You're asking us to assume God exists, and then to basically ask ourselves if the world we live in is good or bad. It's a silly question based on a faulty premise, I'm afraid.

But hey, I'm a downer. Don't let me bring down the whole conversation.

Yeah, I think the premise is a little strange, but I'll put in my answer anyway.

God is definitely very great. Pain is, unfortunately, a necessary product of free will. So without pain we wouldn't have joy, either. God gets the yes vote in my book.

Anyone that wants to bet (over/under) on how many paragraphs obi responses with should contact me through PM. Prop bets are also available.

"Forget IF God exists or not ... supposing he did"

Stop right there.

What if SHE does?

Jhn 4:24 "For God is Spirit, so those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth." Gen 1:27 "So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them." Gal 3:28 "There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus."
(NLT, blueletterbible.org)

I seem to recall not long ago Obi bashing the 'New Atheists' for not being respectful enough of those poor ol' religious folk. Now we have not one but two threads in the span of two days bashing religious neanderthals. Welcome to the good side, Obi. The view is much clearer from here.

asking an atheist to respect religion is like asking a black person to respect the KKK.

Are you kidding?
I've never heard of an athesist slashing car tyres but know plenty that have had worse done to them. Young athesists are constantly berated in school and in general, in the states, claiming to be an athesist causes more trouble than claiming to be affiliated with any religion does.

Put me in for a Y vote. Y'all need to distinguish God from followers. The followers are the truly destructive ones. In fact, based on a deep reading of scriptures from multiple faiths (Abrahamic and Karmic), I'd say that many disciples aren't (disciples). 'Nuff said.

Geo, what school is that? Because I teach in California, and I've *never* seen a young atheist berated where I teach.

Nope, never happens.

http://now.msn.com/now/0220-teen-atheist-scholarship.aspx

If one of you ever so aggrieved (in your mind) Christians can tell me where or when a state representative has ever publicly declared you to be "evil", please let me know. I'd like to hear about your "oppression".

Well, considering grown Christian adults have leveled death threats to atheist teenagers like Jessica Ahlquist and Damon Fowler for daring to - gasp! - request that public schools honor the separation of church and state principle with regard to school prayer, I would indeed have to say young atheists receive a lot more than mere berating...

Simon, you are generalizing to the extreme, and you are smart enough to know it. So what gives?

Putin, I have personal experience being told to watch out for "a nest of Christians" at one of the institutions where I have taught. But I'm not generalizing. :-)

It seems like we have a trial of some Christians rather than the stated intention of placing God on trial. Placing a vote in this case would imply that I, or any of us, have an understanding of a supreme being. In my opinion any claim that could be made would be myopic, without understanding of God’s motives this really amounts to nothing more than “Are you a religious person?”

I'll have to say that no State Representative has ever called me evil. Persecution of Christians is a quaint, fanciful notion though. I’m sure you meant to add “in the21st Century United States”.

This is from Amnesty International’s report on Laos:

“Restrictions on freedom of religion:
According to reports, local officials in Savannaketh and Saravan provinces have tried to force Christians to recant their faith, including through interrogation, harassment and death threats. Recent converts to Christianity appear to be particularly targeted. In the period between July and September 2008, the prosecution of Christians intensified and at least 90 Christians, from mainly evangelical congregations, were arrested and detained without charge or trial. Some were held for several weeks. At least two people were released after being forced to renounce their faith.”

http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/ASA26/003/2009/en/04323c11-d51c-49b5-9172-c8dd4b44970a/asa260032009en.pdf

I've also been told to make sure none of the books in my classroom library have religious themes. There goes "The Chronicles of Narnia".

This is a difficult question. I support the vote that this is a poorly formulated inquiry.

The problem lies here:
If God is "Good," the world would be perfectly "Good" as a derivative of It's (this avoids the he/she issue) traits.
If God is a celestial slave master, the world would be perfectly hellish (pun-intended) as a derivative of It's traits.

The question you really seem to be asking is whether freedom is good. Is it better to be able to do what you want or to be a slave? This again causes problems because freedom is required to make the decision. If you were a slave, you don't get to make your own choice. The only way you would be able to truly decide is if you were already free. This creates a bias towards freedom and makes an objective decision difficult if not impossible.

