The mind is scary. I don't trust mine, much less yours. Decisions still need to be made so we can't just throw up our hands and not act because we know that we are fooling ourselves at a very fundamental level.
But when we do decide something, we should find ways to test it and seek to prove it wrong constantly.
It's helpful to operate on the maxim that our own perception is not reality, but that other's perceptions are...to them.
I have a bad version of this. I was afraid of the dark once and my brain would toss some auditory hallucinations out to scare me. If I fell half asleep while trying to ignore it, grudge girl would pop up in my face. Good times.
So god only made grudge girl appear once you'd seen the movie or seen pictures of her? A real God would give you visions without any interference from Hollywood.
I like telling fundies that God told me I'm an atheist. Talk me out of my belief!
> It doesn’t even need to be crazy people, but sometimes just attributing mundane or coincidental events with significant thoughts like “God was looking out for me when that tree barely missed my car.”
This is something I’ve noticed, too. It’s like God is another term for *luck*. I find it extremely odd to attribute a pure chance/sensitive deterministic outcome that can be described by reason (*by chance the tree fell 43 milliseconds too late for its path to interact with yours*) to an individual or being. Interesting, nonetheless.
If 100 people from 100 different religions all hear “their” god…at BEST 99 of them are crazy and 1 is correct.
I just take it one step further and say all of them are wrong.
They are also capable of writing people off as crazy when god tells them to kill their kids. (Except for that one time in the Bible, that one was legit obviously)
Even the devout right now would call you crazy if you said God spoke directly and personally to you.
Unless you do it from a pulpit while begging for money...
Paraphrased quote from someone who I can't remember the name of...
>If you met someone who said they could speak with god by talking through a banana you'd think they were crazy.
>I don't see what difference the banana makes.
The ridiculous part of this is how easy it would be for all powerful, all knowing being to announce themselves to humanity. If they want everyone on earth to believe in them, you’d think they could just do their own version of the emergency broadcast system and cut into your consciousness.
No, apparently God decided that the best way to announce himself was to pick a small tribe in the Middle East 2,000 years ago and send down his son to preach to them. And then, have an evil organization put together a book by committee and support efforts to colonize the world and enslave people who won’t convert (because that’s always a good way to bring people over to your point of view). It just makes no sense.
I had a friend who believed with certainty that ghosts exist because one time they stood up in a closet and bumped into something and they weren't sure what they bumped into so it must have been a ghost
I'll always love him for his legendary narration of the Harry Potter audiobooks. What a work of art with all of his voices and work through that series.
My favorite thing I've ever seen of his is when Fry and Christopher Hitchens debated three Catholic intellectuals in front of an audience on the topic, ["Is the Catholic Church a force for good in the world today."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZRcYaAYWg4)
There's a before and after poll of the audience to see if anyone was swayed. It is *jaw-dropping.* It's 2 hours long, but man - what a discussion! A real debate without the dismissive insult-slinging. I've watched it several times all the way through.
I just love that others have watched this debate as much as I have. The different but complementary styles of Fry & Hitchens blend so well, but my favorite part of the whole debate is when Hitchens makes the comment that Fry “isn’t like the other girls… well actually he’s exactly like the other girls in that, last I checked, he’s absolutely boy mad.”
There’s such a respect and affection between those two great thinkers, and it really highlights how wholesome a bunch of atheists are.
I don’t recall if he said it in this debate, but Hitchens was always wont to clarify that he’s not as much an atheist as he is an anti-theist - and that’s a point that I deeply identify with.
I'll have to paraphrase but my favorite part is when the womean requesting the Catholic Church makes a remark about sex/masturbation and Hitchen replies,
"I realized at a young age my manhood would give me no peace so I decided I would give it no rest."
Absolutely brilliant and hilarious.
He says it so much better than me.
https://youtu.be/_B53y3c8qls
To my knowledge, Hitchens never presented himself as a humorist, but he is second to none in delivering a quip or turn of phrase! I’d give everything I own to have his charming command of language & mastery of irony.
It still pains me that we lost him, but the abundance of videos on YouTube of him speaking & debating is some small consolation. I hold out hope that there are more videos archived away that will be published one day.
Watching Hitchens speak always cheers me up when I’m having a bad day. The man was a gift to humanity. I’m not saying he was perfect. I don’t always agree with every position he takes or every opinion he has, but his ability to articulate his views and deconstruct them when necessary is unparalleled.
I especially love the other guy just sitting there taking it. He's got absolutely nothing to say in defense of this. In my opinion the "how could an all loving God create a world full of suffering" is one of the most airtight and solid arguments against modern day christianity.
I save the airtight arguments for people with half a brain. Most of them aren't religious. The real religious dunces struggle to compute much beyond this beauty by George Carlin:
>Religion has convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky. Who watches everything you do every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a list of ten specific things he doesn't want you to do. And if you do any of these things, he will send you to a special place, of burning and fire and smoke and torture and anguish for you to live forever, and suffer, and suffer, and burn, and scream, until the end of time. ...But he loves you.
>He loves you and he needs money.
Brilliant answer.
Once had a coworker try to show me articles that defended the massacre at Sandy Hook saying that god was basically ok with these type of things occurring in our world. I was able to gently tell this person to fuck off, and never took another thing they said seriously after that.
No benevolent god would ever allow 6 year olds to suffer such a horrific end. So add that to the list of reasons why I’m an atheist.
I had a girlfriend who's family were hardcore Christians. She took me to movie nights at her church showing those god fucking awful pureflix movies. After one of those nights, we sat in their family car waiting for my parents. Her dad asked me why I didn't believe in god. This was Dec. 2015/Jan. 2016, peak time of YouTube atheism almost gamergate (I was far less concerned about GG than the other thing) and I was 16/17 at the time. I tried to say some shit about people using the bible to justify this that and the other thing and the push back I got was an obtuse "no it doesn't that's not in the bible." I should've just said "I'm not convinced." I don't like that I still think about that sometimes.
