For starters, I have read the Bible. Your god sounds like a sociopath, eager to destroy anything and anyone that doesn’t bend to his will (so why bother giving humanity free will to begin with), while the supposed enemy does nothing of note throughout the entire story except for attempting to give humans knowledge he felt they shouldn’t be denied.

I am far from conceited and am very aware of just how little I really know of the universe and it’s vastness. Quite honestly I find it much more humble to admit you don’t know than to assume your religion (and only your religion) knocked it out of the park in one go and is the best road map we have to an understanding of our universe and it’s creator. I mean, it’s pretty arrogant to think that your religion nailed it while others which are older by thousands of years just missed the mark entirely. And likewise it’s quite arrogant to believe that you’re so incredibly right about this (despite there existing no corroborating evidence of any sort outside of your own mythos) that anyone who disagrees with you is going to burn in hell for all eternity. Not because they were bad people who did evil things, but because they doubted the existence of a fairytale or believed in a different fairytale than yours.

Now, as for your claims about the quality of the moral code spoke by Jesus... the quality of any moral code should be determined by the kind of life it gives to its followers, how well they treat one another and the value they see in charity and selflessness. Now personally when I think of Christianity, most of what comes to mind are violent events like the crusades, the inquisition, and witch hunts. As well as less violent but still morally despicable things such as denying single payer health insurance while professing to follow Christ (only the worthy deserve care), showing unabated cruelty and hatred toward LGBTQ+, forcing unmarried mothers to give their babies up for adoption, the whole “undeserving poor”/poor people are poor because they deserve to be argument, anti homeless architecture, and using the Bible to justify domestic violence and slavery (just a couple of examples). My point is, who Jesus was doesn’t matter in the context of the validity of his moral code.

But I’m very interested to know why god was able to do “any number of things” to get around inbreeding and yet seems either completely powerless or completely ambivalent toward human suffering. Young children get cancer and die, single moms are raped and murdered, innocent people serve years in inhuman prison conditions or are put to death... where is god in all of this? I’ve often heard the argument that he doesn’t intervene because of free will and the idea that our “struggles make us stronger”. But if you have the ability and means to help someone and alleviate their pain and you choose not to do it, you’re a psychopath regardless of how you justified your lack of action.

And lastly, I’m curious how “atheist propaganda” is all fake news? Considering the fact that atheism doesn’t look to replace the belief in god with the belief in something else, nor does it attempt to control any other aspect of a person’s life, I find the very idea of an existence of “atheist propaganda” to be dubious. Because in reality, discussions on evolution, the Big Bang, or the existence of dinosaurs isn’t propaganda, it’s just reality. And it’s reality because it’s true whether you accept it or not, the evidence exists and is compelling whether or not you personally factor it into your beliefs on that subject, and said evidence can be found in a multitude of places without the need to look very hard or make large, illogical jumps in your reasoning to justify it.

I’m not interested in salvation. I’m interested in living a good and kind life filled with love and hopefully leaving a better world for my children.

Eh, it’s not a topic I bring up in regular conversation. And I’m more than happy to let believers believe and worship however they see fit. But when they decide that their beliefs should also be mine by force and that I should have no choice but to live by their religious laws and standards... well that’s when shit gets hyphy for me personally.!

Just like we don’t know for sure that we aren’t all living in the matrix and the machines have already taken over. Just like we don’t know for sure that god exists. Just like we don’t know for sure that aliens have never been to our planet.

Just because you can’t know something for sure doesn’t mean it’s justifiable to believe in it despite contradictory evidence.

The purchase and sale of sex between consenting adults is not a “crime against humanity” and there are plenty of sex workers who are far from being victims of anyone or anything. Making it illegal and therefore underground is what leads to so much suffering, including the sale of children. Without oversight, every industry will behave in whatever way generates the most profit even if it’s unethical.

Prohibition and trying to rely on some religious morality that hasn’t been dominant in most of the west in more than a hundred years does very little to keep evil at bay, especially the kind you all pretend to hate so much.

Omg no, not bRa StRaPs!!!! Next you’ll tell me that her ankles were also visible and I’ll have a heart attack over her moral debauchery ?

Ah, destroy “growth”. Growth is not a reliable measure for the quality of life experienced in any given country. On a world with finite resources, we simply can’t continue to “grow” forever. More shit to buy and less to be paid for it, more places to eat, more places to shop and more shit to buy in those shops.

None of that addresses human suffering or rectifies injustices. It just ensures that you’ll be comfortable while the rest of the world burns.

The universe is so large the human mind can’t really grasp its size, and somehow we’re the one and only form of intelligent life that ever came about? Despite carbon being the 4th most common element in the universe, the universe being “fine tuned” to support carbon based biological life, and the fact that a large number of terrestrial exoplanets also orbit their host stars in what’s known as the “Goldilocks zone”, where liquid water is able to exist. Okay sure. And then on top of that, the world is actually only a few thousands of years old, dinosaurs never existed (despite such well documented evidence of them), and there’s a supposedly a single, omnipotent being who started the human race from one male and female pair and loves all of us unconditionally as his “children”, but will damn us to hell for (among other things) questioning his existence when he himself provides zero proof of it. And somehow, despite being an omnipotent sky dude with no human form he was able to biologically impregnate a woman who gave birth to a man who was somehow both his son and himself.

