Why so friggin' confident?

For the love of God John, do you seriously not see the differences here?To find gravity we step off a ten storey building, there is nothing we can do, we have to accept gravity.Finding God is nothing like this according to you!What test is there that we can do that leaves us no alternative but to believe in God.We step off a building and we cannot deny that there is gravity, even if you are an agravitist you cannot deny it.What test can be done that leaves it impossible for an atheist to deny that God exists?

So it is nothing like the evidence for gravity is it?Everyone experiences gravity whether they acknowledge it or not, they do not have to go out looking for it do they.But God, we have to search for Him, so this is nothing like the quality of evidence for gravity.God really is useless.

So, in order to convince an atheist that there is a God we first have to believe that there is a God. Surely you can come up with better than that?What test can I do that proves there's a God? I cannot deny that gravity exists because its effects can be seen whether I beleive in gravity or not. I don't believe in God but if there was some decent quality of evidence than I would be silly not to believe in God, so what can I do, apart from becoming a brain dead moron, which I don't fancy doing. I have done nothing that requires me to repent.Your God on the other hand does have a lot of repenting to do. His incompetence and hatred for the creatures He created, the evil acts He does to his children everyday of the year does require Him to beg us for forgiveness. He really is an unfit parent.

I'm sure I will one day.However, this won't really do me any good will it? No time to repent and kiss divine butt means that God's threat to cast non-believers into the lake of fire would apply to me. I have nothing to worry about. But, it wouldn't answer my question would it? It is inevitable that God was created by the imagination of men.

So nothing at all like the evidence for gravity is it?I don't have to search or seek out gravity in order for it to be witnessed. If I step oof that 100ft building then gravity will splat my ass whether I believe in it or not. Nothing at all like your incompetent Yahweh. Just did, He failed again to respond.I also just let go of a book and it fell to the floor, gravity does that you know. Far superior evidence to useless Yahweh. As soon as Yahweh apologises for His evil treatment of the Human race I will consider it.

Johnboy may remember the prophets of Baal, but I remember Chemosh, the Moabite God, kicking Yahweh's divine butt. Relevant lines: 17. For I had devoted them to destruction for (the god) Ashtar Chemosh. And from there I took the
18. vessels of Yahweh, and I presented them before the face of Chemosh. And the king of Israel had built
19. Yahaz, and he stayed there throughout his campaign against me; and Chemosh drove him away before my face. And, of course, there's the famous incident in Judges 1:19 when the inept Yahweh again showed how useless He is: The LORD was with the men of Judah. They took possession of the hill country, but they were unable to drive the people from the plains, because they had iron chariots. Think I will get myself a chariot of iron for Judgement Day! Edited by Brian, : whisky infusion!

When have I ever stated that all of the Bible is myth and has no historical context?I would argue that the 'prehistory' books from Genesis to the end of Judges are mostly myth and fictional history, with a little sprinkling of plausible history here and there.We do notice though that the accuracy of the texts improve after the post-exilic period and there is far more support for the biblical texts here than there is for the period of the Judges and before.Personally, I would argue that this mention of King Omri is the first unambiguous mention of an Israelite outside of the Bible. No probs. One of the aims of this website is to educate people, myself included, and in educating people it is important to point out misinformation as well as accurate information. It has two names, The Moabite Stone or The Mesha Stele.The 'Mesha' is the king of the Moabites, Kemosh (Chemosh) was the Moabite God. It is in the Louvre.Archaeology does support a great deal of what is in the Bible, but if we look at the Bible narratives through archaeology we have to be consistent in our approach. If we say find 'x' supports biblical event 'y', we have to be prepared to say that find 'a' suggests that biblical event 'b' really didn't happen. We cannot pick and choose how to use archaeological evidence, and I have always been honest in my postings regarding archaeology and the Bible.I must say though, there's many many Christian websites out there that abuse the discipline of archaeology, many have no idea what archaeology is, they seem to think that finding an artefact related to a Bible event automatically means that everything about that event is now true, all this does is to demonstrate an ignorance of what archaeology is.I really do not have a problem with ancient authors inventing a past for themselves, I think every nation has done that to some degree, ancient nations certainly did. Archaeology has proven that the face value accounts of many biblical events really did not happen. Archaeology has forced scholars to reinterpret the Bible to fit the evidence in their attempts to reconstruct Israel's origins. Before the rise of the New Archaeology many archaeologists utterly abused the evidence, they interpreted every find through the lens of the Bible, they even dated artefacts by using bible chronology! Nowadays this abuse has been eradicated in academic journals. All finds since the late 1960's onwards have had to be interpreted independant of the Bible.The Bible is a wonderful collection of books, personally I prefer to research the Books of Genesis through to Judges, but to take it as the divine word of God that contains no errors is really a stance that only demonstrates an ignorance of the text and the archaeological evidence.

