gft_online

If I were a bit nuts, and I were given a pill that does absolutely nothing, I'd probably feel a bit better. Some doctors prescribe their patients placebo pills from time to time and have found it to be an effective medicine. However, if one were to know that the pills had no effect, they wouldn't work.

That's a good analogy as to why you may get a marvellous feeling from entering your church/reading the bible/praying, whereas I would not. You believe it works, so it makes you feel better. I don't believe it works; it has not effect.

So, when you tell people to just "give it a go" and they'll get that "marvellous feeling", bear the above in mind.

Now, please use your rather powerful human brain to work out which is more likely: your god being real, or placebo. Considering the latter is proven medicine, it's fairly obvious to me which is the likelier. However, it may be another one of those things that is much easier to see with the impartial mind.

What can one expect upon entering hell?

Is it perpetual non-stop punishment? Do I get to sleep? Is it physical or emotional pain? Do I get to meet up with old friends?

There seem to be a lot of Christians who tell us that miracles still happen but we need to open out eyes to them.

My eyes are usually fairly wide open during the day. However, I've yet to see a miracle.

I don't want to hear about unverified stories from Africa about people being raised from the dead. Nor do I want stuff about regaining use of limbs. In a lot of cases, it's usual for people to regain use of non-working limbs, so why the need to categorise that as a miracle? Surviving a car crash also isn't a miracle, since anyone could easily simulate a car crash in their head and work out that it's perfectly possible to survive one.

So, bearing all that in mind, what miracles have you seen in your life? I except this to be a rather unimpressive list, other than the atheist wind up merchants' answers.

Someone in another question just said it is.

It's a right pickle, this one. On one hand stones are known to have evil powers, but on the other hand they're just stones.

Something that's possible of happening within the laws of physics = not a miracle.

Why is everything here? When did everything begin? How did everything begin? Who/What was the catalyst?

Ask yourselves those questions, appreciate that you don't know the answers any more than I do, then stop believing in your god.

I'm not sure whether a god exists or not, but there's quite clearly no reason for believing that one does exist, unless I see something which is literally not physically possible (not being able to exist within the laws of physics).

I'm an agnostic atheist anti-theist; I'm not sure whether a god exists or not, I don't believe in one, and I condemn those who choose to believe in one. I can't understand how anyone could not be an agnostic atheist anti-theist, really. I can only assume that you have some sort of mental weakness.

Please, just ask yourselves the questions. Do NOT already have the answer to them.

Can the current pope cure me of my AIDS, or shall I try to hang on and see if the next one can?

For example, if I lost my iPhone, is there any software I could download for it beforehand, which would allow me to log into a website on my PC and find where it is via GPS?

Thanks.

I've yet to see a definitive answer to this question from a Christian, although I've never directly asked the question until now. So, Christians, where do us atheists go after dying?

Do we go to heaven, hell, some other place, or simply cease existing?

I do not want to live for eternity in your heaven. My heaven, yes. But not your boring heaven.

I quite obviously wouldn't want to go to any form of hell.

I probably wouldn't want to live for eternity in 'some other place either', to be honest with you.

The best option out of those four, IMO, is to cease existing.

What does you god have in plan for us when we die?

If the Christian god is real, will he appreciate that I don't like him, and allow me to simply cease existing?

I don't want to go to hell for eternity. I don't want to embrace him either. I think he's a bit of a crazed lunatic. Would he understand where I'm coming from and just leave me to dwindle from existence? Or will he send me to hell for not embracing him?

Is Christianity a sort of "like me, or I'll send you to hell for eternity" religion?

He sent himself/his son down to Earth to be tortured, for some reason. Apparently the reason was to rid the Earth of its sins, but I could think of easier ways of doing that than sending myself/my son down to Earth to be tortured.

So obviously, the only reason why he did it is because he got some sort of pleasure from being tortured.

Did that turn him on in some sort of sadistic way?

I'll send my son down to Earth, into Mary's womb. I appreciate that I wouldn't really need to utilise a woman's womb, since I am God, but I'll do it anyway for some reason.

I should also point out, that although it's my son that I'm sending down to Earth, it is also somehow me, in some sort of way, if you know what I mean. That's right, I am my son and my son is me, kind of thing. I'm not sure how it works, but believe me, it's true.

Also, I'll have him/me nailed to a cross and leave him/me to be tortured, for some reason. Oh wait, the reason is because the best method of ridding the world of its sins is to send him/me down to Earth to be tortured by some Romans. What an excellent method. I really can't think of any other way of ridding the world of its sins. I'm some sort of masochist.

Why do people believe such utter bullshit?

If there is a God, and I can't disprove something that's omnipotent for startlingly obvious reasons (so don't bother asking anyone to disprove the existence of a God again,you utter lunatics), he's hardly going to do what I've just said, is he? It's absurd to the extreme.

Just actually sit down for 5 minutes, and have a deep think about some of the stuff that you believe. It's really unfathomably incomprehensible how anyone can believe such a load of bollocks.

When getting your ear pierced, do you need to have a particular style of earring certain period of time, or can you use any pair?

I've got a pair of diamond earrings that are a bit bigger and heavier than studs, so I was wondering if that'd cause a problem for my ears when they're freshly pierced.

Thanks in advance.

I've just seen a Christian post this as a response to one of my questions, and used the Bible as its source.

Can anyone explain what that means? Does it say that in the Bible?

I'd have thought that a good deed without faith is better, since you're doing it out of the kindness of your heart, and not with the belief that a deity will one day reward you for your good deeds.

What makes us less moral than you?

If the brain is responsible for cognition, and it decomposes after death, then surely no afterlife is possible?

Of course, the laws of science aren't really important when you add an omnipotent overlord into the mix, who could simply grant you life without the need for a brain. Quite convenient.

To analogise: There's a law in quantum mechanics called the Heisenberg uncertainty principle which states that position and momentum cannot be simultaneously known to arbitrarily high precision.

You could probably appreciate how this could be an issue in the Star Trek universe, what with teleportation requiring precision.

So you know what they've done? The Star Trek writers simply wrote that the transporters had a 'Heisenberg compensator'. They didn't explain how it works, or what it is (aside from compensating for the Heisenberg principle); it's literally just a add-on to the transporters that makes the laws of quantum mechanics expendable. Quite genius of the writers, if you ask me.

Isn't that exactly the same as what you've done regarding death?

The cold hard facts of witnessing a body decompose obviously scare you, so you've compensated for that by inventing an omnipotent being to take care of it. Again, awfully convenient.

Is it officially moral, or what?

Why did he wait a few thousand years to send Jesus (or himself) to die for our sins?

Why didn't he just do that earlier?

There are verses which say how to treat slaves, and verses telling slaves how they should behave.

Why isn't there anything about slavery being morally wrong?

Or is slavery not morally wrong?

Moral questions abound.