God is as likely as not.
Not quite. Your god is as likely as Zeus and Thor and Horus. Your god is as likely as the four of them living together in a small one-bedroom apartment in downtown Dallas where they arm wrestle each other to determine who has to pay the rent this month. In other words, not very likely at all.
Or are you one of those progressive thinkers that believs humans are just evoloving animals with a developing mind? I argue that there is ample evidence that we are by nature selfish, competitive, and greedy.
You say this like these are mutually exclusive ideas. Do you really think evolution is any impediment to selfishness, competitiveness or greed? Or to love, altruism and evil? Know that evolution is the creator of all things in the human condition, of all things in all life on this planet and most probably beyond. Physics is the alpha and the omega. Evolution is its creation and we are evolution's creation.
why on earth is that type of a hypothetical surrender a bad thing?
Because it is demonstrably false. That is all that is necessary to reject the idea.
But further, because it is fantasy masquerading as Truth
SM. And because it is enforced through the use of blind faith and existential threat. It is manipulated by evil for the purpose of evil. From collection plate to prosperity gospel, from charlatans selling holy water to ministers’ admonitions against them and their ways, religion is the excuse and so many times the motivation for so much of the evil we perpetrate upon ourselves.
As has been pointed out already, humans are evil enough without the manipulations and the thousand fold increase your religions perpetrate.
If it did turn out to be real, what harm could it cause?
Are you serious? To be puppet to an evil blood-thirsty cosmic despot? No harm?
If it turned out to be real ... have you seen the disease, the depraved and morbid conditions of life? And you would pray to such a creator? There could never be anything more evil, more despicable, more loathsome than some cosmic tyrant that would deliberately create such a world as this then torture its creation for all eternity for *any* reason let alone its own demonic apotheosis. You venerate and pray to this? Disgusting.
There is great harm in the very idea of such a thing let alone its purported reality.
You guys always always bring up evidence, as if evidence is the only human standard to be trusted.
Lots of evidence. Copious amounts of evidence. Copious amounts of evidence from multiple disparate sources.
Yes, that is the *ONLY* standard. All else fails and is rejected. Bring it or go home.
Edited by AZPaul3, : subtitle
Eschew obfuscation. Habituate elucidation.
™ Version 4.2