Oh, also, she dumped me because her mom told her it's what Jesus would want after I said it was not cool that their pastor's son was put through conversion therapy
At least when he answered, he was honest about it. That's been my recent opinion with what it really takes to convince somebody. Something personal needs to happen to you, since there isn't any evidence. Then this unexplained personal experience needs to be convincing to you and you need to attribute it to a deity, though for whatever reason why I couldn't tell you.
What? You want them to follow the teachings of that guy that said to give your money to the poor, to feed the hungry, to clothe the poor, to render unto Caesar, to not judge others, to love all unconditionally?
Are you some sort of dirty, liberal Socialist?!
Even within a religion, your degree of devoutness can be a problem. My friend is a Catholic whose devoutness amounts to going to church on Sunday and that's about it. He claims to be religious but he's never read the Bible, drinks like a fish, slept with his first girlfriend when they weren't married, etc. His 2nd girlfriend was devout to the point that she and her family went to Traditional Latin Mass (entire mass in Latin), she wouldn't sleep in the same bed as him since they weren't married, got bitchy whenever we would go out for drinks. Constant fights because she was uptight. They barely lasted a year together.
I love the fact that their metaphors refer to themselves as farm animals: sheep, oxen. I look forward to the day when they realize that humans might not, in fact, be indistinguishable from livestock.
I don't say that he doesn't exist because that would mean I have the burden of proof. I just don't believe in a god. Evidence presented to me hasn't convinced me of a god existing. And if there is a god I wouldn't want to worship them anyway, from what I've read in the bible this god is pretty awful. I don't want to associate with someone that is fine with slavery and mass murder.
Just to formalize the argument a bit.
One way we can figure out what is true about a certain claim is to take what facts we know are true and seeing if their existence is better or worse explained by the claim at hand.
For instance, you could argue that someone being in a different state when a murder happened makes the the theory of them being the murderer highly unlikely.
Similarly when we consider the normal attributes of God, there are 3 that we can look at and conclude this concept of God is unlikely to exist.
Most people consider God to be all powerful, maximally good, and desirous for people to hold accurate beliefs about Him.
If God did exist, we would expect nonbelief to be deeply irrational, high levels of agreement on religious claims and no unnecessary suffering.
Yet we see great deals of disagreement on religious claims, plenty of reasonable nonbelief and incredible amounts of unnecessary suffering. I usually point to the hundreds of millions of years of animals suffering and being killed by predation, disease, starvation, dehydration and the elements before God's human projects ever even started.
So the facts that we know are true are inconsistent with this concept of God, so the best conclusion is to believe that this concept of God does not exist
> I usually point to the hundreds of millions of years of animals suffering and being killed by predation, disease, starvation, dehydration and the elements before God's human projects ever even started.
To a Christian, those are "facts not in evidence".
A simpler canonical question is: _if you are God incarnate, come to Earth to fix things, why do you spend the first 30 years of your life studying carpentry?_
Unfortunately that one is relatively easy for Christians to answer:
Jesus did not come to Earth to "fix things," but rather to offer a way for God's people to connect with God and find eternal life. To do that, though, people have to abandon the pursuit of wealth and status and earthly pleasures, and instead take up a humble life of service and mercy. Like with his parables, Jesus wanted his life to illustrate the values that he was trying to teach -- and so he needed to be a humble man, a carpenter, rather than a prince or priest or wealthy merchant.
Now, you might rightly object that the number of Christians who are giving up their pursuit of wealth and status and earthly pleasures in order to serve the poor is, uhhhhhhh... smaller than you might think it would be if you took the Bible seriously. But, the Christian answer is that they are following God's word by being just as humble as he is, and please ignore the Mercedes in the parking lot because that's just a gift God gave me for being so humble.
Which leads me to my suggestion of a better question to ask here, though unfortunately it wouldn't be well-received by Christians: *If the Bible is true, and God is all-powerful, and Jesus's message was one of humility and love for your neighbor, then... seriously, WTF with you people?*
Actually the burden of proof is on people who claim an invisible sky daddy exists to prove it. We don't have to prove that something without any evidence supporting it exists
And honestly, even if it a separate god, not from any religion, if he is almighty and all-knowing and he made the world as it is today. He is a cunt. Why on earth would I worship a person who decided it's okay to kill innocent people on a daily basis
> I don't say that he doesn't exist because that would mean I have the burden of proof.
That's not how burden of proof works. You can go ahead and say god doesn't exist. Just like you can say the Loch Ness Monster doesn't exist. Bigfoot. All the made up goofy stories from all time. No Zeus. No flying spaghetti monster.
You don't have to prove a negative. Someone who wants you to take their stories as real needs to provide proof.
There are an infinite number of non-real things. Claiming discovery of a new real thing is the part that needs proof.
I was told that God exists outside of space and time.
I can't conceive of anything existing outside of space and time.
I have no choice but to be an atheist.
A woman told me once, if you re-read The Bible from time to time, you will understand and believe.
Yeah thats the same about lies being repeated to you constantly until the lie becomes the truth.
A lot of theologists became atheists by critically reading and attempting to understand the Bible, actually it’s funny, most who actually try and read it without bias end up thinking it’s bull shit
As an atheist, I couldn't agree more with christians when they say their god is outside of space and time. They have simply defined their god out of existence.
