Nem, I'll just close by saying that is a very simplistic view of religion, and fails to see the expansive divide between the specifics of the various narratives in human religious threads.

With that, and with you unaware of those significant differences, it's impossible to have a meaningful debate.

Your anecdote of the person repeatedly begging for money perfectly illustrates your oblivion to the spectrum of differences in the various religious narratives. I'll just leave it at that.

I dont see why religion needs to be treated differently from any other human behaviour situation, nor do i personally see how knowing more into the tales or narrative as you like to put it, can have any relevant information that would alter the logic presented. I am sure the stories are very colorful, but nothing of what is written in it can be presented as evidance of god's existance, because it cant be proven. I would love for god to exist, but i just dont see how its possible.

This is not about how the story got to the god, but where the story came from in the first place. That is the proof and rationale to me. Because theres really no reason to believe it. Asking me to make a clean slate analysis, or in other words an exception for this one case really isnt acceptable either, because it wont get me any closer to the truth. On the contrary, it would create a bias. I do not indulge in lieing to myself. Would love for god to exist, if he could exist. Given he obviously doesnt, we really just have to accept the facts of the world we live in, as cruel as they may be.

You don't know the narratives and you don't understand their origins, yet you claim to disprove the Greek mythology from within its narrative. You also claim to find proof in the origin of the stories (where they came from) without having knowledge on them (or so it seems).

From that vantage point, you appear to me as both a hypocrite and a liar. Either that or you are simply biased or terribly confused. Sounds cruel, but it isn't. It's reality. And I would be sad to see you grow up a bitter man hostile to religion because you were too biased to see the reality of things (i.e. that you haven't disproven anything substantial).

Otherwise, you know something about the religions of which you claim to be so certain of their falsehood, but are hiding that knowledge from me. But even if you were hiding that knowledge from me, your blurring them together into one meltingpot, and then your denial of the importance of the differences in their narratives and origins renders that benefit of the doubt void.

What? That is not what im doing. Disproving the narrative? I never talked about whats within the narrative, but of its origin. How can you possibly know that from looking at the book written by the person that came up with the story themselves? At best you could get circunstancial proof of some event, wich i assure you in no way will proves god exists. You realise they can have lied about everything cause you have no way to verify its veracity? How do you even know they werent allucinating? That doesnt prove the story real. I proved that Zeus does not control lightning and that its a perfectly logical and predictable phenomenon. Zeus was worshipped as God of thunder and i showed he cant possibly be in control of them.

You say im melding everything into one, when you are the one that refuses to learn and treats it differently from other situations. You have a bias in there, wich is why your analysis isnt accurate. Its your religion and thus must be looked at differently. I'm not bitter man sir, i am very kind and funny, but i dont lie to people when they deserve to hear the truth for coming up with thrash such as this thread. Unfortunely though, you are lieing to yourself, because you want to. I find it pretty arrogant that you believe something that is not proven, its substanciated by texts of questionable origin, questionable veracity, and proved to be false in previous such cases, But yes, lets forget all that and analyse like a whole new case, even though it makes no sense like i showed before with the loan money example. Its the example of not learning with your mistakes and keep doing them over and over.

You are free to lie to yourself sir, i know it makes you happy, but to call me a hypocrit and a liar is indeed sweet irony. The reality of thing is there is no proof of gods existance, and studies of human faith, behaviour and the way the brain works, aswell as examples of the past make it completely logical to conclude it isnt true. Besides you know... things that are imagined in the human mind dont just poof into this reality, but its perfectly possible for people to allucinate and believe they are talking to some divine entity.

No, you really don't know anything about me. Compare yourself with me for a moment. True I called you out for the hypocrisy of your argument, but notice how you are so quick to disprove religion, where I have mostly only tried to untagle your logic. So no, lying to myself does not make me happy, I mostly like to dispel lies personally. So I'm not here to say being atheist is nuts, but I will challenge your logic where it fails. So again, compare how you constantly jump to say religion is false, and the lesser commitment to the actual argument you were using, and then compare how I stick to your logic, and put aside the "Religion is true" rhetoric. Just an observation.

@bold. That was a case where you attempted to disprove the NARRATIVE. It's black on white here.

@underlined. How can you possibly know that the story wasn't based on actual events??? I never said the fact that they say it proves the story real. You're the one saying that they could have been hallucinating or lying, and that proves that it's not real. So your logic is really screwed up.

@meltingpot. I told you that you were blending all religions together and I explained to you how hypocritical that was when you disproved the Zeus narrative using atmospheric science. Then you say because of that narrative all other religions are fabrications. It was hypocritical at worse, ill-founded at best. So get informed, and then you will be able to judge, because all the religions are VERY different from each other in narrative.

@refusing to learn. How, how have I refused to learn?

@bold-underlined. How do you know that I haven't considered the challenges to my personal belief? Proof is, I have, and I trust my knowledge of my history better than your knowledge of my history, so my word is better than yours. In fact, I have been in many debates on the topic and have constantly challenged my point of view MANY times. I'm pretty confident I've done so much more often than you have. After all, I'm 28 years old.

I'm not sure its worth continuing this debate. You refuse to see that you dont want to learn and you want to look at the new religion in a biased way completely removed from everything that surrounds it. You have not yet told me why i should do that. Your only argument is the narrative. I told you the narrative is not proof, its a story. It does not have a direct proof link to the existance of god. How do i know that? Because if there was we would all believe in God by now and there would be no debate.

Also you're calling narrative to the powers of the god. So if the story of the power is different it makes the story more truthful? Again, makes no sense.

I can just as easily use the argument of the egyptian gods not beeing real, and at the time people believed the Roman ones were true. Now the roman ones arent and we moved to a single god story, more believable but not necessarily any more truthful. I'm not bothering to question how colourful the story is cause that is what you want to do. You want to present me with dubious facts from the stories to try and make me believe there is something that isnt there to believe in. There is no room for the stories, i dont care about them. I care on wether God exists or not, and the logical conclusion looking at all the factors i presented to you before like the way the human brain works, past examples, etc. The story cannot be any sort of evidance on this debate cause its been proven to be completely at fault before. It cannot be trusted and it was written by humans 100%.

You fail to see the difference between facts that can have been manipulated and you have no way of confirming with fact you can confirm in this day and age. The thunder theory can be proven in front of you. What you believe to be history is what someone told you. I'm sure you're familiar with many factors like the winners tell the story and how stories got modified when passed from person to person. Historical facts are many times unaccurate. You are beeing naive if thats all you have to go on.

Also another proof of your assumptions failing you, is that im 30 years old. Oops. Not that age matters anything to the debate. but certainly past the age for beeing naive and believing in fairy tales.

I have said this before, i have linked at studies proving it, but i will say it again: What you cant explain, your brain is gonna take the easiest way out to make sense of it. The brains answer to something you cant explain = a supernatural power. It takes willpower to resist that easy way out. Something you dont know yet, is just that, something you cant explain yet, it doesnt magically become the work of a supernatural entity by default.

Nem, thanks for the memories.

Same to you. :)