Honey, you need a grammar lesson if you’re going to make sense yourself. Even the adults have trouble understanding “you words”.

It is not even clear whom you are addressing.

The author of the original post? (In which case others seemed to understand that person quite well so what is your problem.)

The last person who commented? (That would be me.) Are you one of the teens who is having difficulty with comprehension or are you referring to your school mates?

Kirk and Ray? I can understand that one but the point of the posting here was to frown on the lack of common politeness by those from the non-believers side who were debating against them. Why join the ranks of the impolite yourself? That kind of behavior falls short of the ideal no matter what side of the fence people are on.

Are you annoyed at one of us for making you doubt the existence of the historical Jesus or the god you were taught to worship as a child? If that is a viewpoint you already hold, then why engage in put-down remarks to whoever it is that you are addressing here?

Why do we Christians always have to prove that God does exist?

The burden of proof rests with Christians because the existence of a supernatural being is an extraordinary claim which is not supported by obvious objective tangible evidence. No-one believes in Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, the Easter Bunny or a god unless they have been told that these things exist by someone whom they find persuasive. This usually happens in childhood before a person develops the ability to question authority and sift evidence. Children’s brains are wired to believe anything which an authoritative figure tells them. Some people just never outgrow that stage.

Adults tell children that there is a Santa Klaus and kids believe this without question. One of the stages of mental development is to question this authority and independently consider the evidence for such a being. Kids give up their belief in Santa somewhere between the ages of 4 and 16. http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/167/12/1325 They do so because it is not a socially sanctioned belief for adults and because adults generally assist, rather than hinder, a child’s intellectual development in this realm. If a child asks parental figures for confirmation that there is, in fact, no Santa at least some adults in the child’s environment will admit that it is a playful hoax. Older children who have outgrown the belief will also assist in this process.

The process of outgrowing a belief in a god (usually a very specific god with very specific properties) is hindered because the society the person lives in actively supports these beliefs and actively discourages people from questioning them.

Other people are seduced into believing things for which there is no objective evidence due to the use of marketing ploys, trance induction and other techniques of persuasion which turn off the parts of the brain which engage in critical thinking. Religious events include trance-inducing phenomena such as hand clapping, repetitive phrases, lilting voice patterns, music which causes mood change, vibrations know to cause alterations in mind functioning and physical sensations, topics which induce fear and then provide the promise of relief if the victim believes or does what is hypnotically suggested. The rest is achieved by post hypnotic suggestion and powerful social pressures to conform to the norms and expectations of the group.

Discovering that you have been duped in this way almost always a long and painful process. It is hard to accept that people you admire have betrayed your trust or are sufficiently human and fallible to have been soundly duped themselves.

People who have not reached this stage merely parrot what they have been told by those who they unwisely trust. This is what you repeatedly demonstrate.

There will be a day that all of us will know the truth

Assertion without proof. Blind repetition of what someone you trust has told you.

God will confront us one day and ask us if we believe HIM now.

Assertion without proof. Blind repetition of what someone you trust has told you.

What will you say?? What will you do if he points to hell where you’ll spend eternity at.

This assumes that the previous evidence-free assertion is true. It also asserts that there is a hell without providing proof.

What do you have to loose (=lose?) if you follow the Bible

This is an echo of the well-known Pascal’s Wager which has long been taught in introductory philosophy classes along with its rebuttal.

It assumes, among other things, that people can choose to believe (or follow) anything regardless of whether they find it compelling.

It also assumes that the consequences of believing, or acting as if you do believe, are totally good. There is a vast array of evidence which shows that acting on one’s interpretation of what the Bible says is very often far from benign. The rise in witch burnings in your county is a good case in point.

From the very beginnings of the religion, Christians disagreed about what the Bible was, which parts of it should be followed and which parts should be discarded or ignored. Paul asserted that all scripture was inspired by god. He was not referring to his own writings (because he was not aware that his writings would one day be referred to as scripture). He was not referring to the rest of the New Testament because this was written until decades to centuries later. He was referring only to the Jewish writings. He also argued that the new sect of Judaism which he was shaping was free to discard many of the practices demanded by the Jewish scriptures he stated were divinely inspired. James, the brother of Jesus, disagreed and there was some considerable heat generated over it. Historically, the original disciples of Jesus of Nazareth lost and it was Paul who won. Ironically Paul had never met the physical Jesus or heard him preach. His writings show him to be entirely ignorant of the life and teachings of the physical Jesus.