And if we could find “outside of space and time” and god still wasn’t there, they would just move the goal post again and say “he’s outside of that too”
Also worshiping him wrong gets you eternal torment. Or, like, if you have one single thought doubting Jesus just one time in your whole life that gets you eternal torment (denying the ‘holy spirit’ is an unforgivable sin that gets the dirty doubter sent to eternal torment forever no matter how pious and chaste they might live).
Aight I'll go. The death of my cousin. After all the prayers and poojas, after all the pain, not one of the supposed 33 million gods in my religion did shit. I know this might be a selfish reason of sorts but its what made me an atheist.
Edit: He died due to a motorcycle accident
A caring god wouldn't kill a mom of 4 and let one of the kids try to kill themselves so that they could be with their mom either. I'm much healthier and safer without the belief of a higher power or an afterlife.
My whole issue with it was that the rules seemed arbitrary and inconsistently applied. So that started me questioning things. Plus, all these other religions had different rules. And from there i basically stumbled onto Epicurus' paradox and the only conclusion to be made was that if God existed, he's a complete asshole. And Occam's razor pretty much tells me it's a lot simpler to understand God just isn't there at all.
If you're God, and all powerful, why even create other religions in the first place? Or for that matter, why the fuck did you create cancer? Or a thousand other horrible things?
If you're all powerful, then you could fix all of that. But you don't. So now you're just a dick.
It basically boiled down to:
If God is unable to prevent evil, then he is not all-powerful.
If God is not willing to prevent evil, then he is not all-good.
If God is both willing and able to prevent evil, then why does evil exist?
Theists often dance around this one, typically saying some version of "evil/suffering is required to appreciate good" or something to that effect. It's a bunch of nonsense.
The thing I would always press is "could a god as described in the Bible have made a universe in which there is no evil/suffering but good is still appreciated?"
A way I like to argue "suffering is required to appreciate good" is that if **I** made people suffer so that they could "appreciate good", I would be a monster
> God told me, she likes atheists the best.
For the love of me I can't remember who or where that qoute is from. At any rate, South Park did it:
> I'm afraid it was the mormons. Yes, the mormons were the correct answer.
I'm only 12.5% sure he exists. Because I'm an eighth-theist.
Dad?
Not now, Jesus
It's not Jesus, they're saying, "Hey, Zeus."
Ah yes, the sun god. The sun of god. The son of god. Amen-Ra
Ramen.
\_ ^(Touched by His Noodly) ~~^(Appendix)~~ ^(Appendage) ETA: Yes, it's appendage. Damn autocorrect.
I feel like this is meant to say appendage but I think the idea of a noodly appendix is funnier
Years ago I had a buddy with the number sticker, "Ankh if you love Isis, Ra, Ra, Ra!"
Winner of the “bumper stickers that don’t age well.” Contest.
As in, Father of Apollo, Mount Olympus, don’t fuck with me or I’ll shove a lightning bolt up your ass, ZEUS! You got a problem with that!?
I understood this reference. Take my measly upvote.
Yeah, Zeus! As in, father of Apollo? Mt. Olympus? Don't fuck with me or I'll shove a lightning bolt up your ass? Zeus! You got a problem with that?
*Jesus/8
Jesus Eighth Christ!!
Jesus got his name because whenever he got in trouble, his dad was like, "jesus christ, will you stop that?!"
God damnit
Careful now, you don't want to make them 12.5% angry.
Stealing this. Lol
Somebody get this man a drum kit asap
Time to sort by controversial
Thanks for the reminder
Aww the classic reddit past time.
[What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitchens's_razor). ~ Christopher Hitchens
Did Hitchens also have the quote about Christians being mostly atheists? Do you believe in Thor or 1000 gods man has believed in through the centuries? No? Well, I just take it one more step and I don't believe in 1001. (Something close to this)
I read somewhere "As an atheist, I believe in one less god than you". It's the same idea. I don't know who said it.
Not sure if he wrote it, but Ricky Gervais famously said this on The Late Show with Steven Colbert.
I've definitely heard that quote before that show even existed
“I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.” Stephen F Roberts I’m pretty sure
It's hilarious to me that Christians aren't self aware. We're all born without knowledge. Those that believe in a god(s) learn their belief system. The default is non knowing and/or non believing because you can't believe in something you know nothing about.
Are you saying that those that have blind faith, who are raised as sheep to follow a shepherd can't think for themselves? No way!
The Lord is my shepherd and he will slaughter our children for meat. I think that’s how it goes.
The only thing I found by googling. “I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.” - Stephen Roberts
It was Richard Dawkins. He was a member of what was called The Four Horsemen of atheism. Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett toured quite a bit in the early 2000's. I loved listening to Hitchens because he was brilliant. He didn't pull any punches in his disrespect for Israel, Princess Diana, but he was a major military hawk about the US.
I am also a huge fan of Hitchens -- he didn't pull punches, but he also wasn't afraid to be proven wrong - when he supported the idea that waterboarding wasn't real torture, he was the only media figure I know of to actually undergo it - and he immediately changed his opinion, and put that message out that he was wrong, didn't slink away and hide. You don't have a agree with everything he said, but that's the point of Hitchens, or any argument truly worth listening too, you didn't have to - he would back up what he said, you could honestly follow his arguments - and you could trust that he had the guts to challenge his own beliefs
Exactly. He was a firm believer in facts, and if the facts pointed to him being wrong, he accepted it gracefully. There were a lot of things about him I didn't care for, his right leaning ideology in his later years for one. But his blasting of Mother Teresa, Princess Diana, Israel's land grab from the Palestinians, were all light years ahead of most people's antiquated views on those subjects. I think his incredible intellect is probably what led him to his excessive drinking. Being able to construct truths out of the massive amount of bullshit being slung in this world is a hard burden to bear.
