My argument is specifically about whether or not God exists. Let's stay on-topic here.

Faith has everything to do with it. By not believing in God, a person is taking a leap of faith by assuming (without evidence) that we are all here accidentally. What you are believing is no more probable than what I am believing. (And if probability does not matter to you, then who cares if the life of Jesus was "improbable" or even "impossible"? It still happened.)

Not good enough for you? Let's consider human rights. The ideal of human rights says that each human being is of infinite worth. There are three possible sources for our conviction concerning human rights:

GOD - Are humans given intrinsic value and rights because they are created by God in his image? Certainly not... too many people don't believe in God, so we need to find another basis for human rights.

NATURE - Does nature show us that it is natural to honor the individual? Definitely no... natural selection and Darwinian principles are all about the strong preying upon the weak, which contradicts everything we believe about human rights.

POSITIVE LAW - Did we create morality through law, custom, etc. because it makes society work better? No way... genocide is considered "wrong" only because those in power say so. But the whole point of human rights is that it enables us to turn to the majority or the strong and insist that they honor the interests of the individual. A society that can create human rights can also end them, and we instinctively know this to be utterly wrong.

So where do human rights come from? Are they just "there"? Is it that we don't create them, but rather discover them as we reflect on our long experience with wrongs and injustice?

Without the existence of God, the fine-tuning of the universe and also human rights just "happen" with no explanation. If God exists, then these things are no longer improbable, but probable. While this is not proof of God, it does show two instances of leaps that one who disbelieves in God must make... instances where it takes more faith to disbelieve than it does to believe.

I'll copy my edit from before:

For your benefit I will compare drugs and religions. Both have mind altering effects. In most cases both are extremely addictive, both can make a person feel a feeling of elation. Both have cause great turmoil in society, both can pass from parents to children easily. Both are used as an escape from reality, both are used as something to comfort someone when one is weak. The only difference is, that drugs are a physical body which can be consumed, meanwhile religion is an idea. Otherwise religions and drugs share far too many commonalities for religions to be considered anything other than a plight.

Religions had their uses back in the tribal days when rulers needed tools to control their people so a tribe couls survive and reproduce. That's why all tribes which believed in the supernatural survived, they could easily be controlled. However these tools are obsolete and antiquties in the modern world. Something not needed, something extremely primitive.

If you read the story I linked, I'd love to hear why that is less plausible than your Jesus Christ.

And then address this:

Faith has nothing to do with it. The only thing that has to do with it is just how far you are willing to believe your imagination or that of others. In the case of Jesus, the right word isn't faith, but gullability. Is a person gullible enough to believe something like Jesus, or is he not. Here is the definition of faith, complete confidence in a person or plan. That implies 100% belief, maybe if the world was only black and white, like the Bible would have us believe, then that is certainly true, not falling for the implausible would be the equivalent of 100% complete confidence that it did not happen. However such is not the case, there is an infantesmally small chance that the guy named Jesus actually guessed everything right. It's small, but not complete, and that makes all the difference between faith and just plain common sense. So no, faith has absolutely nothing to do with it.

I can't help but laugh at your human rights argument. This is your premise "The ideal of human rights says that each human being is of infinite worth." Do you realize human rights have never been defined by anything? Yeah we have a definition right now, but the Aztecs had a whole different set of human rights, and the aboriginals had a whole other set of human rights, and the Japanese another set of rights. Even in today's world people can't completely agree, for instance the right to a gun. Different countries have different human rights, and yes they all share some very basic ones, but even those didn't exist in some countries . Who knows what will happen in the future. Already your premise is not correct in the present, the "the ideal of human rights says that each human being is of infinite worth" is false already. In China you aren't allowed to have a second child, therefore the 2nd one is most definitely not seen as having "infinite worth." Your very basic premise you built your entire argument on is false, and by association your very argument.

Simply put, human rights are defined by what is most convenient for the people with power at a given time in history, and nothing more. You really don'thave to look too far back in history to see this is true.

All you're simply saying is that the majority or popular opinion is that being selfish is something "not good". I'm asking you to explain why you personally came to the same opinion. Why is it "not good", or "bad" to be selfish?

Hmm. Asking why a fictional story full of 100%-fictitious characters isn't more plausible than the life story of a real person in history is like asking why the plot of "Harry Potter" isn't more plausible than the plot of "The Pursuit of Happyness".

There's a quite a difference between looking to a drug for a temporary escape (that may kill you) and looking to God to actually guide every aspect of your entire life. I fail to see how these two things are in any way on the same playing field.

Looking at Dictionary.com, the top two definitions of "faith" are:

1) confidence or trust in a person of thing

2) belief that is not based on proof

Go ahead and try and prove that God doesn't exist. Millions of people have tried to do so and have utterly failed, because it's not possible. You can't prove or disprove the existence of something that exists outside of the known universe. So both beliefs require faith. End of story.

Just because human rights are being ignored doesn't mean that they don't exist. Does the fact that the Nazi's thought it was okay to slaughter the Jews make it right? Does the fact that Mao thought it was okay to starve millions of his own people during the "Great Leap Forward" make it right? Does the fact that the Aztecs thought they were justified in sacrificing their own people make it right? There are certain things that everyone knows are wrong; that is why completely separate and distant cultures are able to both come to the consensus that things like murder and stealing are wrong. To even suggest that human rights are totally relative (which is exactly what you are doing) is what is truly laughable.

