Name one ethical statement made, or one ethical action performed, by a believer that could not have been uttered or done by a nonbeliever. And here is my second challenge. Can any reader of this column think of a wicked statement made, or an evil action performed, precisely because of religious faith?

I heard this a while ago and thought it was worth repeating and pointing out to anyone who reads this. There appears to be less and less reason to be religions as the centuries have turned up to the point where its now, if looking at it with fresh perspective, more of a mental illness than anything else.

Bearing in mind that many ‘think that god talks to them’ (hallucinations) and ‘believes in creation’ (delusions) thats two symptoms and thats whats required to be considered schizophrenic (via the international DSM IV-TR standard).

I don’t quite know how to respond to this place. If you think its 6000 years old of 65Million, We still have lost many species. Being very very conservative  there were at least 300 species per cubic meter on that ark.

Obviously, they haven’t read the bible or much science. It always amazes me when people tell me the bible and science (eg evolution) can both be right. It clearly means that these people (like most christians) have not actually read enough on either topic. The bible mentions unicorns at least 9 times (from memory)  so its not really on a good footing.

I recently had a discussion with an ‘uber christian’  (not my words) and was told that the bible consists of 3 styles of information

1. Historical
2. Descriptive
3. Prescriptive

Well Anyone who has read it (seriously) can tell you that the Historical text is very often wrong. Actually its about as accurate as you would expect from under educated people documenting hearsay. (eg, lookup Herod and when he actually lived)

The descriptive test is also very wrong (eg PI = 3.0) so thats really not the inerrant word of god either. Lets now look at the prescriptive text, Things like its your responsability to kill both men if you see homosexuals. (Lev 20:13). Most people would not do that today as we have essentially moved on. The zeitgeist changes and we now know that this is wrong. How much of the other text can we trust ? It would appear that most people today read the bible and like the sensible bits and dislike the ridiculous bits. Its almost as if we have our own ethical standards that are independent of a sky pixie which we use to judge things with. Now, if thats true, why do we need a god anymore anyway ?

1 Corinthians 2:9-”Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.”

Nahum 1:9- “Affliction shall not rise up the second time.”

When we all ascend to heaven, we will be restored and will get all our bits back. This may very well be lovely when you are missing an arm or a leg but I’m having part of my stomach removed so that I’m able to lose weight and have a better, more fulfilling and able life.

When I get to heaven, It will be restored and will start getting fat all over again. Bugger.

LUKE 12:10, “And everyone that says a word against the Son of Man, that will be forgiven; But he that blasphemes against The Holy Spirit will not be forgiven”

So that gives me an out right here. “God Sucks Bottom!”. There, I’ve said it and it’s unforgivable so at least I should be able to stay a better size in hell. I wonder if Satan ever wants to restore bits. Maybe I should have read about that first. Does anyone have a copy of the Satan gospel for me to read ? It can’t be worse than the bible. At least Satan doesn’t ask people to kill their children, bring plagues upon whole populations or drown everyone including men, women, children, babies and animals merely because people didn’t pander to him enough.

I’m angry that so many parents and religious leaders terrorize children — who (a) have brains that are hard-wired to trust adults and believe what they’re told, and (b) are very literal-minded — with vivid, traumatizing stories of eternal burning and torture to ensure that they’ll be too frightened to even question religion.

I don’t know quite where to start with this article. Obviously Greta is correct on almost everything but I doubt it will help anything.

It makes me angry reading this. Strangely I am normally angry reading things that I disagree with but definitely not in this case.

If I were to tell someone that its raining elephants outside, they would probably not believe me and seek evidence for themselves (probably by looking) yet when people are told things about the dead talking to them, virgins floating on clouds, 1 million species fitting on a wooden boat etc, they are willing to believe without evidence.

People are indeed strange. I can understand faith, I have faith in a number of things but Faith doesn’t necessarily make something true.

Systematic, repeatable and incorruptable research is the only way to determine the truth or falsity of anything.

Years ago, The Australian Electoral Commission decided that Pauling Hanson had violated some rule somewhere and she was sent to goal for it. I thought (and still do) that she is basically retarded, her policies are racist and not well thought out and she relies on appealing to the other stupid people in our country. Even with all this, putting her in goal for basically political reasons was very wrong. We do not want to make political prisoners in a country where free speech, no matter how bad it is, is still worth preserving.

That said, on to the current topic. I’m as committed an atheist as reason would allow and think that belief in a invisible sky pixie is basically a mental illness. This however does not mean that other belief should be made illegal. Teaching or indoctrinating is another thing entirely.

I think children should be exposed to religions as ‘this is what some people believe’ type learning and the Socratic method should be taught as it seems like a simple way to determine the truth. Like Richard Dawkins, I believe encouraging a child to believe in a god is basically child abuse.

Informing people about Intelligent Design (Creation) is something that should be allowed, as long as its taught as a ‘this is what some people believe’ style. We should also cover other religions. Science class is NOT the place this should happen, possibly in history or some other social studies class would be more appropriate. An ethics class would also be appropriate as long as its covered with other meta-ethics. Supernaturalism is something that has been successfully argued against in many philosophical papers.

I can’t help wondering what sort of percentage we can reduce the risk by simply removing babies genitals rather than just mutilating them.

Maybe if the catholic church was even slightly less retarded, they might allow people to wear little rubber thingys to do some good. Instead, they seem to just spread mis-information about them to people who are trusting and too impoverished to get decent information.

I think this is very cool. It seems to have about as much credibility as Christianity or Islam.

Why are we here? And how did we get here? Not here necessarily, but HERE! For most of human history the answer took the form of what were called creation myths — traditional stories explaining our origins. They tended to follow a basic template. Typically a deity, either animalistic, anthropomorphic, or bearded, engages in some mystical, wonderous process, that eventually produces the misshapen progenitors of the human race — an thus becomes man. These myths comforted man, by allowing him to laugh at other cultures creation myths. For instance, the Aztecs say we were dug out of the earth by a giant pig. Everyone knows we sprouted from the heavenly ear of corn.

But the rise of Christianity brought a new Creation story to the forum. In six days, man was formed from a lump of clay. And woman sprung from man’s rib. It just made sense.