Zarathustra, thanks for clarifying the real question--Can God be good even though he made us in his image; that is, with a free will, including the capacity to sin and do evil things? My answer is yes indeed. He not only can be good, but is.

Mujus - I'm actually not. Case in point:

http://i.imgur.com/tmwAj.png

If God existed, and has done everything the Bible suggests (big floods, wiping out cities, murdering first born sons etc etc) then I would happily dedicate my life to erasing the bastard from the universe. Fortunately this is not the case.

Hmm...I think IF God exists, he lives like Berlusconi...doesnt care about the world and his duties and simply enjoys his life...
:))

I didn't write this for here, but I thought I'd share it anyway:

It is important to understand that your description is not how science theorises the Big Bang nor is the Big Bang an atheistic concept. The cosmological model was first proposed by a Catholic priest named Georges Lemaître and then promoted by Pope Pius XII even before it was scientifically accepted. Today, the Church considers the theory to lend great support for God's creation ex nihilo.

Lending credence to the theory doesn't stop at Catholicism; Judaism and many Protestant sects welcome the Big Bang theory into their creation myths. And the Hindu faith has held this cosmological concept long before it was ever modern science. Even teachings within Islam and Buddhism also suggest an expanding and contracting universe that came from nothing.

Essentially, this dominant scientific theory for how the universe began does not contradict your beliefs, instead it coincides and supports them. Scientists (who may or may not reject theology) continue to refine and improve upon the model and do so without ever abrading the foundations of any religious group. Why then, should it matter if atheists also accept these scientific bases whilst choosing to wait and see what else science might unravel?

Atheists as a whole aren't trying to remove faith from your lives. They don't have beliefs to argue over or compete with, nor are they trying to disprove the belief of others. In fact, the main point of atheism is that it doesn't need to disprove the existence of God because the existence of God hasn't been proven. It simply is an individual refusal of faith.

Over the years I have stood on both sides of this conflict. I've gone to atheist conventions proclaiming Catholicism and attended Mass and many other religious events proclaiming atheism, across the nation and the world. Sometimes I am mocked, met with hostility, or forced to leave from the intensity of the harassment and without a doubt, the majority of my experienced abuse has come from men and women of faith rather than those that choose to deny it.

Campaigns like this image promote nothing but a quickening of harassment from either side of the table. Somewhere, a Christian is receiving verbal abuse because of your image. And that will only cause another Christian to return the abuse onto an atheist, back and forth, like a game siblings play in the backseat until a parent tells them to stop, or worse, one of the children is hurt.

So please, for the sake of those that have no faith and those that share yours, for the sake of us all, choose the higher path. It doesn’t matter who started it; it doesn’t matter who finishes it. You and I, we’re taught to turn the other cheek.

My faith and my science both share the task of shaping who I am and my curiosity and passion for either will never be satiated. I find no faults in my mind or my spirit in accepting rational concepts of the universe and evolution as miracles of God.

And should scientists ever have the capability to show me, without even the tiniest bit of doubt, exactly which specks of dust I'm from and how they rearranged themselves into a sarcastic man that loves crying violins but hates horror movies, I'll just stare up in wonder and say "so that's how He does it!"

Thanks and God bless.

Give a N for me please :))

Btw: he exists!!! http://vdiplomacy.com/profile.php?userID=790

(you have to copy it and set it in, dont click on the libk!
:P

@ Pres

Mujus never said there weren't cretans who would hurl death threats at a teenage girl. There are cretans who'd do that in many if not all groups. Merely showing that people have done so doesn't indict all of Christianity. Why are the voices of the cretans so important that you won't listen to the majority that have never threatened any child beyond "Wait until your father get's home"?

@ President Simon Eden,

Anglican spells it out better than I did. You gave a few examples (which I have not verified but do accept) and then generalized that therefore <<I would indeed have to say young atheists receive a lot more than mere berating... >>. Giving one more examples does not prove your assertion generally. The other thing you should realize is that not everyone who says he or she is a Christian is acting according to Christ's teachings and examples, so we Christians often take the rap for everyone who knows how to say the words "in God's name."

I cited two examples to demonstrate a greater trend. I can certainly pull more, including from my own personal experiences, if that's necessary.

