lol, i Love rippers argument! It doesnt make any sense half the time! (but then again, neither does god).

"if there is no God where did anything come from?

like it or not what you believe has ZERO effect on reality.... God exists, therefore God exists is philsophical proof, because He is literally the beginning and the end of all"

To call the reason for the physical creation of the earth and universe "god" is at the best unhelpful, and at the worst totally misleading! It is unknown how the universe came into being (there are theories, i.e. Big Bang), so calling the reason for it "god" is stupid.

"actually no, this is what I was told by my philosophy profesor in college. God exists therfore God exists. God cannot be explained away with human language anyway, it is inadequate"

Thats an argument? I agree with rath, you cant say something exists and therefore is exists! Using your logic, i say that there are fairies at the bottom of all ur gardens! Its now true because i say they exist.

"thats the whole point. we are pee-ons God doesn't need us to prove that HE exists, from his point of view the whole thing is preposterous! I mean, an omnipotent God needing a being that he created to prove his existence

I can't prove anything, that is why it is called faith, but I believe once you are 'in' you know. You feel God in your life.

BUT lets stick with logic, what are the consequences if I am wrong? :nothing
If you are wrong: eternal damnation"

First off, God cant be omnipotent for many reasons, which i and many others have explained in other posts.

You cant prove anything, and neither can i. You cant prove once again that there isnt a flying spaghetti monster or an invisble pink unicorn, or (with Betrand Russell's argument) a tiny tepot flying in space, which is so small it cant be seen with a telescope. You cant prove these things exist, but they sound so rediculous (like your all seeing, omnipotent god) that one knows they dont actually exist.

"Lets think about how Christianity started and how it was spread. 12 people that knew Jesus personally went out and spread the world. It was their personal relationship with him that won them over, and eventually much of the world. It really is faith, but once you believe you know. It is people sharing their personal faith in Jesus that has won 2.1 billion hearts. There is no opression like you see in other faiths where people are forced to believe under penalty of death. I like logic, but that isn't what wins over peoples hearts, its supernatural. "

As Rath pointed out again, Christianity, like all other religions, has caused the deaths of thousands of people.

Well there's no real consequences if your wrong, exept that if you live following the rules of a religion maybe you don't exactly live a free life?

My thoughts regarding this are as follows. Not believing in god apparently sends me to hell. So, logically, even if I had lived 1000 years ago on a part of the earth where christianity hadn't expanded to yet, and I was still a good person, god would still send me to hell for not believing in him. That is a huge douche thing to do, especially because god is supposed to be omnipotent and all seeing and all knowing, therfore, even if I have free will, god already knows how I'll use it, and therefore would have known that he was going to send me to hell ever since he created the universe. Anything anyone does is according to god's plan, because if anyone does anything and it turns out it was against god's plan, that means god is fallible. And THAT means that either god has no plan and just does shit for the hell of it, or that god has a plan and it involves nine tenths of everyone who ever lived going to hell, regardless of whether they ever even knew that christianity existed, let alone had a chance to convert.

My conclusion is that god either doesn't exist or is an asshole. And I refuse to bow down and serve an asshole based on fear of hell. Especially when there is zero evidence that god or hell exists. If I want superstition to be an everyday part of my life I'll choose a less constradictory religion, thank you very much. Like the Australian aborigine belief that the universe was created by a flying rainbow salamander. And has ended and re-begun like 8 times now.

I should also add that atheists and agnostics make up about 1 billion people last I heard. And if you're roman catholic, you can claim to be part of the 1.2 billion roman catholics. If you are not, however, then you are one of the 20 or so other denominations of christian, none of which to the best of my knowledge have more than about 50-100 million members, and none of which agree totally with the roman catholic church.

Just like to note, i didnt say that, that was ripper :P And yes, i agree with you.

 Also, the fact that they have to use fear to make many people believe in god...

 1. First of all, God doesn't "send people to hell" how many times can this topic be discussed?

 2. According to God's Word, nature itself has proof of God and Christ and no man lives or dies without the knowledge of God. I'm sure you can't name one person who doesn't know of Christianity (or God) and the people 1000 years ago would have come to God in a way that wouldn't be considered "Traditional" to us.

 3. Yes God is omnipotent and who knows what choice you're going to make, but the responsibility of your choice belongs to you and for God to directly influence your choice would be against God's gift of Free Will.

4. The reason why you think that if God exists he is an "asshole" is because you don't really understand God much at all. That's why i recommend you read Knowledge of the Holy by A.W. Tozer, not that you should be converted but that you know what the Christian God is, assuming he exists. I think you are (don't take thin the wrong way) ignorant of the subject.

5. Seriously i despise denominations of Christians. It goes right against the Word of God about being united under God. The reason why we have our denominations is because most men have thier pulluted, mutated, deformed concept of God that goes against what knowledge of him that was given to us. Yet it seems it is the nature of men to be divided in just about anything. 

Is he trying to say that rain is really God peeing on us? 

And I love how he turns so quickly to trying to scare people into religion.   

Has anyone read Preacher? There's an interesting viewpoint on Heavenly beings for you...

 Same here, hence I don't care.

But god is an asshole? If you have read the old testament you will realise that god is (in the words of Richard Dawkins):

God is one of the biggest most unjust assholes ever!

BUT lets stick with logic, what are the consequences if I am wrong? :nothing
If you are wrong: eternal damnation

The consequences are that you live by rules that are unnecessary and that you waste hundreds of hours of your time for your religion, meanwhile I exist by my own code of ethics and have a hell of a lot of fun.

Nothing pisses me off more than the 'eternal damnation' threat, not because it scares me or anything but because its so blatantly a tool used by the priests for power, along with the 'thou shalt not worship graven images' and 'thou shalt give the priest the first of your crops' (or whatever it was) and the tithe, they are all merely tools for the priesthood to make a living off the gullible.