Today there are huge and irreconcilable differences in how various Christian groups interpret the Bible, including whether this collection of ancient books supports the notion that their version of Christianity is the most correct, or the only correct form. Several factions argue that they, and they alone, are the only True Christians and that others have no right to the label.
In other words, whose Bible and whose fallible interpretation of it are you talking about.

If you dont believe it why do you fear it???

This is a nonsense question because there is absolutely nothing in the previous postings which suggest that any ex-Christian on this forum has any “fear” of the Bible.

God does exist

Assertion without proof. Blind repetition of what someone you trust has told you.

, we cant see Him but we can feel Him.

Assertion without proof. Blind repetition of what someone you trust has told you.

Personal feelings are an extremely unreliable way of knowing anything. The scientific study of psychology is full of evidence that the brain is subject to all kinds of biases, illusions and delusions. The brain is good at seeing patterns, even if they do not exist. It will fill in gaps and make up stuff in order to achieve this. It makes things up in line with our past experiences and knowledge and in line with the things happening in the environment at the time of the experience

One example (of thousands of possible ones) is our brain’s constant denial of the blind spot that we have in each eye. Your brain processes the information in such a way that you have absolutely no awareness that you actually have a couple of holes in your vision. In spite of the fact that your brain convinces you that you are seeing things in the holes, objective testing will prove that you cannot really see anything in those holes. If you want evidence that your brain fools you into thinking that you see what you cannot see then you will find it here. http://library.thinkquest.org/C005949/fun/blindspot.htm

Certain trance-inducing phenomena cause a brain state where part of it is turned off (the part which helps us separate external from internal experience). This results in the experience of a “presence” which is not objectively there. Everyone interprets that experience in line with their past experience, knowledge, expectations and environment. People in this state are usually very vulnerable to outside influence. If a preacher tells you that you are experiencing their version of god then you will very likely interpret your sensations in this manner. People with different backgrounds and traditions will interpret the experience in mutally exclusive ways. Catholics will sense saints (even ones which their church later says really did not exist), evangelicals will sense their version of a loving Jesus, Hindus will sense one of their gods, Australian Aboriginals will sense one of their Dream Spirits while Buddhists who do not believe in a supernatural being will simply experience a state of oneness with the universe.

In other words, what you feel depends entirely on what you have been primed to feel.

Next time you have a think you are sensing your community’s version of “god”, remember that you brain is already fooling you that you can see in your blind spots. If you cannot see two black spots in your vision, then how can you hope to tell whether what you are sensing is not simply a guided product of your imagination? And if you can see two black spots in your vision, how can you be certain that you are not hallucinating these?

Can you see wind? No, but you can feel it.

We can measure wind. We cannot measure supernatural concepts.

I feel sorry for the people that denied God as their Saviour

There is absolutely nothing on this forum which indicates that de-converts have “denied god”, only that they have discarded beliefs which they do not find to be logically tenable.

now you’ll never see anything else as just the Pearly Gates.

Assertion without proof. Blind repetition of what someone you trust has told you.

To see how silly this sounds to a deconvert replace the word “god” with something you no longer believe in because it is logically untenable. For example:

I feel sorry for people who have denied that the Easter Rabbit brings eggs because they will no longer receive chocolate eggs at Easter time.
I feel sorry for people who have denied that Santa Claus brings presents to good children because they will no longer receive rewards at Christmas time.

That is the kind of thing you might hear from a child who has yet to figure out the truth and learned to live with the reality. If you heard this kind of thing from a child you would simply laugh because you know that it is ingenuous magical thinking and that the child will grow out of some time soon. If you heard this kind of thing from an adult (whom you could reasonably expect to have reached mental maturity) you might feel sad, concerned, alarmed or assume they were trying to be funny.

Few of my friends are Atheists but we both believe in something that is difficult to explain at the end of the day.