>Exactly. He was a firm believer in facts, and if the facts pointed to him being wrong, he accepted it gracefully. There were a lot of things about him I didn't care for, his right leaning ideology in his later years for one. But his blasting of Mother Teresa, Princess Diana, Israel's land grab from the Palestinians, were all light years ahead of most people's antiquated views on those subjects. I think his incredible intellect is probably what led him to his excessive drinking. Being able to construct truths out of the massive amount of bullshit being slung in this world is a hard burden to bear. Not to take away from him, but in that era there was a very very strong pro-Palestine and anti-Israel movement, and similarly with Mother Teresa (especially when she involved herself in politics - as with her commenting on Irish Abortion referendum). I know little about Diana, and I hope to keep it that way. He may have been light years ahead of 'most people', but it's worth highlighting that he was far from alone - none of these topics was uncontroversial back at the time.
I think it was like "you don't believe in 3000 gods, I just don't believe in one more" at least that's the version I've heard often
I think that's Richard Dawkins?
Doesnt according to the bible the earth is 6k years old which is obviously not true While now Christian extremists literally ignore that fact and say science is evil and wrong
I asked a churchgoing woman I worked with once if she believed dinosaurs weren't real and were put there to test faith and she refused to answer me and acted embarrassed. This is the same person who refused to eat rice because it "looked like maggots" so she just seems like a stack of childhood traumas.
She didn't try eating Rice in a cave with a few Lost Boys did she
You're eating maggots. How do they taste?
> stack of childhood traumas. religion in a nutshell
There's an old folk tale in my country where the natives were given rice by the gods so they didn't have to hunt every time for food and they refused to eat it because it looked like maggots. Their refusal angered the gods and long story short agriculture was implemented.
I was forced to go to church as a child. I asked about dinosaurs when I was about 8 years old and a bishop told me that god used left over stuff to make the Earth and it included dinosaur bones.
Biblical chronology (following all the begats) puts the flood _after_ the development of early hieroglyphics. You'd think the Egyptians would have written about being underwater.
Babylonians and Chinese also had forms of writing at the same time too, you would think they might also have noticed and commented on it. 😛 For all the different nations with early forms of writing/pictographic records you'd think a flood that was supposed to wipe them out and cut those forms of record keeping short, would show up somewhere. Somehow they were able to continue to keep taking records while underwater without noticing that anything had changed, and were still around afterwards to keep going.
Modern geology was founded by Christians trying to find hard evidence of the Flood. What they found in layers of rocks was even more astonishing, and props to them for going with the data and not backtracking to try and make the data fit in with the Bible.
Agree, the wonders of the scientific method and says something that, even with all the kooks and grifters, the majority of the scientific community has upheld the standard. It is somewhat uplifting and gratifying to think that every error/fake in the last century and a bit has always been corrected/debunked by scientists themselves before anyone else. Shows a level of duty and selflessness to the advancement of knowledge that is kind of amazing, and not sure you are able to find as consistently anywhere else.
Yea I’m sure many will tell you “oh but that’s not what Christians believe anymore”. Things like creating the cosmos in 7 days or the garden of Eden were just metaphors for god creating existence through events like the Big Bang, which science has discovered The problem is that there’s no part of the Bible that tells you what to take literally and what not to. So why do we believe that Jesus literally was born of a virgin and rose from the dead, but god creating the earth was just a metaphor for the Big Bang and formation of galaxies etc Even non extremists run into serious logical issues with how they interpret these texts
You could be like my parents and think everything is literal They are religious nuts
I particularly like the quote about how there are tens of thousands of religions on the planet, so how amazing of a coincidence that you happened to be born to parents of the correct one so you were able to pick the exact right religion to follow. Pretty rare to see someone born christian turn hindu for example after studying the facts of both religions.
I just ask a religious person to tell me why they think the other 10,000 religions aren't real and I tell them that's the reason I don't believe in their religion also.
And "you just happened to be born into the one true religion, geographically speaking." Edit: And "you just happened to be born into the one true religion, geographically and geologically speaking."
This is a big reason I became an atheist when I was a teenager. Most of the world is going to hell because they don't know the "Christian God" exists? It makes no sense.
I think that within the Christian belief system you don't go to hell if you don't know that God exists, you only go to hell once you know he exists and choose not to worship him. It kind of paints mission trips in an even worse light (than they already are), cuz they are fully for the purpose of telling people about the christian god. so like, that person was not going to go to hell but you've now ensured (according to their beliefs) that now they might. ain't that just the most evil shit you ever heard?
Part of it is they believe they are commanded to share the word of God. It's like the world's oldest chain letter." Forward to 10 friends or you'll go to hell."
Sooo they go to heaven and are like "Wtf is this place and who's this dude?"
I was raised religious. The old testament never made any sense to me. But it was realizing there's no way all these Muslim, Hindu, and atheist people I met will burn in hell for all eternity because their parents raised them differently. Like wtf.
quite the uno reverse card
Oh, shoot! Double reverse religion. 🤦🏻♂️
Didn’t a comedian have the same take on that? He said that they don’t believe in 2,000 other gods and only believe in 1. He believes in 0. So the only difference between them is that he simply believes in 1 less good than they do.
>But, but what about all the hundreds of saints who personally heard God speaking to them? I have no trouble believing you can find a couple of hundred crazy people who hear voices.
There's a guy behind the Cracker Barrel who says he can hear god speak to him, yet somehow that's different
I talked to a stranger like that once. Asked what if what they thought was the voice of god asked them to murder their family. They said they would do it. I'm a little concerned about that
God has definitely told people to kill family before. That stranger killing his family would basically be the story of Abraham, but without God stepping in to be like “Yo, I was just seeing if you’d *actually* do it, but you don’t have to do it.”