Yeah. Sounds like a super sound line of reasoning, everything checks out!

Why would any god design his creations to have rational thought and then not expect them to use it to reason on his very existence?

That’s not true. Most tomboys grow up to be typically feminine or in some cases extremely feminine.

The democrats will have passed Biden’s relief bill through budget reconciliation and you’ll all have a fresh 1400 in your bank accounts to buy GME stock with. Trump will still be at his resort, living a life we could only ever dream of. Covid vaccinations will be on their way to mandatory designation (think smallpox and polio), and hopefully at least some of you morons will listen.

We’ll continue moving the Overton window to the left, until the fact that the US remains one of the only wealthy nations without a national health system becomes a point of national embarrassment to all but the most in empathetic among you (I admit that’s quite a lot)... and not long after a floor vote will be forced on M4all as the realities of medical bills due to covid start to become realized as the pandemic winds down. Eventually, nationalized programs will be the majority and private corps will have no choice but to allow the workers who generate the profit to run the show and take home the bacon. Higher education will also be nationalized and long overdue infrastructure needs will finally be addressed. All the necessities of a decent standard of living (housing, food, water, gas, utilities, schooling, the internet) will be enshrined in a new amendment to the constitution.

DNA evolved pretty directly from RNA. We know the oldest life forms on earth were RNA based just as we (and everything else on earth excluding some microorganisms and viruses) are DNA based.

Before the evolution of DNA there was an entire world of living things using RNA to carry their genetic sequence (instead of using it for the building the replication of that sequence the way we do). DNA came about the same way most forms of evolution do; random chance that was then positively selected for due to offering a survival advantage. The advantage of DNA over RNA is clear. It degrades less rapidly, it’s less prone to error, and most of all it allows for much longer and more sophisticated sequencing.

There are mysteries around DNA that science still hasn’t answered. But it’s very existence is evidence that evolution is real and has been since the beginning of life on earth.

Lmao this thread is insane,

There is no god, no satan, no heaven, no hell.

This is our one and only shot. Instead of wasting it trying to indoctrinate someone into your religion, why don’t you help a neighbor or have nice long masturbation sesh.

Both of them are better options than trying to convince someone that your religion really is the one and only way (despite the hundreds of other religions preached with just as much surety), when they themselves have made efforts to reach out to your god and were met with only silence and the self awareness to know that if they claimed to believe they would be lying.

I’m only 27 and this ship has long since sailed for me as well. Age doesn’t have anything to do with it. I’ve known 5 year olds that realized people have never lived to be hundreds of years old and that a story about a great flood that only one single family survived (meaning incest was the only way forward for the species) probably wasn’t meant to be taken literally, the same way they realize Santa isn’t real.

So you think that makes them satanists? I fail to see how laughing at what a group you don’t take seriously is deathly afraid of somehow makes you the enemy of that group.

You’re ridiculous. You have no right to demonize all atheists because we don’t believe in a god.

I volunteer in my community to assist the homeless who want our help. I’m a peer support in my addiction recovery group and do my best to include everyone no matter what their recovery looks like. I donate a couple thousand dollars a year to worthwhile charities. I treat everyone I meet with kindness and even if they’re nasty to me I don’t reciprocate their negativity. I’m always willing to help someone in need.

I behave this way because I truly believe we only have this one life to live so we should do all we can to make it as close to utopia as we can. If you’re only a good person because god told you to be then you aren’t actually a good person. Truly good people are good because they want to be.

But by all means, tell me how the way I live my life serves this satan guy in literally any way.

Atheists are not “working for Satan” without knowing it. I’m quite certain that in your mythological framework, satan requires the permission of any would be helper in order to carry out his works through them. I mean, isn’t that what this “cabal” is all about? They sold their souls in order to gain power and influence here on earth?

But someone who has made no such pact with your boogeyman is not automatically working for him by default. You don’t have to be a Christian to think molesting kids, raping, murdering, lying, cheating and stealing are all morally wrong. I’m so sick of this bullshit argument that without religion you can’t have morality because it just isn’t true.

If you’re only a good person because your god told you to be then you aren’t actually a good person.

Hey bro, so I just wanna let you know that atheists don’t believe in Satan...and neither does the mainstream satanic church.

I would defend any child against any potential abuser until my last breath. But I don’t need jesus to do it.

Lmao. You’ve gotta be kidding me.

It isn’t Elon “my parents owned an emerald mine in apartheid South Africa and I take so much LSD I can’t remember my children’s names (seriously, something his partner Grimes recently complained about)” Musk, and it isn’t Donald Trump.

It’s the dudes taking out second mortgages, not paying rent and other bills, and high interest rate loans that are propping up with the big orders. I’m assuming you’ve been on the reddit because this is an obvious fact.

Long gone are the days of making investments by giving your stock broker a call. It’s 2021 and every asshole with a robinhood or webull account has the power to make or break the market.

We didn’t need Elon Musk or Donald Trump to do this. We did it ourselves.

Lmao. It’s a bunch of Robinhood boys on the Reddit wallstreetbets. I know because my husband is one of them.