Dan

Do you ever think, "Is this really the best God can do?"

If you were omnipotent like God, would you let all of this suffering continue, or would you actually use your power to help people with all the major suffering?

Would you remain in hiding, or would you be actively, visibly present trying to save everyone?

Would you communicate with people directly to let them know you love them and invite them to follow you, or would you use an unreliable, poorly written book that demands blind faith?

Isn't God responsible for Satan, considering God is both omniscient and omnipotent? Doesn't that mean God is ultimately responsible for suffering, evil, and all of the bad things that happen outside of man's control (i.e. natural disasters)? How, then, is God good?

God cannot claim he loves us for saving us from the suffering that he himself inflicts on us.

In Genesis 12, Abram tells Sarai to pretend to be his sister, rather than his wife. This lie is told to Pharaoh, who believes it and then takes Sarai as his wife, because he has been misinformed and lied to by Abram and Sarai.

Rather than punishing Abram and Sarai for lying to the Pharaoh, however, God decides to "[inflict] serious diseases on Pharaoh and his household" (Genesis 12:17). God punishes not only Pharaoh, but also Pharaoh's entire household, because Pharaoh was lied to by Abram and Sarai.

How is God being an omni-benevolent and just God in this story?

People often say that God is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and omni-benevolent. I am curious about which Bible verses support these qualities of God.

If anyone knows of any verses that contradict these qualities of God, feel free to post those as well.

People often say that God is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and omni-benevolent. I am curious about which Bible verses support these qualities of God.

If anyone knows of any verses that contradict these qualities of God, feel free to post those as well (you know, other than all the verses that clearly contradict God's omni-benevolence).

If Jesus preached love, then why do so many of you Christians spew hatred? How do you justify that? I know that not all Christians are hateful, in fact I have met many respectful and intelligent Christians.

However, a good number of you guys seem to be the antithesis of what Jesus taught. I do not mean to offend anyone with this question. I am simply curious about how you disrespectful Christians out there justify your disrespect and your behavior that is in such opposition to Christ's teachings.

As for you fellow atheists, how was your day?

We are sent to hell for not believing in God, for rejecting him, and/or for just being human (meaning we sin).

Now, once we are in hell, we will obviously believe in God. Now say we lived on Earth for 80 years, and stopped believing in God when we were 20. That means that we had spent 60 years of our life not believing in God.

Then we go to hell for all eternity, where we will believe in God and stop sinning since we will be too busy being in unbearable agony. However, as we stay in hell for eternity, the amount of time we have spent during our existence not believing in God approaches zero.

That means that God, given enough time, is punishing people for something they thought during essentially 0% of their existence.

How is that justice?

If you can, I want the evidence, and an answer more comprehensive than "Go look it up yourself" because I have done that and it has led me to the conclusion that God doesn't exist. Also, your argument should be able to account for the Christian God specifically, not just any god (meaning if your argument is that we exist, therefore we must have been created, you'll have to try again).

what basis do you Christians claim that the Old Testament Law is invalidated even though Jesus said, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished." Matthew 5:17

I understand that when Jesus died, he allegedly said, "It is finished," but I have two points to make about this. First, the Gospel of John was the only Gospel that had Jesus say, "It is finished." The Gospel of John was the last Gospel to be written (Mark was the first, and it was still written 30 years after Jesus's death at the earliest), so John (who probably didn't even write the Gospel of John) could easily have just added that in there to try to make it fit with Matthew 5:17. However, the other part of Matthew 5:17 was "until heaven and earth disappear", and that has certainly not happened. So Christians, tell me what makes you believe that you are suddenly allowed to wear clothes made with two materials, why you no longer stone people, etc. Is it because you realized the Old Testament was written by barbaric desert nomads, or is it because there are other verses in the New Testament that contradict Matthew 5:17? In which case, why would you believe your holy book is inerrant and the direct word of God? And if you say it is because it is translated by men, what kind of omnipotent God can't ensure reliable translation of the one and only form of evidence he has given to mankind of his existence?

Also of note is 2 Timothy 3:16, "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness." "All Scripture" includes the Old Testament as well as the New Testament, assuming of course that you believe the Old Testament is also the divinely-inspired (or "God-breathed") word of God.

I used to be a Christian and then became an atheist. For me, it happened because I realized my prayers weren't working, so I began to question Christianity. That led to a process that lasted years during which I finally came to grips with the fact that God most likely doesn't exist, and that God as we know him definitely does not exist. The Bible is far too unreliable and the character of God is highly inconsistent with itself. Those are the first two things I found out that really started to push me away from Christianity.

I am just curious about how the rest of you ex-Christians turned atheists lost your faith.

I understand that, assuming God exists, He can't have unrepentant sinners enter heaven, but why did He create hell for sinners to go to? Why couldn't God just make the sinner stop existing? Why does He feel the need to torture the unbeliever for eternity?

I woke up to find the audio on my computer wasn't working (no youtube, no itunes, no games, etc.), but when I ran a diagnostics test each speaker played its sound just fine. The sound card drivers are up to date. Any idea on what's wrong?

I woke up to find the audio on my computer wasn't working (no youtube, no itunes, no games, etc.), but when I ran a diagnostics test each speaker played its sound just fine. The sound card drivers are up to date. Any idea on what's wrong?

Any eyewitness accounts not included in the Bible or anything like that? I am looking for credible sources outside of the Bible, meaning documents, not the Shroud of Turin. Links are preferable.

Throughout history there have been many, many, many religions. In any religion, the followers of that particular religion believe wholeheartedly in their own religion. Even today, there are people who follow Islam, Buddhism, etc. with the same certainty and faith that you Christians follow your own religion with. What makes Christianity correct over every other religion that has ever existed? Why is the faith of people following other religions wrong or misplaced when they feel the exact same way you do about Christianity?

What is the purpose in creating us and putting us through everything He puts us through? If God created us to worship Him, then why would He intentionally create us in such a way that would mean the vast majority of humans go to Hell and end up never worshiping Him?

I watched The Dark Knight Rises last night, and when I heard Batman say, "A hero can be anyone, even a man doing something as simple and reassuring as putting a coat around a young boy’s shoulders to let him know the world hasn't ended," I could have sworn I had heard the quote before. Has it been said in a previous Batman movie or is it a famous quote from someone else or am I just having one of those weird deja vu moments that means nothing?

If so, please provide some examples.

Did He just get bored and decide "Oh, I know what to do! I'm gonna make these things called 'humans' and I'm gonna have this whole plan set up where most of them go to uh...'Hell' where they will burn for all eternity! Yeah, that'll be loads of fun!"?

This doesn't make sense to me. Satan tempted Eve to eat the fruit...but if God had never put the tree there to begin with, then there never would have been anything for Satan to tempt Adam and Eve with. So why did God put the tree in the garden, knowing Satan would tempt Adam and Eve, knowing that they would give in to the temptation, and knowing that billions of people would go to Hell after that? What was the point in putting the tree in the Garden to begin with?

Also, if the tree was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, then doesn't that mean Adam and Eve wouldn't have even known that what they were doing was evil? They hadn't eaten the fruit yet...so at that time they wouldn't have really had a moral compass to guide them. They wouldn't have known it was evil since they did not yet know what good and evil were.