Atheist pops in and waves (See avatar). The whole god thing always creates a massive response everytime it's brought up on here or gaymer. Live and let live. If everyone just had respect and tolerance for other people the world would be such a better place.

 No matter how much science proves Christians have the amazing ability to cover up their ears and say 'GOD GOD GOD GOD GOD'.

It is easily possible to disprove major parts of the old testament, the entire creation story has been ripped apart through at least four fields of science, biology (evolution is accepted as scientific fact), geology (everything about geology requires the earth to be far older than the bible allows), astronomy (once again the entire field of science proves that the universe is far older than the bible allows) and paleontology (which once again proves that creatures existed far before the bible says the universe existed) yet somehow creationists find it in themselves to ignore the science and stay convinced that the bible is an absolute truth.

I am not going to argue that god doesn't exist as there is no burden of proof on me to prove it doesn't, I can claim that an invisible pink unicorn lives in my garage and say 'Prove it doesn't, hah!, you can't! See!' but I cannot prove that it does exist, the burden of proof is on me.

I believe that the Christian god does not exist, not because I don't believe he does, but because none of the evidence points to it other than a 1500 year old book and a far older book both of which have large sections which have been proven to be completely wrong and a large portion of the rest of it smacks of fairy tales. 

Won't anyone answer my questions?

Yes, I'm looking at you Kazadoom.

@kergeten, I'm an athiest and even I can recognize that religion does a lot of good for a lot of people. It provides hope and guidance in many people's lives when otherwise there might be none.

It's unfortunate that the extreme religious types who do harm in its name ruin it for everyone else.

The interesting scenario that comes up often when discussing religion is, if you knew categorically that there was no God, and you could prove it without a shadow of a doubt(just for arguments sake), would you tell everyone? Even as an athiest, I have to say I don't know if I would.

Also, something to consider: Man will make war and commit attrocities, whether in the name of religion or not, so simply taking religion away would not prevent man from doing horrible things............they'd simply find other excuses for doing so.

I look at it this way.

God is the universe and the universe is God.

He exists everywhere, everywhen, everyhow even in the dimensions we cannot percieve.

God knows everything, down to the tiny iota of matter/energy intimately.

Human understanding is limited to what we can percieve and concieve.

We have as much ability to truly understand God as an ant has of understanding New York City. Yes the ant can guess people are working (which he can relate to) but not all the ants in all the world in all of time could ever concieve of the political, economical, social, etc., etc. realities of New York.

Nor can all of mankind in the history of mankind ever truly grasp the enormity of what God is. You cannot fully percieve him, our level of perception is very limited. Nor can our brains fully concieve him, it's just too small.

But you can get to know Him. That's the beauty of it all.

Yes, I know.  So? I've already said that that's possible by God revealing himself to man.  Are you objecting by the fact that the gods in various cultures are different, so it couldn't be the result of a single God?  In response, why would the revelation remain the same as it passed down and around by oral tradition thousands of times?  Look into any cultures' stories, you'll find quite a bit of variation there on a single subject.  And like I said, without knowing prior, how on earth would any person have been able to think of something nonphysical?

@ SuperDave Well I was refering to something on a larger scale, and hope and guidance is offered first and foremost by society, and a secular one at that, the curch did none of that in the middle ages, rather it was pure fear and opression. as to your second post, I had an answer to that in another thread ,the bottom line was that despite religion being used for so much evil, it is still viewed as pure, incoruptable and unquestionable, and that is just wrong.

Religion has done a ton of good even if you have an athiestic viewpoint it is possible ot see that. For starters it initially explained the unexplainable. To some extent it still does today. For example there are secluded tribes of people tha tlive in Indonesia during the time of the tsunami a few years ago they all ran to higher ground because there religion told them that when the world tree shook the water would come ashore and they would need to get away form it. In the old testement the rule not to eat pork was there because pork could make you sick(trichinosis) the rules about how to deal with people who were sick prevent people from catching comminicable diseases. it also put to rest people mind about questions that mankind has always asked why am I here or how did the world come about. It did so with a certainity to that satisfied most people and let them focus on the stuff they needed to do. Even the concept of go forth and multiply greatly encouraged agrarian cultures. there is a lot that religion has done right. However it is easy to overlook since a lot times religion is misused by power seeking people who don't really care or are egomaniacal because they think they are god's A list either way not good.