LOL his name is Zeus and he is a whiny shit.

Upvote to make up for @ant’s downvote. I need to find this fine establishment and let them take all my monies. Praise Hey Zeus! Can I get an amen brothers and sisters?

*quality Zeus!!!!

I am open to rational answers, but not hokum. Using mythos to prove mythos is no answer.
I've said I'm not open to suspending rationality or sanity, you say that means I won't listen to you....um.....

The entirety of Christianity hinges on one thing; the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is a historical event and can be investigated that way. Jesus Christ is a real person who lived 2000 years ago in Israel. This isn't mythos and there is good evidence to believe it happened.

How do you know there's no FSM? I've seen exponentially more evidence of his existence than Yahweh's. I've eaten pasta. I absolutely believe in it more than Yahweh, but that's not a high bar.
Edit: How do you know there's no Allah? Odin? Zeus? Mythra? Mot? Cthulhu?

We both know that the fsm is a joke religion invented to mock Christianity.

The scripture tells us that men have worshiped other gods for thousands of years, but that what they worship are demons. So I believe those beings exist, but they aren't what they claim to be. One of Satans primary tools to deceive mankind is false religion. He provides supernatural confirmation of these religions. There is a desire in mans heart to worship God, and it gets corrupted so that man is willing to worship just about anything. In western culture, men idolize money, materialism, carnal lusts, even themselves. Our idols are less obvious but they are still idols.

One more time, my questions were 1.why is God's word so easily misstated, misunderstood, misidentified, misused, confused, and used for evil and hate? (Edit: especially given that properly interpreting it is allegedly the only way to escape eternal torture, seems like a set up.)

Any truth is easily misstated, misunderstood, misidentified, misused, confused, and used for evil and hate. This isn't a phenomenon unique to the scriptures; this is the reality of living in a fallen world. Corrupt men distort truth for their own gain. Look at the political situation in our country; how is what politicians do different from what prosperity preachers do? It really isn't.

The fact is that the gospel is very simple to understand; even a child could understand it, and they do. Gods word is very clear about our need for salvation and how to obtain it. It's man who overcomplicates it, distorts it for gain, or deliberately conceals the truth. Trust in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and believe He was raised from the dead. You don't need to be a theologian to understand that.

2.why is disbelief apparently worse than murder, rape, and slavery and so not covered by Jesus's sin erasing sacrifice and the only sin that's totally unforgivable.

How did you come to the conclusion that Jesus didn't die for unbelief? We all have unbelief that needs forgiveness which we receive by repentance. His atonement is not automatically transferred to everyone; the condition of receiving forgiveness is to believe. If you don't believe you won't receive forgiveness because you failed to meet the condition, not because unbelief is worse than murder necessarily. Dying without forgiveness for your sin is the problem, not that it can't be forgiven, but it can't be forgiven without repentance. It's kind of like this:

Let's say you had cancer and the only cure was in Los Angeles. You had no way to get there but God sent you a car to get you to Los Angeles and get the cure. When it arrived you didn't believe it would take you there so you didn't get in. A short time later you died of cancer.

So what was the reason you died? It was your unbelief that stopped you receiving the cure, but it was your cancer that killed you. In the same way it is your unbelief that keeps you from coming to Jesus Christ for forgiveness, so you will die in your sin.

I am interested in and open to an actual answer to either or both if you have one. It won't make me believe, but it might help me understand those who do a little better.

I'm happy to answer your questions newtboy..I just didn't want it to turn into another internet argument. I appreciate your candor

I am open to rational answers, but not hokum. Using mythos to prove mythos is no answer.
I've said I'm not open to suspending rationality or sanity, you say that means I won't listen to you....um.....

I offered precise questions in hope of precise answers, but got off topic rambling and accusations I won't listen. Understand why I don't respect that?

First, that's not an answer at all or even addressing my questions, it's a misdirection question.
Second, I don't know, but I'm 100% sure there's been zero credible evidence of it that I've ever heard of, as are you, and that it's a totally incredible story which require extraordinary evidence.

How do you know there's no FSM? I've seen exponentially more evidence of his existence than Yahweh's. I've eaten pasta. I absolutely believe in it more than Yahweh, but that's not a high bar.
Edit: How do you know there's no Allah? Odin? Zeus? Mythra? Mot? Cthulhu?

One more time, my questions were 1.why is God's word so easily misstated, misunderstood, misidentified, misused, confused, and used for evil and hate? (Edit: especially given that properly interpreting it is allegedly the only way to escape eternal torture, seems like a set up.) 2.why is disbelief apparently worse than murder, rape, and slavery and so not covered by Jesus's sin erasing sacrifice and the only sin that's totally unforgivable.
I am interested in and open to an actual answer to either or both if you have one. It won't make me believe, but it might help me understand those who do a little better.

I agree with every point made here... and 5, maybe 10 years ago, I would happily engage in refuting any argument for god.

But it feels like society has gone backward since then.

OF COURSE, there's no god. There's no Santa, there's no tooth fairy and there's no Zeus. Thor was in an awesome movie, but so was fucking Batman (to be clear, I'm talking about the Dark Knight, not that DCEU shite). Doesn't make either of them real.

We've all made all the same logical coherent arguments for atheism, but at this stage it's so blindingly obvious, it's ... boring.

Is there a possibility of god? Uh, fine, I guess... but it's about as likely as me being the reincarnation of Elvis.

At this stage, I no longer have the energy or the motivation to debate people who still believe. Wanna believe in god? Eh, knock yourself out, as long as you don't try to push your fairytales onto my life or the lives of others, I really don't care anymore....

@harlequinn

Yeeeaaaaaah...