And, of course, none of us are bored with the discussions on 'evolution is just a theory' are we?There's an easy way to avoid that road, take another one.

Maybe the One True God is using you as a warning to us what following a false god can do to a person's sanity?I am sure you mean well, but people like yourself, Bertot, and Jaywill actually drive people away from Christianity.Who in their right mind would voluntarily allow themselves to enter the world of circular reasoning and illogical fantasies that is Christianity?

This is just your cognitive dissonance rearing its head again, keep telling yourself that your belief is rational and supported by evidence if you want, but to us free thinkers it is clear that it isn't.The thing is, as in regard to evidence, it is my experience that believers in general have a very poor understanding of the Bible, science, archaeology, and history. Have you never noticed that it is the 'atheist fundamentalists' who take the time to go to university and study these subjects at a very high academic level? Personally, in all they years that I have posted here, and on other boards, I have never met a Christian who has studied theology and archaeology at university yet they come on these boards and act as if they know what they are talking about, then when their errors are pointed out they start whining about having to look at the evidence through the help of the Holy Spirit!So keep posting this obvious self-duluded position you have convinced yourself of, I am sure some psychology students will appreaciate it. But it is impossible for you to abandon your beliefs, I worked that out pretty soon after I joined a discussion board, Also, as an atheist, it is impossible for me to hate anything, I may dislike a lot of things, but I leave hate to the religious folk. Oh I see, all these years at universities and I haven't looked at any evidence, what do you think I have been doing? But even IF every story was confirmed historically and archaeologically it DOES NOT follow that there is a god, can't you see your faulty reasoning here? My position is entirely due to the lack of evidence. My area of research is the origins of ancient Israel and it is ebtirely due to the lack of evidence that the Bible's version of Israel's origins has been abandonned by all except the most fundamental 'scholars', even then their hypotheses are ripped to shreds in the journals. What they can see is obvious. John 10:10 is barely coherent, you keep coming up with some crazy idea that you have posted something worthwhile, Jaywill is full of hatred for everyone, Peg hasn't got a clue about anything really, ICANT is a decent chap but clearly deluded. So I think you will be surprised at what the readers believe. What attitiude? I am the friendliest person you will ever meet. I am doing you a favour and get no thanks for it. Oh there's evidence all right. You just need to seek it out, understand it, search and search, keep telling yourself it is true and you will find it.

All I have seen on this thread supports what I have concluded years ago, namely that belief in the Christian God is completely circular. The Christians who have attempted to explain that their position is based on objective evidence have utterly failed to supply an acceptable argument of this.It always comes round to 'seek God and the answers will become clear to you', or 'you don't want to find God that's why you cannot see the evidence', we even get the tiresome 'Jesus fulfilled over 300 prophecies therefore He has to be the Messiah', and what is the evidence for these 300 fulfilled prophecies? yes, the very same book that the claims are in!How can these people not see this childish error that they continually make, or maybe they do see it and don't have the honesty to admit it?John 10:10 just spouts out Bible verses every 5 minutes and thinks that is going to persuade anyone that he has a case. He also fits into the camp of the circular reasonists, and he uncritically accepts every fable in the Bible as true.So, finally, nothing new here, nothing different from the same old stuff we get all the time. One thing I will say for certain, the people who have this life changing experience that convinces them there is a God certianly have far lower stabdards of what is acceptable evidence. They have a very childlike gullibility about them, a naivety that an adult should have left behind when they were about twelve years old.This thread has also been a very good example of how little Christians know about their Holy Book, they really appear to know zip about how it came into being, they know virtually nothing about the historical background of times and places written about in the Bible, but worst of all has to be the uncritical acceptance of everything in the Bible, I find this embarrassing.