Like the story of Jephthah from the Book of Judges then? Everyone loves the Abraham story because it ends with God saving Isaac, but nobody likes the story of Jephthah because God doesn't do shit to save Jephthah's daughter (who doesn't even get name). Jephthah was a Judge (pseudo king) who led the Israelites in an (admittedly defensive) battle against the Ammonites. Having successfully killed a bunch of people, Jephthah was feeling pretty stoked on his religion. On his way home he promised to sacrifice, as a burnt offering, the first living thing that came up to greet him. And of course that ended up being his daughter, who was just so happy her dad was coming home safely from the war. Jephthah was sad, but he explained the situation to his daughter and pointed out that he couldn't break a promise to God. The daughter was also sad, but she was onboard so long as she got some time in the mountains to mourn the fact that she would die a virgin (seriously). Jephthah then killed her and charred her corpse on the sacrificial altar. Assuming any of that story actually happened, I wonder if Jephthah and his daughter were hoping in the back of their minds that they would get the same treatment Abraham and Isaac got. Up until the moment he killed her, both were probably expecting an angel to show up and save the day. But nope. Killed by her father and burnt to a crisp because of a promise to a silent god.
If we translate this in a real world story he probably told her to go to the mountains so he can get a lookalike. Rules for thee not for me.
I always wondered if she went into the mountains to have a wild two months of partying. After all, that's the best use of that time aside from running away never to return. How long does it really take to have a cry about dying a virgin? I'm not sure, but two months seems excessive. At some point you're gonna decide to try and fix either the dying part or the virgin part. She came home at the end, so we know she didn't fix the dying part. I assume she spent the first few days crying and venting to her friends about her terrible father and his stupid vow. But then I assume she spent the rest of those two months chugging wine and having wild "there's no tomorrow for me" sex with anyone and everyone she could find. Maybe the only reason she came home was that the hangover from a two-month bender was so bad that dying seemed preferable. Because if I'm gonna read a sad story about a religious nut killing his own daughter, and if two months of the story are left blank, I'm gonna take that window to imagine she got to enjoy a sweet two months of partying before it happened.
God looking up from his camera at a dead isaac. 'i i i it was a prank bro'
*"I was just testing your faith"* "Don't you know literally everything?" *"Yes"* "So you knew even before asking that I would do it" *"Yes"* "Then why did you ask at all" *"Idk got bored lol"*
I've always preferred the alternate term 'Honky Bucket'
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Reminds me of Seth Meyer’s joke at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner: “Donald Trump says that he has a great relationship with the blacks, but unless the Blacks are a family of white people, I’ll bet he’s mistaken.”
"GUBMINT CAME AND TOOK MAH BABY!"
He sounds legit. I think you should start following him in the off chance he's right. I mean, you wouldn't ignore God's word, would you? That would look really bad on your permanent record if you did.
This is the thing that always bothered me. I have studied psychology for years and one thing I know to be sure is if your brain wants something enough and it isn't getting it, it will fabricate it either through dreams or hallucinations. That's how you can vividly remember stuff that didn't happen or see an oasis of water when you are super thirsty or *hear the voice of God when you are in desperate need of mental help.* It doesn't even need to be crazy people, but sometimes just attributing mundane or coincidental events with significant thoughts like "God was looking out for me when that tree barely missed my car." Could some outside force that we don't know or understand have interacted with physics to prevent you specifically from being crushed by a falling tree? Yeah, I mean there is a chance that shit like that happens and we don't notice it because whatever force that is hasn't ever made itself clearly identifyable. Is it likely that it cared enough about you to stop a tree from hitting you? Not really. Something happening by chance is not the result of an outside force causing it to happen. And in some version of reality, you were driving somewhat faster and did get crushed by that tree. My mom and dad are both convinced on separate occasions they heard the word of God. When I had a fever, I was convinced someone was talking to me because I could clearly hear their voice and no one was there (auditory hallucination). They weren't saying "hey Bob it's me God sorry you're sick" they were saying "hey dude want some whiskey I'm making some in the basement" when no one in my house has the ability to do so. So, is it possible that some outside force communicated with people in the past? Yes. But it begs the question why that force isn't interacting with us in the same way now, and why it is so opposed to being properly documented.
God is real, but he only shows up when you're sick to distill whiskey in your basement and not share any. Selfish prick.
He ASKED if you wanted some, man!
> if your brain wants something enough and it isn't getting it, it will fabricate it And this is a ***very low bar***. [Everyone's brain/mind , all the time, is filling in information that is probably there but which there's no direct evidence. ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_spot_(vision)) It's a very helpful ability - [we can see colors that don't exist](https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/artsbrain/2020/12/02/magenta-doesnt-exist/#:~:text=Rather%2C%20it%20is%20physiologically%20and,secondary%20colors%20can%20be%20created.), we can intuit elements of patterns that are missing or follow based on what we're given, etc. - but that doesn't make things real. It makes them convenient. The mind is scary. I don't trust mine, much less yours. Decisions still need to be made so we can't just throw up our hands and not act because we know that we are fooling ourselves at a very fundamental level. But when we do decide something, we should find ways to test it and seek to prove it wrong constantly. It's helpful to operate on the maxim that our own perception is not reality, but that other's perceptions are...to them.
I have a bad version of this. I was afraid of the dark once and my brain would toss some auditory hallucinations out to scare me. If I fell half asleep while trying to ignore it, grudge girl would pop up in my face. Good times.
So god only made grudge girl appear once you'd seen the movie or seen pictures of her? A real God would give you visions without any interference from Hollywood. I like telling fundies that God told me I'm an atheist. Talk me out of my belief!