It is you who are having trouble explaining and justifying your beliefs. In fact, you do not even try. This suggests that your beliefs are based on subjective and personally interpreted emotional experience rather than on observable and tangible evidence. You may be intellectually immature. You may have a credulous personality which is programmed to believe what people tell you without demanding that they provide reasonable proof. You may lack an education in critical thinking and the scientific method of determining truth. You may be living in a community which has strong taboos against independent thinking and the questioning of authority figures. You may be subject to social conditioning to conform to the norms and values of the group and subject to social punishment is you express different views or simply admit to entertaining them. You may be frequently subjected to hypnotic suggestion, misdirection and other mind manipulations. You may be subject to sub-conscious influences which persuade you the sensations which result from induced alterations in brain functioning should be interpreted as a “god experience” of the kind acceptable to your community. You will no doubt lack the knowledge that such experiences are subjectively interpreted in an extremely varied way with the only common factor being that they are consistent with the background knowledge of the person and in line with opinions being loudly expressed by whoever is in the vicinity at the time.

The only thing which is certain is that you did not arrive at your belief set in the absence of close contact with other human beings. Many aspects of morality appear to be innate or develop naturally as the result of contact with others. On the other hand, god beliefs are purely social constructs. They are not inherently obvious or innately developed.

There is nothing wrong in what I believe and you don’t believe.

Assertion without proof.

This is easily demolished by pointing to a very long history of atrocities and malignant actions caused by belief in the Jewish-Christian god.

The list begins with the horrendous acts reported to have been carried out by the Jewish people at the command of their Yahweh god (read the books of Exodus and Leviticus for some of the worst of these horrors). It continues with Paul’s denigration of women and support of slavery, the slaughtering history of the Crusades, the incredible cruelty of the Catholic Inquisition, the torture and death of those believed to be witches (happening in your own country right now), the discrimination and abuse of those with genetics which produce a brown skin color and of those who have began their existence in a womb environment which bathed them in hormones with resulted in the later development of sexual preferences which differ from the norm.

Today, there is ongoing evidence of Christian believers who suppress or attempt to suppress scientific development and of those who deliberately mis-educate or omit to educate children in crucial elements of science and critical thinking.

Finally, there are the many instances of physical and psychological child abuse in the name of the Christian god and of the physical and psychological abuse of adults who do not believe exactly the same things as their Christian family or surrounding community. The waiting rooms of mental health professionals are full of such people. Therapy results in changes which are far more profound and benevolent than any of those attributed to a religious conversion experience.

In summary,
you have clearly demonstrated that your beliefs are merely repetitions of what you have been told to believe without question by others. There is nothing at all glorious about credulous acceptance.

If you want to have our ideas respected by this community then you will need to show that you have thought them through carefully. This includes investigating alternative explanations, both for the beliefs of your community and for your subjective and emotional experiences. You clearly have not done so. Nor does it appear that you have any interest in doing so.

That leaves us with few alternatives other than to treat you as we would a person who insists that Santa really exists simply and entirely because he has a strong emotional feeling that he does, and all his friends agree with him. In the light of what has been said above, would you take such a person seriously?

What will you say?? What will you do if he points to hell where you’ll spend eternity at.
This assumes that the previous evidence-free assertion is true. It also asserts that there is a hell without providing proof.
What do you have to loose (=lose?) if you follow the Bible
This is an echo of the well-known Pascal’s Wager which has long been taught in introductory philosophy classes along with its rebuttal.
It assumes, among other things, that people can choose to believe (or follow) anything regardless of whether they find it compelling.
It also assumes that the consequences of believing, or acting as if you do believe, are totally good. There is a vast array of evidence which shows that acting on one’s interpretation of what the Bible says is very often far from benign. The rise in witch burnings in your county is a good case in point.
From the very beginnings of the religion, Christians disagreed about what the Bible was, which parts of it should be followed and which parts should be discarded or ignored. Paul asserted that all scripture was inspired by god. He was not referring to his own writings (because he was not aware that his writings would one day be referred to as scripture). He was not referring to the rest of the New Testament because this was written until decades to centuries later. He was referring only to the Jewish writings. He also argued that the new sect of Judaism which he was shaping was free to discard many of the practices demanded by the Jewish scriptures he stated were divinely inspired. James, the brother of Jesus, disagreed and there was some considerable heat generated over it. Historically, the original disciples of Jesus of Nazareth lost and it was Paul who won. Ironically Paul had never met the physical Jesus or heard him preach. His writings show him to be entirely ignorant of the life and teachings of the physical Jesus.

