trillian

I think it would have been really cool if the Christian God had placed a copy of the bible, thousands of years ago, inside of a millions year old rock, under the antarctic ice shelf, written in a perfectly legible modern language and it was found by a buddhist and dated by scientists. That might get me thinking but I hope it never happens because I don't like the Xn God very much, even as a story. But the Xn God never communicates so clearly today so I still have to believe he doesn't exist.

Why doesn't God talk anymore or inspire people to write? Why not keep adding to the Bible? God seemed to evolve towards modernity, then he just stopped talking and inspiring around 100CE? He left a sexist, racist, bloody book to stand for all eternity without another revision?

There is no evidence (as many others have said) of the Xn God any more compelling than other religions of the world. To say that one is true and others are false is ignoring "their" same evidence. There can be no logic to that. It is a simple sociological, emotional attachment which is difficult for most theists to break.

RevDahlia

beautifully put. STILL waiting for answers to these questions... but am willing to bet i will be disappointed. phooey.

Biff the unclean

If you really "believed" that the Bible was the word of God, then by what standard did you decide that it wasn't?
How did you establish this standard as being superior to God's word?

I used the very standards that the bible suggested. It said that God was perfect.
So, I asked myself, if a perfect being had an important message to get out it would have to be perfectly communicated or the being would be no longer perfect himself.
So who is the target audience?
That's easy, it's everyone on the planet.
A perfect communication would mean that everyone would know exactly what was being communicated.
BUT
The bible is a book. Written in a time when only a very few people could read. And only a small percentage of those who could read could read the obscure language it was written in.
It was published by people who lacked the technology to do a mass printing. They even lacked the knowledge that most of the people on the planet existed. And had they known couldn't have shipped the books anyway.
Different factions would read the same words in the bible and completely disagree with what the words meant. Disagree to the point of killing one another.
So obviously this isn't a message from a perfect being. Because perfect communication is not the responsibility of the audience. It is the responsibility of the communicator. If I wanted to tell you that your fly was open and I told you in ancient Greek, all the time knowing that you don't speak ancient Greek, it would not be your fault that you didn't understand me. It would be mine for being such a piss poor communicator. And considering that I had the knowledge already that you didn't understand what I was saying it would make me an idiot for wasting both our time.
So by using the standards set by the "word of God" you can easily see that it's really the "word of an idiot."
Since there are thousands of different types of Christians each with their own interpretation (and why would you even need an interpretation if you were the intended audience?) then the Christians prove that the bible is not the word of God.

Jack the Bodiless

Yet again, the short-circuiting of reason!

Evidence that the Bible actually IS God's word:
{ }

Theo, if I told you that I've just found a discarded bubblegum wrapper with the words "God commands everyone to yodel thrice daily for 20 minutes", you'd take up yodelling, right? No questions asked?

Who are YOU to deny God's word?

Dargo

That simple enough. I believed that Jesus was my lord and savior and tried to live my life in a way that would please him. I trusted him to follow the promise in Math 7:7-12 to answer prayers. I never took this to mean god was a genie who would cater to my every whim, but I did believe he would meet my needs.

I prayed for several things for years without receiving any answer. For example I have always suffered from poor self-confidence and was never much good at evangelism. I believed it was important, but my shyness made it impossible for me to do it effectively. I have always had a rather negative attitude. Other Christians would frequently tell me I needed to be more positive. I wanted to be more positive, and I certainly prayed for this to happen with no results.

I also believed that premarital sex was wrong. I therefore remained virtuous like god wanted me to. In fact I decided I would only date Christian women who had the same standard I did. I'm neither attractive, nor self-confident, so woman weren't especially interested in me. However, had I been willing to give up on this "important" standard I could have a lot more dates when I was younger. Problem is it started becoming real obvious that my moral standards were condeming me to a lifetime of loneliness.

I was left with the feeling that god was playing some kind of cruel game with me by repeatedly ignoring my prayers. Like many other ex-Christians I realized that the promise in Math 7:7-12 was a load of horse-hockey. God had repeatedly proven himself to be untrustworthy and I lost respect for him.

I started to read artitcles on atheistic web sites such as this one. The more I read the more my faith eroded. I believed the bible was inerrant, so finding out it was full of errors was especially damaging. I didn't want to lose it, but I could no longer ignore reality. I pleaded with god to give me some shred of evidence to restore my dying faith. It wouldn't have taken much but I needed some clear proof I wasn't praying to an empty sky. If god had answered my prayers earlier I would never have doubted his existance in the first place. I needed something clearly supernatural, so when I had doubts in the future I could remember that and say yes that was god. He exists and he cares about me.

To sum this up, like all ex-Christians I never saw any proof at all. I wanted to. Sorry to everyone if this rambling is off-topic, but I wanted Theo to know why I am so "arrogant" in expecting evidence for god Apparently I'm expected to struggle my whole life to believe, and the great all-powerful holy one doesn't need to lift a finger to help me in times of need or give me any reason to believe in him. Theo, I may sound angry at god and I was very angry during my deconversion period because I felt betrayed. I'm past that; being angry at god is as pointless as being angry as Santa Clause. If I had gotten psycological help when I was younger instead of counting on some the promises in a dusty book of myths that an invisible sky genie would help me with my problems, maybe I wouldn't be in such a hopeless position now.

Vorkosigan

Dargo, the only hopeless position is dead. From all other positions, it is possible to go forward. Welcome to Infidels, BTW, belated thought it may be.

Vorkosigan

Biff the unclean

Theophilus: If you really believed in the ressurection, why did you stop believing?

Because one day I started wondering about the word "Easter." What does it mean, what language is it in?
I was shocked to find out that it was the name of a pagan Goddess. I was more shocked to find that this was the day that she brought her son, Tammuz, back to life after he had been dead for three days. And to find that the image of Easter and Tammuz (the earliest of which comes from Hacilar in Turkey and dates to 5400-5700BCE) was exactly the same image that was in my church of Mary and the crucified Jesus. Easter was the Goddess of the sunrise (the direction the sun comes up in is named for her) and on this date the Pagans held sun rise survices every year.
The more I researched the more versions of this same story I found. Venus, Aphrodite, Cybele, Hathor, Ishtar, Inanna, Dumuzi, Mithra, Dionysus, Apis, Christna…I found over a dozen stories. All of them had God/human hybrids, they all died (many from crucifixion) for either three or forty days, and they all came back to life on either the first day of spring or the first full moon thereafter. They all went to the underworld and freed the souls of the virtuous dead.
The story of Jesus' resurrection is completely indistinguishable from the rest of them. It is just some warmed over agrarian myth left over from the late stone age. It's about crops not metaphysics. And the Christians didn't even try to hide this fact by giving it a Christian name: what arrogance.

Calzaer

Well, then, that clears everything up nicely!

Where can I see this specimen?

theIPU

A clear definition of the Christian God, plus some objective and compelling supporting evidence, would be enough to convince me.

The evidence must be objective, though; anecdotal evidence of other people's religious experiences isn't good enough. And strong, compelling evidence is required, because the existence of God is an extraordinary claim -- and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

SOURCE: http://www.infidels.org/news/atheism/intro.html

Biff the unclean

extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence
I'd be willing to go with mundane evidence instead of extraordinary. The same degree of evidence that is required to prove the existence of a tuna salad sandwich would do just fine for God Almighty.