Judging by the incoherent rambling of that last post, it looks like I struck a nerve. I mean, come on man. You claim you can't remember everything you read, but in this case you somehow didn't remember that the Christian god is omnipotent--a fundamental doctrine of every major denomination of Christianity in existence today? That's seriously your defense?

Quit your bullshit. You tried to shut down @newtboy and got yourself shut down instead. I'm sure that's frustrating and contributed to the nonsensical nature of that last post, but still....

To answer in all seriousness your subsequent questions:

1) Yes, atheism has brought me immense peace. It felt great to let go of religion--Christianity specifically--especially all the guilt-tripping and fire-and-brimstone bullshit that went along with it. As a side bonus, I felt relieved that I was no longer financially subsidizing a bunch of pedophiles (I left long before the major scandals broke in mainstream media).

2) No, I'm not angry but I am certainly annoyed at all the numb nuts who keep blowing themselves up, discriminating against the LGBT community, and trying to tell women what they can and can't do with their bodies using only their Bronze Age (or older in the case of religions like Hinduism and Buddhism) superstitious beliefs as the rationale for their behavior.

3) No, I am not vegan. Just had fried chicken for dinner tonight.

4) Yes, I had to Google the exact passages but I knew the bible said somewhere that god was omnipotent because, as a former Christian, I'd read through it several times before. Sorry to hear you are so "forgetful" about the holy text that forms the backbone of your religion. Actually, I know you're not forgetful; the point the guy in the video is making is that most Christians choose not to look at the parts of the bible they don't like or even worse make ridiculous convoluted arguments to try to explain them away (as you tried to do here in explaining away god's omnipotence/omniscience).

Moving on, the "tenability" of Christianity has nothing to do with "Tradition." The whole thing is a house of cards. It doesn't matter in the slightest whether you want to interpret any holy text in the world literally or through some collective interpretation by an ostensibly educated priest-class. What makes all religion untenable is the fact that it is 100% made up bullshit. There is as much evidence for the existence of a Christian god as there is for Zeus, Thor, Santa Claus, or the tooth fairy (i.e. none).

Finally, no, I don't need to come up with a system to replace religion. It already exists and it is called "using reason and compassion." The idea itself that we need some system to control us or protect us from ourselves is archaic and frankly anachronistic in this day and age.

Now, I mean this in all seriousness--I wish you the best. I was you once, a long time ago, trying to stave off the cognitive dissonance of being a rationale human being yet also believing in a religion. I'd argue with atheists just like you're trying to do now. But the thing is... they made good arguments. The stuff they pointed out stuck with me. At first I'd shrug it off, but the facts nagged at me and nagged at me until I finally set out to prove those pesky atheists wrong--only to find out through research that everything they were saying was 100% correct.

Like I said in the previous post, you'll either face the facts or turn away and hide from them. I can't tell you if you'd be happier or not without religion--no one can. What I can tell you is that at the very least you would no longer be contributing to a collective hive-mind that has very real and very negative effects on the world we live in, regardless of whatever benefits the religion may bring to you personally. Either way, I sincerely wish you peace.

Sequentially we just saw; an average member of the public certain that a bill would stay, followed by someone who works in media who said that she had utmost faith in the bill staying.

Am i Lord Stupid of Stupidville for thinking that there might be a connection there which should make sirens and alarm bells go off in our brains?

With respect to the senior correspondent at Vox, how in the name of Zeus' arsehole did someone so naive get to be in that position?

If she was so sure and casual about it, then probably the articles and/or people that she oversaw would have been just as flippant in their reporting, which in turn gave the reader the impression they didn't have to be concerned with keeping what they needed.

I thought they were going to talk about the origin story of Zeus.

Why don't we call them pearl babies. That sounds much nicer to me.

Perhaps the 2nd amendment has just been taken out of context, maybe it's the right to "bear arms". So when you hunt bears you get to keep it's arms.


Or maybe it was a spelling mistake, and it's the right to "bare" arms. So everyone has a right to roll up their sleeves and wear singlets.


Either way basing your lifestyle on a out-dated document that is clearly not relevant to modern society, you might as well be praying to Zeus.

Somewhat disappointed that he didn't include my personal favorite argument against Pascal's Wager: conflicting faiths.

Instead of a 4-cell chart (2x2 from believe/don't believe and god exists/doesn't), the chart should arguably be a LOT bigger. Plenty of individual branches of Christianity will tell you that *their* specific brand is the only one that will get you into heaven. And that's just relatively minor distinctions -- different sorts of Protestants, or Protestants vs Catholics, etc. We haven't even got to Christianity vs Judaism vs Islam -- all of which fall under the "Abrahamic" umbrella -- but very few Christian faiths think that Jews or Muslims are just as eligible to enter heaven as they are (or vice-versa). From there you can get to things as disparate as Hindu vs Ancient Egyptian vs Zoroastrianism, and everything else.

With that sort of chart, it is just as easy to say that choosing to believe in the *wrong* god could possibly be associated with a more negative outcome than washing your hands of it and going Atheist. Maybe I chose to believe in Ra the Sun God when Zeus ends up being the one true deity. Come to find that Zeus, as it turns out, tolerates people who don't believe in him as long as they don't believe in one of his competitors (like Ra). Therefore I get a lightning bolt to the keyster and a trip to Hades while my nonbeliever buddy gets a ticket to Elysium.

Of course it's all a load of bollocks, but if your argument is a load of bollocks (like Pascal's wager) you don't get to complain when somebody flips it on its head and uses it to argue the exact opposite...

Your video, Zeus vs Thor - Epic Rap Battles of History season 4, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Hah... missed! In your face, zeus!!

Zeus says...slow down....