i'm totally sick of these lame attempts to discredit religion with moronic, unresearched, one sided arguments.

the problem of evil has been debated by philosophers for hundreds of years. Alvin Plantiga and John Hick are two modern religious philosophers who these people should read if they would actually like to engage the subject, although I doubt that's likely to happen.

i just went looking for that bit in the bible about putting disobedient children to death (i've actually read the bible and never come across that before). Guess what? It's not there. I found the bit of old testament law talking about purity in sexual relations, but nothing about killing disobedient children. It seems slightly ironic that in this short video pontificating on biblical inaccuracies Pen and Teller have managed to add text that isn't even there. Also they don't seem to have a strong grasp on what rules were for the Israelites and how Jesus death fulfilled the requirements of the law. I suppose it is easier to just assume that all Christians and ill informed morons.

talk about bullshit.

it's painfully obvious that he did not go looking for Jesus. sounds to me like he went looking for reasons to mock jesus and his followers. it's been done.

with a billion people claiming to be followers, it's not hard to find some deranged person who does something crazy for Jesus, not hard to find a power-hungry political figure who uses Jesus.

this is a series of lame cheap shots strung together with cheesy Jesus movies.

i found Dawkin's last sentence odd: "I don't believe we're put here to be comfortable." um... amen?

I agree that quoting the Bible makes little sense when speaking to an atheist since a Christian believes that the scriptures are inspired by God and the atheist does not believe in God. However, the Bible does not only contain the wise sayings of sages, but descriptions of people and events – historical references -- that can be substantiated or disproved by comparing them with accounts provided by secular historians of the day. Since the Bible contains detailed genealogies of actual people who lived and died, it is quite reasonable for an atheist to believe in the historically verifiable pieces of the Bible while still discounting the parts that cannot be proven. If the Bible has been shown to historically accurate, the atheist should have no trouble agreeing that Jesus Christ was a descendant of King David, who was a descendant of Moses. In fact in the face of historical texts, it would take more faith to disbelieve this. It is also reasonable for an atheist to agree with the Christian that a man born in Bethlehem, Jesus Christ, during the rein of Cesar Augustus does appear to fulfill many prophesies written concerning a future descendant of King David (most notably that he would claim to be the son of God and that he would be put to death for it). What we do with this claim is the primary thing that separates the Christian from the Atheist.

But let's be clear on what is in the Bible and what is not. Slyrr is quoting the Book of Mormon, not the Bible. There is a big difference. The Book of Mormon was unearthed and translated from text inscribed on shiny sheets by Joseph Smith (founder of the Church of Latter Day Saints) in 1823. According to Wiki, these texts were only shown to eight people and most of them fell away from the religion, so the whole thing seems rather suspect to me. I see no historical basis for it that can be substantiated.

Snake: I noticed that you quoted Blaise Pascal. Pascal devoted much of his life to using reason and logic to argue for the existence of God, it seems odd to use one of his quotes to argue the opposite.
"It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason. That is what faith is: God perceived by the heart, not by the reason." -- Blaise Pascal

Regardless of scientific or artistic accomplishment, if an atheist is wrong and God does exist, they will feel foolish when they stand before Him. This Biblical statement cannot be really evaluated until we can answer the question of God's existance (which can't be know until after death). Clearly there are many intelligent people who believe and many who do not. The Bible says that men who do not believe in God are fools and this statement certainly cannot be disproven with a long list of distingued names.