Nah, cause that'd be your bet. Not mine. It's the same reason i don't give things up for lent, attone during Rosh Hashanah, fast during Ramadan, burn tributes to poseidian or sacrifice someone on a temple.

 As for the "evils" of Christianity, none of that has to do with the start of it.  That's all what happened after the romans took it as there own because some guy thought that God let him win more battles then Jupiter. 

The Crusades and everything after wern't caused by religion.  You are a fool if you think they were.  They were caused by mans greed and fear.  If religion did not exist the ruling class would of thought of new excuses to have started the wars.  It's the penalty you pay for having organization.  Heck the last crusade was nothing but the looting of rich christian cities. (I think that was the last one.)

Heck if anything christians should be the angriest at the romans since they destroyed countless christian texts after deciding what suited them best.

Why do you believe in god? Is it pure faith? Is it because you are seeking spiritually based rationallity for your actions? Do you think that guidelines becomes the right guidelines just by beeing the word of god?

Here is a beautiful piece by Nietzsche, it's directed towards not only the believers but also the nonbelievers living in the framework of believing.

"Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: "I seek God! I seek God!"---As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated?---Thus they yelled and laughed.

The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you. We have killed him---you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.

"How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us---for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto."

Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke into pieces and went out. "I have come too early," he said then; "my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than most distant stars---and yet they have done it themselves.

It has been related further that on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there struck up his requiem aeternam deo. Led out and called to account, he is said always to have replied nothing but: "What after all are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?"

 I don't believe in Jesus. Those that do will suffer externally.

@Kasz. I didnt say that Christianity caused those things (which it didnt, those things would have been done anyway, by different people for different reasons) but rather that those things spread Christianity. The word of Christ was spread at the point of a sword during those times, peoples were conquered and converted.

 It was definitely an episode of Flying Circus, but I have no way of knowing which episode and can't find it online.  I keep googling any combination of "monty python's flying circus" and "god is dead" and only find Nietzsche results.  Which brings me to my next point.  God is dead.

See i think the same things would of been done by the roughly the same people who would have gotten to their positions just through another way.  Assuming we're talking about an alternate universe where only religion doesn't exist.

People always overlook how one little thing can change things, like for example how much of a longshot it is for you to be born.  I mean you're half one of who knows how many sperm, then at the right time, at the right date... etc.  This is really a tangent but it's an interesting thought.

Either way i'm sure it doesn't matter.  One could make people eat rice by force because rice is the easiest thing to grow and that doesn't make rice any more sinister.

Either way, if there's no proof for something one way or another i'm not going to make fun of someone for believeing what they believe.  If someone wants to beleive pink dragons exist in the universe, hey why not.  There are any on this planet as far as we know but we haven't seen every planet, who knows if there's life elsewhere and if there a pink things we would call dragons in one of those places.

Now if someone were to say Pink Dragons existed on earth.  There we might have a problem. 

If someone wants to believe in Thor go ahead.  Until someone shows me a mathematic proof i'm not ready to say there isn't a god.  Also, even if someone does show me a mathemetical proof that says there is no god i probably won't accept it because i'm nowhere near good enough at math to decipher mathematical proofs.  I mean i heard someone found a mathematical proof that says alternate universes might exist.  How's that work?

That's the real problem though.  Just because science can't currently detet something doesn't mean it doesn't exist.  Sub-Atomic Particles, Dark Matter, Dark Energy.  These all exist.(Probably, I think there is still debate over Dark Energy since we don't have a lot of proof on it.)

They still existed when we did not have proof.  Someone who believed in sub atomic particles before we could see them would of been correct.

The belief the universe is planet is flat and luminerious ether don't exist we have proof.

The truth is.  You don't have to prove something exists in this world.  You have to prove it doesn't exist.  Because the absense of proof doesn't mean that something doesn't exist.  The only thing that proves something doesn't exist is proof that something doesn't exist.

That's another reason i wouldn't want to be an atheist.  You can't really win this arguement because there is no way to prove God doesn't exist.  Well excepet possibly one of those really strange math proofs.  While all someone who believes in god has to do is wait.  A hard thing to do, but eventually if right, they'll be proven right when the whole afterlife thing kicks in. 

Of course this is rarely the case as religious people often try to convinvce atheists god exists.  Which I'm sure gets annoying, but i mean think about it from their end.  They think your going to spend forever in a place worse then a WNBA game. 

Of course that's where i generally have a breakdown as far as mainstream christianity goes.  How could anyone be happy in heaven when they knew a bunch of people they knew... or heck 1 person they knew was in hell?  Heck I wouldn't consider my afterlife a perfect place if I knew someone I knew was facing eternal punsihment.  Even if it was someone I really hated.

Heck I'm not even sure i could rest easy knowing Adolf Hitler was in a place where he was tortured forever, likely because nobody has ever wronged me enough.  Of course I don't think hitler should get in the "buffet line" with everyone else either.  But either way i'm not God so i really don't know what you'd do in such a sitation.

