So in your first paragraph youve set a scene that I believe in magic ratheer than an all powerful all seeing , all knowing "thing". What a riduclous opening start.
Right , first off a request. It’s not the 00s anymore and angry man atheist is a bit britpop these days. Please can we conduct this debate in your normal way?
Second, I’m not wanting to write a book that no one wants to read, so will try and pick up the many points succinctly. Come back to any you are particularly interested in. (Edit upon finishing - fail!)
Lastly, and at the risk of matching Archie for lawyerly posing, I’m not qualified to answer some of this stuff, you need to speak to someone who is more up on Theology.
Anyway…
Regards the first point; glib you might find it, but you come from the school of sky fairy denouncing glibsters do you not? (Edit - sorry that was Burbank, apologies if you view it differently but your earlier salvo suggests not). I’m pointing out precisely that you are not starting on firmer ground so perhaps that’s worth bearing in mind. Oh and science has nothing to say here and never will; your faith articles aren’t a get out of jail.
As I said below, the requirement to be an atheist - if you think about it, and again most don’t - starts from here, and then as enumerated in my subsequent questions, requires belief in things that
must be false in an atheist universe….well to function anyway.
It’s more than you can charge at any religion where ultimately you can only express disbelief however strongly. In an atheist universe the bunch of things I listed
must be so. It’s all a bit much for me to reconcile, and tbh virtually no atheists do, and those that tried invariably went bonkers.
These days most western atheists are instead alcohol-free lager Christians. Fair enough, but one might ask for a bit less disdain for where you get your worldview, not least since your faith is nonsensical with the key ingredient taken out.
Failing so far on brevity, will try harder…
I reject completeley that "equality" (yip, theres loads of equality in the bible. A book which condones slavery for example!!) and your fantastic notion that before Christianity (FFS how many older stories are out there of eg an immaculate conception, a messiah blah blah blah. There IS NOTHING original at all in the story of your messiah) there were no human traits of love and care etc before the chritians came. Laughable. Your getting human traits and behaviours mixed up with a believe system wihout one ounce of proof of any existance.
Sorry, dawkinsian tosh. Our notion of equality very much comes from the New Testament as does eventually the abolition of slavery, which is present in the history of the OT as it was practised by he Jews as by everyone everywhere. Yes, it took Christians fckn ages to follow through on the logic of their beliefs, but they did in the end, and abolished it where no one else did (some transient and local efforts in the ancient world should be noted - but nothing underpinning them to allow it to spread and last it seems).
Returning to equality, what does it even mean in an atheist universe? It’s nonsense on stilts in the context of evolution and is literally devoid of meaning. It’s a faith article imported from Christianity.
I mean what
does it mean ? In what sense are people equal without resort to any religious concepts ? (The latter includes right or wrong attitudes to hold; so please don’t employ them - they’re meaningless in an atheist universe. There is useful and not useful).
You probably pray. You tell me ONE time, ONCE where your prayers were answered and you can wholly contribute it to the paranormal.
I’m not making any paranormal claims and I’m quite surprised you expect me to. I don’t think any Christian would answer differently (some of these American types perhaps excepted). Pray then do stuff, to very loosely paraphrase the Pope. Because of Christianity I’ve done lots of things I wouldn’t otherwise have done, and not done lots of things I would otherwise have done. My nature is far from angelic.
Free will. Does the raped lady have free will egb? Do little Palestian children, as an example have free will when they are bombed by and slaughtered by peoples from a neighbouring country.? Does that then mean we have to make up fantastic tales of an all powerful all seeing all knowing "thing". A creator of everything who demands worship! wtaf. You pick and choose the parts of your bible and you ignore anything that doesnt suite. Where are the thousands of other gods at yhe mo egb. Wheres Odin got to?
What is this all about ? Nothing to do with anything. Please return to the point, which is not that some poor people are victims of others against their will, it’s that in an atheist universe there is no free will. Do you accept that? If not why not ?
As for Odin et al, the stock response to that is religion is hard wired in mankind, and the panoply of Gods reflects man’s attempts to understand a sensed Divine.
I asked a very simple question to you. I asked if you had read your bible as an adult, what would you have thought of it. I know the answer, you dont wish to, as when you do, you know where it leads.