I certainly didn't indict all or even most Christians, though. I simply acknowledged what I have found, both through personal experience and through the news, to be the case: that atheist students are unjustly harassed, bullied, and threatened for nothing more than being atheist, and that *of the ones doing the harassing* the majority seem to be Christian. This isn't to say that the majority of Christians do it - just that of the people, of all faiths, who do it, the majority tend to be Christian. That's not an indictment of you or Anglican or the faith at large, it's just a statement of fact about the disappointing situation atheist teens face in America today.

And for what it's worth, I'd probably expect the situation is better at any higher education institution than it is in a high school, so I'm not sure we're talking about the same situation (as I would indeed consider it strange to find regular bullying of atheist students at a university).

Simon, examples from your personal experience don't demonstrate a trend. Granted, in the 1950's, there was widespread harassment of atheists, communists, and pretty much everybody else who didn't espouse the shared wartime values of God, country, Mom, and apple pie, to say nothing of the persecution of African Americans in many parts of the country, and covenant restrictions that prevented many minorities, including Jews, from even buying property in many communities throughout the USA. But your statement that the majority of people who are doing the harassing "seem to be Christian" couldn't be further from the truth. The very fact of physical attacks make them seem *not* to be Christian. And if you want to talk about places where real persecution is taking place, try espousing atheism, or Christianity, or any other religion, in a Muslim country.

I said "including from." Of course they're not limited to just my experiences... that wouldn't be a trend. And yes, from my experiences, experiences of atheist acquaintances and friends with whom I've discussed the matter personally, and the experiences of those atheists bullying against whom appears in the local, state and national news, the perpetrators are, more often than not, Christians. Not very *good* ones, at least, not from what I understand a good Christian to be... but they are Christians.

I don't see how the even worse plight of atheists in Iran is relevant to the still-legitimate plight of atheists in America.

The devil is the good guy in the bible:

think about it:
How many people does the devil kill in the bible?
How many does God kill?
If God loves everyone why does he conduct many tests of faith (whats his name has to kill his son if he loves god. God kills whats his name family to test his faith) when he knows everything so there is no reason to do so?
Why would God punish people for not believing in him, when he requests people to believe on him in good faith, not on evidence?

What crime did the devil commit? He betrayed God, betraying God makes him evil. But if God was evil shouldn't betraying God be considered a heroic act, making him a good guy, not bad guy?

@Fasces

If you use the Holy Bible as your source then you can't escape the Fall of Man. It's the devil's fault (and man for listening to him) that we have mortality in the first place. So the answer to your question

"How many people does the devil kill in the bible?"

is everyone.

and the answer to

"How many does God kill?"

is nobody.

What's his name? (Abraham) did not have to kill his son, God prevents it. As the father of three major world religions God may just have wanted Abraham to see for himself how deep his own faith went. How useful is a leader who doubts himself overmuch?

What's his name? (Job) is a poor example because it's the devil not God who inflicts all of Job's suffering upon him. It was in response to the devil playing a game telling God "If you let me I'll make him curse your name". The story is to show that righteousness will be rewarded even if one has to suffer adversity along the way. Job is rewarded with more than he had originally and his family (who were going to die at some point thanks to the devil) had presumably went to heaven if they followed in Job's example of righteousness.

Let’s talk about what persecution really is, shall we?

Lionel Moirez has a thought:

“Public Display: Recently I’ve had the unfortunate experience of viewing a display in the library inside
of the public high school in my town. On this were numerous books depicting religious themes, and even an open bible. Personally to me this violates the first constitutional amendment: Freedom of religion. To me this should be changed to freedom of and from religion, but of course the federal government, being primarily catholic/Christian, will never advocate to the most oppressed minority in this country. The open bible in the school represents an advertisement of religion, and personally I don’t want to see it any way shape or form. The bible is violating my disbelief in theism, and therefore not advocating to my personal beliefs, which is negating my “freedom” in this country, hence being an extreme violation and attack on my disbelief system.”

http://www.atheists.net/pages/sinister_minister_persecution.html

It appears to me that the mere act of having a book open on a table is persecution and “an extreme violation and attack on my disbelief system”. This in a media center that probably also has a copy of Christopher Paolini’s “Inheritance” (which includes as eloquent a defense of Secular Humanism as I’ve seen in a fictional book) and I’d warrant has probably had it sitting in a display at various times. If that particular one doesn’t then many others certainly have. The purpose of a media center is to be a hub of information it’s not supposed to isolate kids from knowledge.