Anything less then what everyone else got and one of hitlers relatives who wasn't pure evil likely would be upset. (I would of said parents, but from all accounts they were both jerks if i remember right.)  I suppose this is just another tangent though.  Which happens when it's 5:30 am and you've yet to sleep.  So i'll wrap this up with yet another tangent.

It all does remind me of one holy text spread around by a group of christianity that was mostly destroyed.  It might of been part of the dead sea scrolls or recovered elsewhere.  I believe it was Jesus to one of his disciples after jesus died who asked a similar question to mine above to which jesus said something like "Don't tell anybody but everyone gets into heaven." or something along those lines. Which would probably be the most favorable option if those who believe in god are right.

Then again an eternity of someone saying "I told you so" might be hell for some people.

The truth is. You don't have to prove something exists in this world. You have to prove it doesn't exist. Because the absense of proof doesn't mean that something doesn't exist. The only thing that proves something doesn't exist is proof that something doesn't exist.

The only real question is what counts as proof?
For all three of the Abrahamic religions have a literal account of the creation of the earth and humans yet there is plenty of proof that this did not occur. I'm sure such proofs exist for other religions such as Taoism and Hinduism.

The idea of a God that started the big bang and left it at that cannot be proven or disproven however taking the common meaning of Occam's Razor the simplest solution is most likely to be correct and as an omnipotent being is infinitely complex by definition it is therefore unlikely to exist.

Who says it's literal?  Who's to say if it was that god said it, and not just someone who wanted and explination and the romans rand with it?  Or if it's really the word of God it's because we couldn't understand it or maybe got was just screwing with us?

All we really know is that we have proof that the Earth wasn't created in 6 days.  Nobody disputes this, not even the Pope and he's the pope. (Ok some people do, but not a majority of people who believe in the abrahamic god.)

Considering the bible as we have it now, is just a small selection of what was a mass of christian writings, ones deemed most acceptable by the romans, it wouldn't be too surprising if some things in it were. 

As for Occam's razor, the simplest solution isn't always correct.  I also don't think an omipotent being is really that complex.

To me all one needs to do is use the old example of the 2-D man living in a 3-D world.  We are the 2-D man in comparison to God.  He can access all dimensions, even those that we think just might exist and yet can't perceive ourselves.  By doing this and being able to travel through them as eaisly as we travel through 3-D God would be able to be outside of time.  He would also be able to see the results of what he was doing in our world as he was doing it, giving him what would look like omnipotence to us.  etc.

That would be an easy way for god to be everywhere and be "omnipotent".

The problem with arguing about faith is that faith is an individual device. Yes, scientists have faith. They have faith in the infallabillity of their five senses and the machines they make telling them the truth. Sure, numbers don't lie, but our limited minds that interpret those numbers sure do. The fact is, reality is a faith-based system.

The only truth is that we as individuals exist. In other words, I know I exist. I don't know you exist, only you can know that. To me you are simply a perception. That's the only thing we can ever prove. Everything else is faith-based. Atheists, don't go around using logic to try and disprove God. If God created logic then he is not subject to it. And let's face it, logic is a house of cards. If logic were to fail even once then the entire structure comes falling down. Faith in God is cast in stone though. Hell, look at Bible Belt Christians. They think the devil created dinosaur bones and evidence of evolution to trick us. You can say they're crazy, but you can't prove they're wrong. You say science proves them wrong, but when did science become the end-all, be-all? It's simply the structure upon what this reality is based. Even scientists accept the fact that science is stranger than we could possibly imagine.

After all, in the end we come back to the basic precepts of existentialism. Existence is perception, and I perceive God, thus God exists. I need not prove it to you or anyone else, since I need not prove myself to an illusion. Of course, I don't 'believe' you're an illusion, but I think you get my point.

As for religion causing wars, that's such a strawman argument. In fact, it reminds me of a South Park episode (ironically, the one with the Nintendo Wii) where Cartman travels to the future. In that future, all religion has been abolished, but there are constant wars about 'which science is the correct science.' They even say things like "Praise science!" or "Oh my science!" in substitution for 'god'. Of course, ridiculous episode, but it makes a great point. If you actually believe that baloney about a Utopian world without religion where there are no wars and everyone lives in peace, then you are in denial about human nature. Religion and God are one of many excuses man has used to control and dominate others.

I know some of these things have already been addressed, but since this is my first post on an 11-page argument I figured I should be thorough.

One more thing I wanted to do was try and defend Catholicism, which has been the brunt of attacks from both believers and non-believers alike on this forum. I am a Catholic, and I'm aware how guilty the church has been of corruption. But targetting Catholics for trying to indoctrinate people and believing only their way is right...where do you all get off? Almost all branches of Christianity have been guilty of that, as have been Muslims, Jews, atheists (Soviet Russia anyone?) and...well, anyone in power. Power corrupts absolutely, and the church has had a lot of power over the years. But I still stand by the principle of the church, being united in a sense of worldwide community and practicing ages-old traditions to try and give us a more direct connection to Jesus. Maybe it'll take us another 2000 years to get it right, but that just makes us no different from any other system, and there's nothing wrong with those of us who choose to stick by it.

Sorry, Catholic boy once engaged to a Baptist girl...defending the church and its/my beliefs was a daily chore.