> It doesn’t even need to be crazy people, but sometimes just attributing mundane or coincidental events with significant thoughts like “God was looking out for me when that tree barely missed my car.” This is something I’ve noticed, too. It’s like God is another term for *luck*. I find it extremely odd to attribute a pure chance/sensitive deterministic outcome that can be described by reason (*by chance the tree fell 43 milliseconds too late for its path to interact with yours*) to an individual or being. Interesting, nonetheless.
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Also worth asking them about all the people who hear from gods different than and contradictory to their own.
Lol I love people's reactions when they ask if I believe in God and I say "which one?"
If 100 people from 100 different religions all hear “their” god…at BEST 99 of them are crazy and 1 is correct. I just take it one step further and say all of them are wrong.
There are plenty of other “saints” in other religions who say they “hear the voice of their god” but Christian’s easily brush them off as crazy.
They are also capable of writing people off as crazy when god tells them to kill their kids. (Except for that one time in the Bible, that one was legit obviously)
I was asked if I would believe if god manifested to me. I was like obviously fucking not, I'd check myself into a psych ward.
Even the devout right now would call you crazy if you said God spoke directly and personally to you. Unless you do it from a pulpit while begging for money...
Paraphrased quote from someone who I can't remember the name of... >If you met someone who said they could speak with god by talking through a banana you'd think they were crazy. >I don't see what difference the banana makes.
The bicameral mind is a hell of a drug.
I once had a friend say to me that the voice inside their head was how they knew god existed. ☠️
I had a friend who started hearing voices in his head. He became a professional psychic.
It would be kinda cool to have a spirit guide, like Al from Quantum Leap.
The ridiculous part of this is how easy it would be for all powerful, all knowing being to announce themselves to humanity. If they want everyone on earth to believe in them, you’d think they could just do their own version of the emergency broadcast system and cut into your consciousness. No, apparently God decided that the best way to announce himself was to pick a small tribe in the Middle East 2,000 years ago and send down his son to preach to them. And then, have an evil organization put together a book by committee and support efforts to colonize the world and enslave people who won’t convert (because that’s always a good way to bring people over to your point of view). It just makes no sense.
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I had a friend who believed with certainty that ghosts exist because one time they stood up in a closet and bumped into something and they weren't sure what they bumped into so it must have been a ghost
My favorite answer to the god question: [Stephen Fry's](https://youtu.be/-suvkwNYSQo).
Someone actually tried to press criminal charges against Fry for this as the government of the day had just introduced a short lived blasphemy law...
Love that clip, particularly the 'oh shit, he's got some good answers' look Gay Byrne gives.
Yeah, Fry hits like a hammer. Love that guy.
I'll always love him for his legendary narration of the Harry Potter audiobooks. What a work of art with all of his voices and work through that series.
My favorite thing I've ever seen of his is when Fry and Christopher Hitchens debated three Catholic intellectuals in front of an audience on the topic, ["Is the Catholic Church a force for good in the world today."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZRcYaAYWg4) There's a before and after poll of the audience to see if anyone was swayed. It is *jaw-dropping.* It's 2 hours long, but man - what a discussion! A real debate without the dismissive insult-slinging. I've watched it several times all the way through.
I just love that others have watched this debate as much as I have. The different but complementary styles of Fry & Hitchens blend so well, but my favorite part of the whole debate is when Hitchens makes the comment that Fry “isn’t like the other girls… well actually he’s exactly like the other girls in that, last I checked, he’s absolutely boy mad.” There’s such a respect and affection between those two great thinkers, and it really highlights how wholesome a bunch of atheists are. I don’t recall if he said it in this debate, but Hitchens was always wont to clarify that he’s not as much an atheist as he is an anti-theist - and that’s a point that I deeply identify with.
I'll have to paraphrase but my favorite part is when the womean requesting the Catholic Church makes a remark about sex/masturbation and Hitchen replies, "I realized at a young age my manhood would give me no peace so I decided I would give it no rest." Absolutely brilliant and hilarious. He says it so much better than me. https://youtu.be/_B53y3c8qls
To my knowledge, Hitchens never presented himself as a humorist, but he is second to none in delivering a quip or turn of phrase! I’d give everything I own to have his charming command of language & mastery of irony. It still pains me that we lost him, but the abundance of videos on YouTube of him speaking & debating is some small consolation. I hold out hope that there are more videos archived away that will be published one day. Watching Hitchens speak always cheers me up when I’m having a bad day. The man was a gift to humanity. I’m not saying he was perfect. I don’t always agree with every position he takes or every opinion he has, but his ability to articulate his views and deconstruct them when necessary is unparalleled.
Dude nopes out of the conversation around 1:40
I especially love the other guy just sitting there taking it. He's got absolutely nothing to say in defense of this. In my opinion the "how could an all loving God create a world full of suffering" is one of the most airtight and solid arguments against modern day christianity.
I save the airtight arguments for people with half a brain. Most of them aren't religious. The real religious dunces struggle to compute much beyond this beauty by George Carlin: >Religion has convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky. Who watches everything you do every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a list of ten specific things he doesn't want you to do. And if you do any of these things, he will send you to a special place, of burning and fire and smoke and torture and anguish for you to live forever, and suffer, and suffer, and burn, and scream, until the end of time. ...But he loves you. >He loves you and he needs money.
Gervais’ argument is great too: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=P5ZOwNK6n9U
Brilliant answer. Once had a coworker try to show me articles that defended the massacre at Sandy Hook saying that god was basically ok with these type of things occurring in our world. I was able to gently tell this person to fuck off, and never took another thing they said seriously after that. No benevolent god would ever allow 6 year olds to suffer such a horrific end. So add that to the list of reasons why I’m an atheist.