People do sometimes piss one another off. Even crazy politicians do this sort of thing, but nobody is being hauled off to jail for their atheism and the very fact that court cases are filed and won undermines the claim of persecution. One must also rememebr that the kooks that are out there making these death threats are breaking the laws by making terroristic threats. I'm not sure who you think is persecuting you but it isn' the government. When the force of the government is protecting you from those who would do you harm, then you are not being persecuted.

@crazy anglican: But if god is omniscient why would he need to test his faith?

@Fasces, did you actually read what CA said? He said,

"What's his name? (Abraham) did not have to kill his son, God prevents it. As the father of three major world religions God may just have wanted Abraham to see for himself how deep his own faith went. How useful is a leader who doubts himself overmuch?"

Not only did he not mention testing of faith, but he actually already addressed your question before you asked it.

Which leaves me wondering, why did you ask it?

Anyway, @obi -- Yes.

I did, but I am just really tired

There are so many holes in that post I don't know where to begin.

First of all, no one here called displaying a Bible in a public library persecution. I *work* in a public library, which means I *shelve* those books, and I couldn't care less that they're Christian works or Bible copies or anything else. They're books, they convey a message like any other, and the point of a library is to convey the written word. I could not bring myself to care, at all, about such a display, and I don't think any atheists posting here could, either.

And frankly, comparing such childish boo-hoo-ing about a damn BOOK to death and rape threats like the example I showed here is disgusting and insulting. I think I have a very legitimate complaint about the fact that I was harassed and almost routinely threatened with violence by Christian teens for not sharing their religious beliefs. I furthermore think that as I've observed a similar, rather widespread theme with other atheist teens in the United States that this legitimate complaint extends well beyond my own personal bad experiences to incorporate a more general problem.

Why should we atheists be satisfied with the fact that the state isn't hauling us off to jail? Is that the bottom line for societal decency? Oh, sure, we'll make your life a living hell five days a week and maybe on weekends, we'll pull whatever pretenses we can to exclude you and treat you like a subhuman, we'll threaten you on a regular basis, but at least we're not forcibly holding you in a steel cell against your wall with the monopolistic power of the state, so stop complaining! Is that what I'm supposed to live with? No. We're human beings, and just as you and I are sitting here talking as equals about a tendentious issue, atheists should be able to discuss these issues as equals, or be free to avoid these issues as equals, as we wish. We should not be subjected to daily ridicule and scorn and have our differences forced upon us. Atheism is not the defining characteristic of my personality or my life. It's a descriptor, an important philosophical characteristic, but I am not and should not be defined by a single issue, and yet I spent the majority of my high school years going through exactly that. There were plenty of times that I just wanted not to have to worry about whether there exists a God or not, just to be left alone if people didn't like my beliefs, but no, they kept insisting and pushing the difference between us on me and never gave me a moment's rest about it. Not a day went by without someone mocking me or threatening me or pushing me or some other bullshit. I've had parents - adult human beings! - who refused to let their children associate with me. I distinctly remember on at least one occasion that a girl I was seeing stopped talking to me; I later found out that once her dad got wind of my atheism, he refused to let her spend any time with me because he was seriously concerned his daughter was going to be raped and murdered by "some atheist sociopath sicko." Verbatim words. I still cope with major depressive disorder which developed as a result of daily bullying for my lack of Christian faith.

And you want to sit there and tell me that I don't have a case or complaint about how atheists are treated in this country just because I'm not being thrown in prison. Get real.

Simon, I am sad that you had to endure that sort of abuse. In a lot of the U.S., "Christianity" is in fact the dominant culture, and there are widespread areas where non-Christians are indeed persecuted, or have been in the past. However, the people doing the persecuting are "cultural Christians" in that they are not following Jesus' teachings. I can only surmise that to those persecutors, Christianity is just a culture rather than a relationship. And just being a part of a Christian culture does not get you to heaven. Unless those people become aware of and confess their sins in this area, I doubt that they can even become Christians in the relationship-with-God sense. This brings to mind both Saul, who persecuted Christians before his encounter with God, and Revelations, where (to paraphrase) it says that many came saying "Lord, Lord, I did (many things) in your name," but Jesus said, "Depart from me, you workers of wickedness, because I didn't know you." Please excuse my paraphrase.