Lastly, you should really examine the person and life of Jesus Christ before you assume that I am as gullible as you say. Have at it... disprove anything about the life of Jesus that the Bible teaches and get back to me when you do. I'll be eagerly awaiting you.

I won't deny that Jesus exist, but saying that the Bible is not a work of fiction is just laughable in itself. The ideas of the bible are just as fictional as the ideas in the story above, and just as plausible. I am not gonna deny that the people existed, but saying that the events are fiction is just wrong.

Many people are guided by drugs their entire lives and are not just looking for a temporary escape. I'm also very sorry, but what exactly is God if not an escape from reality? Good thing you pointed the another similarity to the list, both are used to escape reality. The only reason that drugs and religions aren't on the same playing field is because religions have killed billions while drugs have killed only a few million, they are on a whole other level of destruction.

So now you are reverting to semantics? Really? Religion is based on complete, blind faith. Why do you think I have to be faithful to propose that an idea is probably wrong? I am not putting my faith in it, I am putting simple statistics to it. As for why that isn't faith, it can easily be proven that the probability of your Jesus being right is as equal as Muhammad which is as equal as Sidhartha which is as equal as the Hindi prophets. So you see, it is very easily provable that Jesus is only a probability and not a certainty, and it requires zero faith to do believe so. Also the statistics on it have far more other options, and infinite amount in fact, of probabilities other than the ones I listed above, and as of yet they are all more or less equally likely, making the probability of Jesus being remotely right equal to 1 divided by infinity, or in other terms, zero.

To address your human rights argument. I am willing to bet you would be singing a very different tune if the Axis had dominated world. Right now you'd think that slaughtering Jews was just a-ok. You can also ask millions of people about Mao's actions, and they will tell you that what he did was absolutely amazing. As far as the Aztecs, they believed it was right, so they did it, do you think all that many complained about it? Did you know that in Aztec religion the only way to go to heaven was to be sacrificed, or to go to a watery heaven you would have to die of lightning, the plague, or by drowning? If none of those conditions were met, that is the watery associated death or sacrifice, then the person went to hell. Their gods, which are as equally likely to be the right supernatural beings as is your Jesus, demanded that. So their human rights were just as right as yours.

By your last line about not realizing that human rights are relative, you just showed me how astoundingly conceited and close-minded you really are, spoken like a true fanatical christian. Therefore I will stop this argument here because I have had it many times with people like you and the result is always the same, I get amazed and pissed off at the profound stupidity of humanity. As such, I don't see why you should answer this post, however if someone else that's more open minded wants to pick up the argument, I would greatly appreciate it. I am always down for a good argument.

Edit:

Too much embedding.

It doesn't take "faith" to disbelieve in God. It's always a personal choice and people make that choice as a "life" choice. Also if as you said that Jesus is the only way to heaven then does that lead to Hell of the masses? After all, There are substantial amounts of people: Atheists Muslims Buddists, Hindus etc who in your view will go to hell?

This is precisly what I dislike about Religion. All the main "core" Religions state if you don't believe in their God you will GO TO HELL AND ROT AWAY. They all claim to have different God's so it looks like whichever way it swings more people are going to hell than heaven. If i was going to take the literal view of the bible (Like the millions that do) it would lead me to disciminate people based upon Religion and sexuality and as I have previously stated, I like to be more balanced than what Christ teaches.

+1

Let's try to keep this civil. Nobody needs to resort to name-calling.

Why do you keep bringing up statistics as if they matter? Why would statistics apply to anything outside of the known universe? Statistics prove absolutely nothing about the existence of God; any renowned scientist or mathematician would agree. I don't know why it keeps being brought up over and over. Using any argument involving statistics is proving absolutely nothing.

I can understand why a drug metaphor would make sense to you. But tell me... have you ever given Christianity a try? Have you ever attempted to have a personal relationship with God? If not, how can you know that such a metaphor is accurate? How can you know that it really is just a drug? Physical drugs can be proven to be "drugs" by their chemical composition. There is no such measuring stick for Christianity.

To say that an Axis-controlled world would change my views is a preposterous position. How could you possibly know? Let's not go there.

And how do you know who complained about Aztec practices and who didn't? How do you know how many people would side with Mao? You're assuming way too much in order to make your position sound attractive and convincing. Were the Jews being bigots for not agreeing with Nazism and respecting the beliefs of the Nazis? Moral relativism suggests that anybody can believe anything and be right... but nobody can actually justify such a notion. It's ridiculous. There's nothing conceited, close-minded, or bigoted about believing in moral absolutism; it's a perfectly legitimate stance. Suggesting that others who disagree with you are "profoundly stupid" is the most close-minded and condescending thing that has been uttered in the entirety of this debate.

You want to know just what sets Jesus apart from the rest? I'll tell you.

True Christianity isn't a religion at all - it's discovering and establishing a relationship with God. It's trusting in Jesus and what He did on the cross for all of us, not on what we can do for ourselves. It's not about hierarchical structures, ornate buildings, flamboyant preachers, or traditional rules and rituals. It's all about Jesus and who He is. Either He's the Son of God who offers the only true hope for the world, or he's not.