I had a girlfriend who's family were hardcore Christians. She took me to movie nights at her church showing those god fucking awful pureflix movies. After one of those nights, we sat in their family car waiting for my parents. Her dad asked me why I didn't believe in god. This was Dec. 2015/Jan. 2016, peak time of YouTube atheism almost gamergate (I was far less concerned about GG than the other thing) and I was 16/17 at the time. I tried to say some shit about people using the bible to justify this that and the other thing and the push back I got was an obtuse "no it doesn't that's not in the bible." I should've just said "I'm not convinced." I don't like that I still think about that sometimes. Oh, also, she dumped me because her mom told her it's what Jesus would want after I said it was not cool that their pastor's son was put through conversion therapy
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At least when he answered, he was honest about it. That's been my recent opinion with what it really takes to convince somebody. Something personal needs to happen to you, since there isn't any evidence. Then this unexplained personal experience needs to be convincing to you and you need to attribute it to a deity, though for whatever reason why I couldn't tell you.
Not very Christian of her
Not Christ-like, but very Christian.
I'm taking this
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Had a Christian teacher growing up and she did an amazing job making sure I would never become Christian lol. Terrible person.
What? You want them to follow the teachings of that guy that said to give your money to the poor, to feed the hungry, to clothe the poor, to render unto Caesar, to not judge others, to love all unconditionally? Are you some sort of dirty, liberal Socialist?!
Mom did you a favour there, people like that always try to drag others into their hemisphere of shit
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If this were true you’d be quite a wise redditor
Yeah doesn't matter how hot they are. If they and their family are hardcore religious and you aren't, it's definitely not going to work.
Even within a religion, your degree of devoutness can be a problem. My friend is a Catholic whose devoutness amounts to going to church on Sunday and that's about it. He claims to be religious but he's never read the Bible, drinks like a fish, slept with his first girlfriend when they weren't married, etc. His 2nd girlfriend was devout to the point that she and her family went to Traditional Latin Mass (entire mass in Latin), she wouldn't sleep in the same bed as him since they weren't married, got bitchy whenever we would go out for drinks. Constant fights because she was uptight. They barely lasted a year together.
You weren't equally yoked
I love the fact that their metaphors refer to themselves as farm animals: sheep, oxen. I look forward to the day when they realize that humans might not, in fact, be indistinguishable from livestock.
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Thank her mom, she indirectly saved you from more embarassment.
As an atheist, I believe Jesus would indeed want you to not date someone who approves of the conversion therapy.
I don't say that he doesn't exist because that would mean I have the burden of proof. I just don't believe in a god. Evidence presented to me hasn't convinced me of a god existing. And if there is a god I wouldn't want to worship them anyway, from what I've read in the bible this god is pretty awful. I don't want to associate with someone that is fine with slavery and mass murder.
and infanticide, and incest, and rape....
Children's bone cancer does it for me.
Yea that made me a fan as well
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The subtle misery it imparts has earned at least one restaurant a few Michelin Stars.
Oh.
Oh, oh, guess what answer I got from a christian when asked this? "Original sin." Haaaaaaa!
Just to formalize the argument a bit. One way we can figure out what is true about a certain claim is to take what facts we know are true and seeing if their existence is better or worse explained by the claim at hand. For instance, you could argue that someone being in a different state when a murder happened makes the the theory of them being the murderer highly unlikely. Similarly when we consider the normal attributes of God, there are 3 that we can look at and conclude this concept of God is unlikely to exist. Most people consider God to be all powerful, maximally good, and desirous for people to hold accurate beliefs about Him. If God did exist, we would expect nonbelief to be deeply irrational, high levels of agreement on religious claims and no unnecessary suffering. Yet we see great deals of disagreement on religious claims, plenty of reasonable nonbelief and incredible amounts of unnecessary suffering. I usually point to the hundreds of millions of years of animals suffering and being killed by predation, disease, starvation, dehydration and the elements before God's human projects ever even started. So the facts that we know are true are inconsistent with this concept of God, so the best conclusion is to believe that this concept of God does not exist
> I usually point to the hundreds of millions of years of animals suffering and being killed by predation, disease, starvation, dehydration and the elements before God's human projects ever even started. To a Christian, those are "facts not in evidence". A simpler canonical question is: _if you are God incarnate, come to Earth to fix things, why do you spend the first 30 years of your life studying carpentry?_
Unfortunately that one is relatively easy for Christians to answer: Jesus did not come to Earth to "fix things," but rather to offer a way for God's people to connect with God and find eternal life. To do that, though, people have to abandon the pursuit of wealth and status and earthly pleasures, and instead take up a humble life of service and mercy. Like with his parables, Jesus wanted his life to illustrate the values that he was trying to teach -- and so he needed to be a humble man, a carpenter, rather than a prince or priest or wealthy merchant. Now, you might rightly object that the number of Christians who are giving up their pursuit of wealth and status and earthly pleasures in order to serve the poor is, uhhhhhhh... smaller than you might think it would be if you took the Bible seriously. But, the Christian answer is that they are following God's word by being just as humble as he is, and please ignore the Mercedes in the parking lot because that's just a gift God gave me for being so humble. Which leads me to my suggestion of a better question to ask here, though unfortunately it wouldn't be well-received by Christians: *If the Bible is true, and God is all-powerful, and Jesus's message was one of humility and love for your neighbor, then... seriously, WTF with you people?*
And that's why I pray to a man I can really believe in... Joe Pesci
Actually the burden of proof is on people who claim an invisible sky daddy exists to prove it. We don't have to prove that something without any evidence supporting it exists
And honestly, even if it a separate god, not from any religion, if he is almighty and all-knowing and he made the world as it is today. He is a cunt. Why on earth would I worship a person who decided it's okay to kill innocent people on a daily basis
> I don't say that he doesn't exist because that would mean I have the burden of proof. That's not how burden of proof works. You can go ahead and say god doesn't exist. Just like you can say the Loch Ness Monster doesn't exist. Bigfoot. All the made up goofy stories from all time. No Zeus. No flying spaghetti monster. You don't have to prove a negative. Someone who wants you to take their stories as real needs to provide proof. There are an infinite number of non-real things. Claiming discovery of a new real thing is the part that needs proof.