Today there are huge and irreconcilable differences in how various Christian groups interpret the Bible, including whether this collection of ancient books supports the notion that their version of Christianity is the most correct, or the only correct form. Several factions argue that they, and they alone, are the only True Christians and that others have no right to the label.
In other words, whose Bible and whose fallible interpretation of it are you talking about.

If you dont believe it why do you fear it???
This is a nonsense question because there is absolutely nothing in the previous postings which suggest that any ex-Christian on this forum has any “fear” of the Bible.
God does exist
Assertion without proof. Blind repetition of what someone you trust has told you.

, we cant see Him but we can feel Him.
Assertion without proof. Blind repetition of what someone you trust has told you.
Personal feelings are an extremely unreliable way of knowing anything. The scientific study of psychology is full of evidence that the brain is subject to all kinds of biases, illusions and delusions. The brain is good at seeing patterns, even if they do not exist. It will fill in gaps and make up stuff in order to achieve this. It makes things up in line with our past experiences and knowledge and in line with the things happening in the environment at the time of the experience
One example (of thousands of possible ones) is our brain’s constant denial of the blind spot that we have in each eye. Your brain processes the information in such a way that you have absolutely no awareness that you actually have a couple of holes in your vision. In spite of the fact that your brain convinces you that you are seeing things in the holes, objective testing will prove that you cannot really see anything in those holes. If you want evidence that your brain fools you into thinking that you see what you cannot see then you will find it here. http://library.thinkquest.org/C005949/fun/blindspot.htm

Certain trance-inducing phenomena cause a brain state where part of it is turned off (the part which helps us separate external from internal experience). This results in the experience of a “presence” which is not objectively there. Everyone interprets that experience in line with their past experience, knowledge, expectations and environment. People in this state are usually very vulnerable to outside influence. If a preacher tells you that you are experiencing their version of god then you will very likely interpret your sensations in this manner. People with different backgrounds and traditions will interpret the experience in mutally exclusive ways. Catholics will sense saints (even ones which their church later says really did not exist), evangelicals will sense their version of a loving Jesus, Hindus will sense one of their gods, Australian Aboriginals will sense one of their Dream Spirits while Buddhists who do not believe in a supernatural being will simply experience a state of oneness with the universe.
In other words, what you feel depends entirely on what you have been primed to feel.

Next time you have a think you are sensing your community’s version of “god”, remember that you brain is already fooling you that you can see in your blind spots. If you cannot see two black spots in your vision, then how can you hope to tell whether what you are sensing is not simply a guided product of your imagination? And if you can see two black spots in your vision, how can you be certain that you are not hallucinating these?
Can you see wind? No, but you can feel it.
We can measure wind. We cannot measure supernatural concepts.
I feel sorry for the people that denied God as their Saviour
There is absolutely nothing on this forum which indicates that de-converts have “denied god”, only that they have discarded beliefs which they do not find to be logically tenable.
now you’ll never see anything else as just the Pearly Gates.

Assertion without proof. Blind repetition of what someone you trust has told you.
To see how silly this sounds to a deconvert replace the word “god” with something you no longer believe in because it is logically untenable. For example:
I feel sorry for people who have denied that the Easter Rabbit brings eggs because they will no longer receive chocolate eggs at Easter time.
I feel sorry for people who have denied that Santa Claus brings presents to good children because they will no longer receive rewards at Christmas time.
That is the kind of thing you might hear from a child who has yet to figure out the truth and learned to live with the reality. If you heard this kind of thing from a child you would simply laugh because you know that it is ingenuous magical thinking and that the child will grow out of some time soon. If you heard this kind of thing from an adult (whom you could reasonably expect to have reached mental maturity) you might feel sad, concerned, alarmed or assume they were trying to be funny.
Few of my friends are Atheists but we both believe in something that is difficult to explain at the end of the day.
It is you who are having trouble explaining and justifying your beliefs. In fact, you do not even try. This suggests that your beliefs are based on subjective and personally interpreted emotional experience rather than on observable and tangible evidence. You may be intellectually immature. You may have a credulous personality which is programmed to believe what people tell you without demanding that they provide reasonable proof. You may lack an education in critical thinking and the scientific method of determining truth. You may be living in a community which has strong taboos against independent thinking and the questioning of authority figures. You may be subject to social conditioning to conform to the norms and values of the group and subject to social punishment is you express different views or simply admit to entertaining them. You may be frequently subjected to hypnotic suggestion, misdirection and other mind manipulations. You may be subject to sub-conscious influences which persuade you the sensations which result from induced alterations in brain functioning should be interpreted as a “god experience” of the kind acceptable to your community. You will no doubt lack the knowledge that such experiences are subjectively interpreted in an extremely varied way with the only common factor being that they are consistent with the background knowledge of the person and in line with opinions being loudly expressed by whoever is in the vicinity at the time.
The only thing which is certain is that you did not arrive at your belief set in the absence of close contact with other human beings. Many aspects of morality appear to be innate or develop naturally as the result of contact with others. On the other hand, god beliefs are purely social constructs. They are not inherently obvious or innately developed.
There is nothing wrong in what I believe and you don’t believe.
Assertion without proof.