The following is a bit cringe tbh. I love how atheists think that in thousands of years religions haven’t been over this kind of thing endlessly and with considerably more depth than this logic free doodle. Please don’t take us down to this level.
View attachment 14006
Jesus.
God "gave" his son, to come down to earth to be tortured and die for our sins. All the dead rose and wandered about etc. WTF. Why didnt god jus pop down and tell us. What an awfy convoluted way of doing things, wouldnt you agree.
Free will. You’re missing out the part where the idyll atheists complain God hasn’t bestowed is in the hereafter. This life is about free will, and free choices, including to reject. Of course you don’t believe that as is your wont, but it’s not the inconsistent position your preachers would have it.
If a bear attacks its prey, it will simply start eating it alive. eh? That no shan? CAreful no piss into some rivers in Africa, as there are paracites that will travel up you urine and into your body and kill you.....
Not sure what your point is? Why is it shan if you’re an atheist? It just is. You’ll have to look to theologians for serious discussions of ‘natural evil’. My take on things - and I don’t know if they’d agree - is this environment is full of challenges we can freely choose to pick up. Or not. Ie help people or pursue our own gratification. Free choice doesn’t mean much if limited to coke vs Pepsi.
Can you give one piece of proof of the existance of this being you worship. Why do you wish to believe in a being which demands worship, and if not, it will cast you in the fiery furnace for all eternity? What the fuck is the point in that? Why are there so many versions of this all seeing all knowing all powerful being out there. Can all you religious human beings out there be right? The answer is no. Can you all be wrong? The answer is yes.
You wholly dodged my question. Its was very easy and fundamental. Give me science where there is a burden of proof, which changes constantly as we learn more and disprove theories over asinine "faith" every day of the week.
Why on earth do you expect that I am going to try and offer you proof of something that is faith based?
Your own faith in science is a little tambourine waving, not to say unscientific. Science is just a discipline for exploring mechanical processes, nothing more, nothing less. It’s fckn great but you dont seem to have a good grasp of what it is which is perhaps behind your scientistic sounding statements of faith. Scientism - science as religion - isn’t new btw. It’s been tried and swiftly failed long before the naïfs of the 00s tried and swiftly failed, and are now denounced by their own former flock who have substantially gone full moonhowler.
Science is never, ever, going to resolve the magic point I put to you for one example. That is where science fails in its reach - well actually well well before that. If you don’t get that, you don’t get what science is I’m afraid.
Really, tho, I was looking for you, Egb, the man, the bounce legend, the force of nature to give me youre rationale for this nonsense. I got an Egb waffle. This subject is your cross to bear. The one you dodge and have dodged for centuries of bounce musings. I think it’s because you can only , once ll is said and done, fall back on "faith" and "faith" alone..... so nothing really. Cheers for taking the time to not really answer tho.
Where the feck were you in the 00s. This was done to death endlessly and I was the opposite of dodging it. I don’t major on the topic anymore for that very reason. It was done and done again. We all know where we are.
As I said before, I gave you my answers in my question to you. Your implicit beliefs and the double think required to function are wildly improbable to me and the outcome is a pretty pishy one that fails on its own terms as well as any other (ie all atheist social groupings start to die out the moment they become such - at least without a strong proxy for religion).
You seem to assume this comes from childhood. It of course does in as much as I would be unlikely to pick anything I wasn’t aware of but how many kids do you know that read the Bible? As a kid I barely thought about this at all, as a teenager and for a good while beyond I still didn’t think about anything and if asked would have come out with many of the blithe assumptions that society has bequeathed to you. When I started to think about them they feel to pieces, and that was part of my way to engaging with religion properly for the first time, or at least as properly as I get.
Things you seem to think just natural human things are emphatically not to the point it’s an absurdity to believe this once you make the most cursory examination of history or nature. But…it’s passed on by the hand that rocks the cradle as it’s one of the faith articles of our own society. What do you think you’d have concluded if not saturated by this stuff from day one, never challenged to examine it, and never had the reality pushed at you? Or maybe you think you’d have been the human rights advocate in Genghis Khan’s cohort?
Right I have answered you at length. Will you return the favour and answer what was put to you?
... and I appreciate the heads up.... apologies 
