Why are all Christians atheists?

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All belief in god(s) is magic.

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What else is it other than "magic", Phat?In other words, can you explain how is it not magic?

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God is a construct of the human mind only and is not our Creator.

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Why do you disagree?Upon what basis?

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Transcendant reality.

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What's that?

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Because it's not evident that God is made-up. That might not be the case. It's just an opinion.

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Do you mean that it is only an opinion that any superstition is made up, or just the one you subscribe to?

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Don't most fundies claim they have considered other religions and picked the right/best one?

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I don't think they do, actually.They spend a lot of time saying that their religion is the One True Faith, but I don't recall many fundies claiming to have seriously considered any other religion with an open mind before settling upon fundamentalist christianity.

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I'm betting you already accept that there are mysteries to reality that far exceed human knowledge. Reality might go further than what we can experience and study. What we know might be true but might only be like the earth's crust - thin.

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Sure, but...so what?If we don't know, then we don't know.Going beyond that and saying, "There are mysteries that far exceed human knowledge, but [i]I actually have special, unsharable knowledge that allows me to understand those mysteries" is making an unwarranted leap.It's just making stuff up. What else could it be, since we have no way of knowing if you are correct?

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That assumes it is a superstition.

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No, it doesn't, really.How is it not a superstition? All belief in the supernatural is superstition."Religion" is just what we call our own superstition when we want to make it sound better and more respectable than all the other superstitions.

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So if force X divulges information to source C but source D doesn't know it, or can't know it, then it's made up?

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Like I said already, there's no way to tell if you are correct.It might as well be made up if there's no way to know which one is right.OTOH, we DO know that certain brain abnormalities make people hear God, or demons, or aliens, or what have you.If someone who says they are Jesus, are they Jesus?

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If force X and source C have a correspondence, it's irrelevant as to what other sources conclude. it becomes a reality which is merely unknowable to other sources.

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So, how can one tell the difference between reality and self-delusion in this case?

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I've no genuine reason to believe it is self-delusion, from my experience.

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But everybody who holds to superstitious beliefs says that.The Jim Jones cult people didn't think they were deluded, either, nor the Cargo cults, nor the Heaven's Gate cults, nor the guy at the local insane asylum who thinks he is Jesus.That's the nature of delusion. You aren't aware of being deluded.

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That doesn't mean I'm incorrect.

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It doesn't mean that any superstition is incorrect, then.They could all be "correct", right?

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You favour that it IS superstition, and that it is incorrect, which isn't impartial Shraff - it comes from your own beliefs.

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No, I favor the liklihood of superstition because the evidence most strongly supports that view. Remember the guy at the asylum who thinks he is Jesus?Anything we dream up could be "correct", Mike. But there's no way to test any of those dreams to learn which one, some, all, or none of them are correct, because the basis for each of those beliefs is exactly the same.

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If any belief was a superstition, then logically, superstition would have no definition, as we would have one term, which would be belief.

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Superstition is a subset of belief.

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Could be, but many 'fundies' did go thru a point of seriously considering fundamentalism with an open mind!

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Again, I don't think so.I think many if not most fundamentalists who were not raised that way get into fundamentalism out of emotional need.I mean, there's a reason that Mormon missionaries (and other cult/religious missionaries) target young, emotionally vulnerable college students, away from home and mostly on their own for the first time.This is not due to the academic environment encouraging "open-minded consideration" in the students, but because college can be very lonely.Easy pickings.

Superstition is a subset of belief.

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But yes, obviously belief in God is not a superstition.

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Is belief in the power of prayer a superstition?

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The most powerful one, in my opinion, is that the Greek and Roman gods behaved in ways that would get them prosecuted and punished by the Greek and Roman states. Jupiter, for example, ate his own children. Far from being gods, they are rather criminals.

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Where is the requirement that gods be benevolent?Saturn (not Jupiter) ate his own children, yes, but Yaweh drowned nearly all life on earth.I really don't see the difference.Edited by nator, : No reason given.

Hey, welcome back, Juggs!

Are you planning to explain the difference between a god who kills his (few) children by eating them and a god who kills his (millions of) children and all animal and plant life by drowing all of them?And again, where is it written that gods are required to be benevolent to be considered legitimate?

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If you'd like. You didn't ask, so I didn't figure it was necessary. A God who creates and rules the world is entitled to decree the death penalty for sufficient violation of his will.

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A god whose passions and jealousies cause him to eat his physically generated children is a monster. There is no resemblance between those two beings.

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A god who kills millions, including entirely innocent animals, plants and children (including infants and those being carried by pregnant women) in a terrifying flood is a far greater monster.But your own God regretted killing everything in the flood, didn't he? Doesn't that mean that he made a mistake in killing every living thing, and that maybe it was the wrong thing to have done?I don't know which is worse, the God-caused drowning/suffering of millions of innocent animals and children or the "Oops, I guess I overreacted. Sorry."Both stories are fucked up, TL. Both portray sociopathic behavior.

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That's not written anywhere, but when a large, wide issue like which God is real is being debated, this is something that gets discussed. In context of the whole debate, it's a significant issue.

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The reason I asked that question was because you wrote: My points are:1) Drowning innocent animals and children would get your God prosecuted and punished today, so I fail to see why this point is in your favor.2) You seem to imply that gods shouldn't be considered gods if they aren't "good" or benevolent, or something. I don't understand at all why you would think that. The OT god is a jealous, venegeful, bloodthirsty god that would be tried for war crimes for his many genocides. Does this mean that, to you, the OT Yaweh is "far from being a god, but is rather a criminal."?

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It's reasonable to disbelieve in the truth of a claimed god if the deity isn't benevolent or shows wildly irrational behaviour.

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Why?

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For me, the more forgiving and understanding/intelligent the God is, the more likely the deity is, to be the correct deity IF it is assumed there is one.

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Why?I have no idea where anybody ever got the idea that gods have to be "nice" or "good" to be gods.Likewise, I have no idea where anybody ever got the idea that the "correct" god could be determined by her "niceness" or "goodness"There is no logical reason at all to conclude this.