I Know That God Does Not Exist

Sigh.I've shown the thunderbolt-throwing pagan deity is irrational.I've shown the monotheistic omnipotent, omniscient deity is irrational.It's all superstition, pathetic will-to-believe. Even the believers concede that they believe through faith and not reason.Are you planning to make any argument disputing me? Or are you just going to keep making "fill-in-the-blanks" whines?

I'm curious. What are you concluding? That this deity stuff isn't irrational? If so, why don't you present an argument for your position?

I haven't said I've proven no deities exist. They may.But there's nothing to indicate that they do.The fact that some people believe in them by faith is a perfect proof that there is no reason to believe they exist, considering the vast differences of "religious experiences" throughout the world and throughout history.

Think of it this way: good people will generally do good things, while bad people will often do bad things, but the way to persuade good people to do really heinous crimes is through religious faith.

So when good people do things and claim that their religion had something to do with it, you believe that the religion made them do it, even though it could easily have been their own change of heart in the first place that made them decide to do good, and then take up some religion, but when people espousing some religion do bad things explicitly in the name of their religion you brush it off as not because of their religious beliefs?Oh, by the way, in July an indie band called off a concert in Lebanon because of fears of violence by the Christian community there.

Humanity has had so many problems with vast numbers of people believing things that just aren't so. I'm not talking about things like believing the world is flat, or believing in horoscopes or alien abductions.I'm talking about the anti-vaxxers or the people that believe certain races are superior or the millions of devoted practitioners of Communism that believed the millennium was at hand.Just because a lot of people believe something...

So you see the problem with devotion to unreason.

Well, I'm sure that eventually, when you get around to it, you'll start to try to pretend to prove your case.

Indeed, we all do make mistakes from time to time.

Cherry-picking? You seem confused as to what you mean by a deity. Is it possible that you have some strange idea of "the idea of god" that somehow can be construed to be rational?I doubt it.But go ahead, tell me what's special about your "idea of god".

When you say "I have never said otherwise" you agree that "you can demonstrate that something isn't there by looking for it and not finding it." Then you say "I have said that not finding something is no guarantee that it doesn't exist" which means you can't demonstrate that something's not there by looking for it and not finding it.

Just look at the (Hindu and Buddhist) Tamil suicide bombers who started blowing themselves up way way back in the 1980s.

Now you're trying to go back and change what you claim you said. That's a no-no, kid!

I was pointing out how the Tamil were pioneers of the suicide bombings, though not of terrorism itself.If you want to look at how Buddhists promote their religion, just look at their treatment of the Rohingya in Myanmar.It's simply a fact that, as Christopher Hitchens puts it in his book, religion poisons everything.

"Supposedly"? You really aren't up on current events. Do you know who the Rohingya are?You've basically proven my point with your remarks about Hitler and Stalin. Of course Hitler was a fervent Christian (that's why he persecuted the Jews, of course). As for Stalin, I'll quote Christopher Hitchens.

quote:

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For hundreds of years, millions of Russians had been told the head of state should be a man close to God, the czar, who was head of the Russian Orthodox Church as well as absolute despot. If you’re Stalin, you shouldn’t be in the dictatorship business if you can’t exploit the pool of servility and docility that’s ready-made for you. The task of atheists is to raise people above that level of servility and credulity. No society has gone the way of gulags or concentration camps by following the path of Spinoza and Einstein and Jefferson and Thomas Paine.

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But the thing I enjoy most about your post is the implication that religion isn't good. It's bad. It's very bad, with millions slaughtered over the centuries and throughout the world. Making comparisons of body counts of the Middle East's Muslims, the Northern Irish Christians, the Sri Lankan Hindus, the Myanmar Buddhists etc. etc. etc. with Hitler and Stalin and Mao and others (throw in Genghis Khan too, if you like) just shows that all of this nuttiness, this unreason is bad bad bad!