“It is possible to be good relative to other people without God, but is not possible to be wholly good without God.”

Haha!! Really? You mean good in the ways that we don’t understand (since God has his mysterious ways), like trying as hard as we can not to let gays marry? I prefer be evil then. That’s too much kindness.

“Really? Really? I have no comment for this childish drivel.”

Hahaha!! You’re right, it is childish.

““I simply do not know everything about our universe” is the key phrase. You don’t know for certain whether God exists, so why are you arrogantly acting as if he doesn’t?”

You don’t know for certain whether elves exist either, but you WOULD act as if they don’t (and maybe arrogantly). You would probably laugh at the idea that the pope is infallible, which is somewhat supported by scripture.

I haven’t read everything, I’ve got to run.

Héhé, I’m not pretending to have convinced that many Christians (religious people) that they were wrong, but they always seem to hear the arguments for the first time, and said arguments really seem to bother them, to give them a violent shock. My sister has lost her faith, is now an agnostic, héhé, thanks to me. Though she’s the only relative I have managed to convince.

“I really believe what you termed “horseshit.” You don’t know that it’s only a myth; indeed you can’t know that by your own admission. But we don’t have numerous historical, eyewitness claims for the power and majesty of the rabbit’s foot, where we do have the Bible that chronicles the history of man’s dealings with God. And God has been faithful in his promises. And Jesus offers us confirmatory evidence that the God of the Bible is real.”

It was indelicate of him to call your beliefs “horseshit” (héhé, if you want delicacy from non-believers, don’t go look there at all). Yes, he doesn’t know that it’s only a myth, but he doesn’t know that about a lot of other unproven claims, like the Story of Saint Nicolas, or the existence of Zeus. As for the Bible, I’m not sure it is accepted as a historical document, or should be. I’m not a history expert, so I can’t really refute your claims about it being so. I don’t think any document claiming the supernatural can be considered a faithful document anyway. And there are so many contradictions. I recently learned the gospels don’t agree on Jesus’ last words, on Judas’ death, on things concerning the trip of Paul to Damascus, etc. And historians don’t even think the great census happened (the last part is from “The God Delusion”, I know, it’s a biased source, héhé). What about the burning bush: the only person who could have reported it would be Moses. It would, as almost all the apparitions in the Bible, require later people to take a single person’s word for it. I’m not sure I would trust the Bible, really, why is it more reliable than the Iliad? The people may have existed, but their actions and encounters may have been fabricated (maybe the same for the Iliad). But again, I’m no history expert.

“This is a typical sentiment of atheists. They don’t want anything to do with heaven. The underlying pretext is that they don’t want heaven because of the eternal fellowship with the God they hate. Therefore, hell is reserved for at they may feel the wrath of God rather than fellowship. That’s what they want, after all!”

You’re being sarcastic? I mean, non-believers don’t even believe in God, Mark is mocking religious people. But I feel you’re just mocking him back.

“Interesting.

Or, the fact that the belief in some sort of paradise for the righteous and torment for the unrighteous after death is so ubiquitous testifies to the truth of the belief. That humans building a “religion” on it and using it to control the “naive masses” is a corruption of the intent of heaven and hell. Those who falsely teach and mislead the “naive masses” will answer for their transgression in a most severe way (Jms 3:1).

The vast majority of ancient peoples believed in some sort of God or gods, and believed in a concept similar to heaven and hell. Does that mean that all ancient people were ignorant?

My personal experience managing teenagers on what is usually their first job has taught me that with each graduating class, peoples’ intelligences are eroding away. They become more dependent on technology. If that is true, then backing up through time would indicate that the ancient people who believed in God were actually smarter than we are today.

There may be something to that. Our ancestors laid the groundwork for all of the technology that we enjoy today. They invented metallurgy, smelting, food preservation, and figured out which berries were food and which were poisonous (hopefully not the hard way).”

Hmmm. That last part is pretty funny actually, héhé. They probably did it the hard way (or maybe the poisonous berries didn’t look appealing).

First of all, come on. The fact that most people believe in some paradise and some torment of hell only shows that they wanted a motive to do good and not be evil. The Hindus (I think) or the Buddhists have this reincarnation punishment, you become an insignificant creature in your next life or something if you don’t behave (hell) and become a well positioned human, or better, a spirit if you do behave. Doesn’t that make more sense than for some people only agree on the principles of punishment and reward (while completely disagreeing on the most important parts of their theologies?). What, in your opinion, would people be most likely to encounter if a deity appeared to them, their “hell”s or their “heavens” or the deity himself on whom they so disagree (for the record, Israel’s religion was the most incompatible with the various pagan faiths surrounding them; said pagans even used to “fuse” their deities, claim that they were the same (Greeks-Romans), something that WOULD, though weakly, testify to the existence of, say, Zeus/Jupiter.

I actually don’t believe that people invented religion to control the masses, I think for some reason people start believing certain things (distorting facts very little, the complete distortion being left to future generations which can magnify the tales, etc) and only later, opportunists profit of the naive beliefs to exploit believers (televangelists).

It doesn’t mean that ancient peoples were stupid. Isaac Newton was religious. One of the smartest people I know is religious. But I do think it shows a lack of independence of thinking in the religious sphere, which can walk hand in hand with intelligence. They come up with the most complicated mathematical theories, but with the lamest things to justify their beliefs. I think (as in your case) they are very practical, but they “feel” God first, and after that point, all bets are off. They will lie to themselves in order to show that he exists because to them, that fact is self-evident. I also think that many people just don’t have enough time to sit down and seriously question themselves about their beliefs.

Well, I don’t know what to say about your remark concerning intelligence. Héhé, technology is addictive, of course. But the people who are less religious nowadays are not really the ones profiting of technology, they are the ones building it, the ones who use their brains for a living. Our ancestors may have needed to know about evolution maybe (though it is not necessary, the question “Who created God?” is enough for an un-evolved world). I didn’t really know much about evolution when I became an agnostic, I was never a fan of biology. You have to also know that some non-believers had to remain silent in order to avoid arrest at earlier times.