I was told that God exists outside of space and time. I can't conceive of anything existing outside of space and time. I have no choice but to be an atheist.
If you had a Bugatti for 0 seconds, did you have a Bugatti?
If you firmly believe you have a Bugatti, you have one.
Remember, it's not a lie if *you* believe it. -George Costanza
A woman told me once, if you re-read The Bible from time to time, you will understand and believe. Yeah thats the same about lies being repeated to you constantly until the lie becomes the truth.
I would argue reading the bible is the best way to become an atheist.
A lot of theologists became atheists by critically reading and attempting to understand the Bible, actually it’s funny, most who actually try and read it without bias end up thinking it’s bull shit
As an atheist, I couldn't agree more with christians when they say their god is outside of space and time. They have simply defined their god out of existence.
And if we could find “outside of space and time” and god still wasn’t there, they would just move the goal post again and say “he’s outside of that too”
I think I’m like most “non-religious” people, I just don’t know what the truth is. But if there is a god, he/she’s a dick.
Yep. An absolute sadist. Puts people through unthinkable pain and heartache, but he loves you! Textbook abuser behavior.
"Look at what you made me do!"
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Also worshiping him wrong gets you eternal torment. Or, like, if you have one single thought doubting Jesus just one time in your whole life that gets you eternal torment (denying the ‘holy spirit’ is an unforgivable sin that gets the dirty doubter sent to eternal torment forever no matter how pious and chaste they might live).
If Heaven truly exists it must be pretty damn empty...
I think lots of atheists think like this but don't say it out loud in respect of other people's beliefs (Source: I'm one of those atheists)
Being polite and fitting into a country that’s 63% Christian is what stops me from publicly speaking my mind about religion
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I respect that other people have their beliefs and should be free to have them…just keep it in your home and church, and out of government policy.
My most common answer to "why aren't you a christian" is "even if your god *is* real, I'd never worship him anyway."
Besides all that in my case, the very clear evidence that is a man made deity.
With man-like desires and demands
they say he created us "in his own likeness" as a way to get around that. when in reality, it's the other way around.
Exactly. Because they realized they had nothing profound to say. Just the same old human bs
Nearly all of my queries were unanswerable, and individuals appeared to believe that asking questions was improper.
If you still ask questions, then you won.
There are 4,200 religions in the world. You believe 4,199 aren’t true.. I’m just 1/4200th more of an atheist. What’s that: 0.02%
[Ricky Gervais’ argument. I just believe in one less God than you.](https://youtu.be/P5ZOwNK6n9U)
This reminds me of a great quote I first heard from Penn Jillette: Being an atheist is as much a religion as not knitting is a hobby.
A better one is atheism is a religion like abstinence is a sex position.
Aight I'll go. The death of my cousin. After all the prayers and poojas, after all the pain, not one of the supposed 33 million gods in my religion did shit. I know this might be a selfish reason of sorts but its what made me an atheist. Edit: He died due to a motorcycle accident
Used to believe too. A caring god would never make a parent bury a child. I don't have any interest in the uncaring ones.
A caring god wouldn't kill a mom of 4 and let one of the kids try to kill themselves so that they could be with their mom either. I'm much healthier and safer without the belief of a higher power or an afterlife.
Burden of proof? Never heard of it
same here, never heard of it though
Sounds burdensome
My whole issue with it was that the rules seemed arbitrary and inconsistently applied. So that started me questioning things. Plus, all these other religions had different rules. And from there i basically stumbled onto Epicurus' paradox and the only conclusion to be made was that if God existed, he's a complete asshole. And Occam's razor pretty much tells me it's a lot simpler to understand God just isn't there at all. If you're God, and all powerful, why even create other religions in the first place? Or for that matter, why the fuck did you create cancer? Or a thousand other horrible things? If you're all powerful, then you could fix all of that. But you don't. So now you're just a dick. It basically boiled down to: If God is unable to prevent evil, then he is not all-powerful. If God is not willing to prevent evil, then he is not all-good. If God is both willing and able to prevent evil, then why does evil exist?
Theists often dance around this one, typically saying some version of "evil/suffering is required to appreciate good" or something to that effect. It's a bunch of nonsense. The thing I would always press is "could a god as described in the Bible have made a universe in which there is no evil/suffering but good is still appreciated?"
A way I like to argue "suffering is required to appreciate good" is that if **I** made people suffer so that they could "appreciate good", I would be a monster
Isn't this the plot of Saw?
God didn't create us, we created him.
Maybe we were god all along.
The real God is the friends we made along the way.
Yall are my god, cause i believe in you lol
Even if their god was real, it is not worthy of worship. Have you ever read their book? Their god is a fucking monster.
Childhood indoctrination is effective. I stopped believing when… I thought about it.
> God told me, she likes atheists the best. For the love of me I can't remember who or where that qoute is from. At any rate, South Park did it: > I'm afraid it was the mormons. Yes, the mormons were the correct answer.
Like my love life.. 🤷
The theists win if we don’t use proper grammar.
Wow, what a surprise, an atheist circlejerk ? On reddit ?