This is easily demolished by pointing to a very long history of atrocities and malignant actions caused by belief in the Jewish-Christian god.

The list begins with the horrendous acts reported to have been carried out by the Jewish people at the command of their Yahweh god (read the books of Exodus and Leviticus for some of the worst of these horrors). It continues with Paul’s denigration of women and support of slavery, the slaughtering history of the Crusades, the incredible cruelty of the Catholic Inquisition, the torture and death of those believed to be witches (happening in your own country right now), the discrimination and abuse of those with genetics which produce a brown skin color and of those who have began their existence in a womb environment which bathed them in hormones with resulted in the later development of sexual preferences which differ from the norm.
Today, there is ongoing evidence of Christian believers who suppress or attempt to suppress scientific development and of those who deliberately mis-educate or omit to educate children in crucial elements of science and critical thinking. There are those who seek to

Finally, there are the many instances of physical and psychological child abuse in the name of the Christian god and of the physical and psychological abuse of adults who do not believe exactly the same things as their Christian family or surrounding community. The waiting rooms of mental health professionals are full of such people. Therapy results in changes which are far more profound and benevolent than any of those attributed to a religious conversion experience.

In summary, you have clearly demonstrated that your beliefs are merely repetitions of what you have been told to believe without question by others. There is nothing at all glorious about credulous acceptance.

If you want to have our ideas respected by this community then you will need to show that you have thought them through carefully. This includes investigating alternative explanations, both for the beliefs of your community and for your subjective and emotional experiences. You clearly have not done so. Nor does it appear that you have any interest in doing so.

That leaves us with few alternatives other than to treat you as we would a person who insists that Santa really exists simply and entirely because he has a strong emotional feeling that he does, and all his friends agree with him. In the light of what has been said above, would you take such a person seriously?

ubi dubium, that is what you say. But we believe different than you do. Why do you try so hard to prove that there isn’t a God??

I don’t. I also don’t need to prove there is not an invisible dragon in my garage. The Theists have simply failed to prove there is a god. I find insufficient evidence to support the “god hypothesis” at this time.

And I really have no problem with you believing what you want. I never go to Christian websites and try to de-convert them, that would be rude. Believe what you want, I don’t care. Until you get in my face about it and insist that I, or my children, have to believe it too, or burn in hell. Or until you insist that your mythology be taught in public school science classes. It’s not “god” I have a problem with, it’s the behavior of his fan club.

Im not taking on Atheists. Few of my friends are Atheists but we both believe in something that is difficult to explain at the end of the day.

There is nothing wrong in what I believe and you don’t believe.

God does exist, we cant see Him but we can feel Him. Can you see wind? No, but you can feel it. I feel sorry for the people that denied God as their Saviour because now you’ll never see anything else as just the Pearly Gates.

Be Blessed to those that thought through reading this that there is more to this story than there was before and to those who still dont believe. Take care.

On the other hand, don’t let the Rational Response Squad speak for any group of people except for itself. It ought to be representative of nothing, as it takes part in pointless debates such as the one which you address. Creationists like Comfort and Cameron aren’t to be engaged rationally, they are to be laughed out of the room.