Ok I am a christan and am sad that other christan's are dumb and do things under ignorence. Simon teenagers that are christan are mostly trying to fit in and bully people like the rest of the teenage body. Dont let the individual people that say they are christan's becuase most people are only sunday christans. if they swear and do alot of looked down apon things then they are only sunday christans or like my sister- only saying she is but dont really go or avoid going.

@ Pres

I agree the tone of my post was terrible and I can completely understand how that you'd be insulted by them. That was not my intention. I am in no way saying that there aren't cretans out there who do terrible things. If you look hard enough it isn't hard to find tales of cretans vandalizing churches and cemeteries as well. I'm not in any way saying that there behavior is right. I'm not even going to go the route that these cretans aren't Christians, I don't have that right. If someone claims to be a Christian then I accept that they are.

As to your personal treatment, I'm apalled. One of my dearest friends was an atheist and he grew up in Georgia. If anyone treated him like that they'd have me to deal with. Our dialogues were very similar to forum posts although I'm not sure internet forums existed back then.

What I can say is this. I stereotyped atheists as arguing against treatment that is of little consequence deliberately. Not to say that your treatment at the hands of Christians is unimportant. We've discussed things on this board many times and I hope nothing I've ever said would lead you to believe that of me. The stereotype was to punctuate what Mujus and I were trying to get across to you. You are stereotyping Christians based upon your horrible experiences with some of them. Has every Christian you've ever met treated you this way? I can think of at least three that have not. Mujus said that you were generalizing in the extreme and I chimed in that I agreed with his assessment. Neither of us dignify or make any attempt to defend the people who have mistreated you. What I'm saying is quite simply that it's an overgeneralization to look at the actions of a few and make statement about the many. I could just as easily say that there is a trend toward atheists disfacing churches (yes it does happen) and give you anecdote after anecdote of factual accounts. The problem with that reasoning is that it screws the majority of atheists who would never do such a thing.

I vote for No. What kind of benevolent god creates a human race then subject them to pain and suffering just so that they worship him. The way I see it, worship is a Machiavellian ploy to maintain favor in the eyes of a perceived omnipotent benefactor.

I'm not sure where in any of my posts I was stereotyping Christians. In fact, I've stated more than once in here that it's not all or a majority or plurality of Christians doing it. Literally my entire contribution to the thread was a response to a statement, and I can't remember whose, that implied some degree of skepticism about how badly atheists (particularly younger ones) get treated in America. I cited two examples of extremely courageous and increasingly well-known atheist teens (both with whom I've had the pleasure of exchanging letters and getting to know to an extent) who have, quite literally, received some of the most horrifying threats one could level at another individual over their faith. The purpose of that being to say that there shouldn't even be skepticism over the notion that atheists get treated relatively badly compared to other groups in America, and that the primary perpetrators are Christian, because these are not by any means isolated incidents.

I did not, however, implicate Christians at large with my statements. What I said was akin to observing that the 9/11 hijackers were Muslim, not that all/most Muslims are terrorists, to use the 21st century equivalent of Godwin's Law here. One can factually observe that most of the perpetrators of a terrible behavior happen to belong to one specific group without necessarily implying that all or most members of that group exhibit that behavior. I thought I did a good job toeing that line and I honestly do not see where I failed to do it, but I apologize nonetheless if this was not clear.

I haven't been stereotyping, oversimplifying or generalizing. I've been reporting, quite literally, the facts as I've observed them to be. The fact is that the majority of the perpetrators of these deeds have been Christian. That doesn't say anything about Christians at large. My point was simply that yes, it does happen, no, there's really no room to doubt seriously that it happens, and that the focal point of such a discussion ought to be how both sides can rein in their crazies and their jackasses so we can move forward and coexist peacefully as a reasonable, empathetic society, not spent squabbling over whether one group actually does have members who act like jerks or not.

Anglican your point is very well taken. Simon, we'd have to agree on a definition of "Christian" before I could agree that "the majority of the perpetrators of these deeds" are Christians.

Ah, yeah, we would. I noticed that you had made the implication (if not outright stated) that these folks weren't Christians. I know they are nominally - they met the minimum standard that my own former church had, and the minimum standard I saw in the Bible. But I suspect you take it a bit further than that. What are your criteria for being a Christian?