I know i may be ignorant to whatever science, evolution theory u may have studied, which is in vain anyway as is everything man has accomplished for himself is vanity.

You are ignorant to science (which is an affliction so easily remedied!). And if everything that science has given you is in vain, then I suggest you get off the computer (which is one of the fruits of science), stop buying food (which is grown, protected, improved, distributed and preserved by the fruits of science), don’t take your flu shots (designed by science), never use a docter (trained by the accumulated knowledge of scientists), and never use a car/train/microwave/cell phone/gorram hot water tap ever again.

And i could say the same for you where christianity is concerned.

You haven’t addressed any of my concerns in my previous posts that attempt to show you why I don’t see a reason to accept god. Which god? And why?

Your ignorant of God.what would u lose if u got to know God?

Again, which one? Do you have any idea how many gods humans have believed in over the millenia? Why don’t you believe in Zeus?

I tell you, the only thing u will lose is your hardened heart, and the rest will follow.

It’s like you’re not reading my posts. All I need to accept the existence of (a) god(s) is evidence. Not lovey-dovey open-your-heart-and-you’ll-see emotional experiences; actual, reliable evidence. Please explain to me how this is hardening my heart, and not a reasonable standpoint for any person to take when confronted by an implausible idea.

You made a choice to deny God.

Again, no. Please read what I’m writing, not your interpretation of what I’m writing.

Im glad im not playing russian roulette with my soul.

Aaah, the updated version of Pascal’s Wager. Please read up on this wager to understand why your argument doesn’t work. I’ll ignore the tone of smug self-satisfaction for now.

*skips block of all-caps*

Maybe you should get an easy to read bible

There is a Bible at my bed-side right now. I’ll also ignore the implication I’m too dumb to understand a hard to read Bible.

And you know what? GOD BLESS YOU!

Why? I haven’t sneezed.

Im gonna pray for you. I am. Nice knowing you. Melissa, in
fact, im gonna get my church to pray for you too.

You know what, while this is very sweet, it really doesn’t address any of the questions/rebuttals I’ve given you. At all. You would do me a far greater favour by actually reading something constructive, such as a basic book on science. It amazes me that you haven’t even considered going to wikipedia or a library to see what we’ve actually managed to figure out over the past few centuries.

If the doctor removed one of ur ribs, and u had a son after, wouldnt he have all his ribs?

*blinks*

Yes, that makes the whole created-an-entire-female-human-being-from-a-male-rib story much more plausible.

I am spiritual minded, you are carnally minded,

What is this obsession with the word carnal?

i feel offended on your part when the word atheist comes to mind.

Why? Should I feel offended on your part that the word Christian exists?

I dont know why they made such a harsh word.

Because it accurately describes the position? In any case, it is the word theist, which you presumably have no problems with, prefixed by a perfectly ordinary negation. Methinks your ears are oversensitive.

Where do our personalities come from and talents?

From a combination of the genetics we inherit from our parents, the developmental conditions during our foetal and childhood periods, and the environment we find ourselves in. Come on, these are questions that have answers!

As far as the science bit, God gave people the ability to study cancers e.t.c, medication, the human body,

Citation needed.

but i am not so clued up with is the ongoing latest science, it
always seems to be changing,

What is? The basic foundations of science?

last time i heard, it was dust, now i hear its something else.

“Dust” hasn’t been an acceptable explanation of human origins for 150 years! We are clearly apes, and no other hypothesis has the explanatory power or the evidential support that this explanation does.

I do know the scientists dont know when the
earth was made.

4.6 billion years, give or take a few hundred million years. The error bars on this might have narrowed, I haven’t kept up with the relevant literature.

They mistook some substance in the mines, saying it
tool millions of years to grow 20 cm, but in actual fact, only tooj 2
weeks.

This sounds like a job for the talk.origins archive!

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-age-of-earth.html#creacrit

Animals have no knowledge of good and bad, they simply live by instinct. At some point humans evolved self awareness and the ability to reason about the effects of their actions. This is the point at which we had taken a bite of that metaphorical apple, in which we had to start contending with the challenges of being fully aware of the consequences of our actions, and therefore accountable. Prior to having knowledge/awareness of harm we commit, we wouldn’t have any responsibility. We wouldn’t be capable of “sin”, depending on your theological stance towards the concept. (I argue that cats playing with mice aren’t sinning, they are adhering to their nature and not aware of the suffering they cause.)

We also have numerous pieces of literature and other art (such as movies) investigating the dangers we could run into due to a blind pursuit of science. I think we could also consider the Adam and Eve narrative as an early example of this genre, though like the opening of pandora’s box, with us having access to knowledge and science and good and evil, there’s no going back. We do need to deal with it. (We need to develop our ethics to be able to cope with the new challenges we face. We have lived many decades in the nuclear age, and we face the possibility of biological warfare, also scary – thus we have most clearly lost our innocence about the risks of science and the challenges we will need to overcome going forward.)

Just some tangential thoughts inspired by the Adam&Eve narrative.

As a child of God, your spirit
is alive, as adams was, before he ate of the fruit, after he ate the
fruit, his spirit died.

Again with the gendered language. Why are you ignoring Eve?

And also, might I point out that the fruit of knowledge of good and evil was a fruit god provided Adam and Eve, at the same time that he denied them the knowledge of whether it was good or bad to actually eat it, because they hadn’t actually eaten the fruit yet? How can they be held responsible for doing this when they had no way to know whether what they were doing was good or bad?

These things sound foolish to the carnal mind, but to the spiritual mind it is revelation and enlightening.

I would say these things sound foolish because they are foolish.

He has his plans for ur life, child abuse, rape,
abortion, suicide, theft, those are all his plans for ur life,

What, all at the same time?

Depression, hatred, racism, murder, genocide,
hyprocisy, abuse, abortion, satanism, everything which God is not,
when we r born into this world, we are born under satans yoke.

No, we are not. Some of us believe this.

Even though u deny him now, He says seek me and
you will find me.

Again, I only deny the Christian god in the sense that I deny Thor, Zeus, Quetzalcoatl, Paul Bunyan, Māui, the teapot around Mars, and the Invisible Pink Unicorn. I even deny the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and there is far more evidence that the last exists than any of the others. Should I seek these as well? However do I decide which one? Why is your god better?

So i promise u, God has His ways of getting to you.

He’s been extremely coy about using them, hasn’t he? Downright shy, I would say.

Even though u fight everything i say, im sowing seeds in your life, and one day they will start sprouting by Gods grace.

What?

I’m not fighting, I’m disagreeing. There is a world of difference.

And I can turn this around and say I hope that some of the arguments I’ve used here might lead you to question the assumptions your beliefs are based on, perhaps even eventually lead you to change your mind. But these will be your decisions, not those of some nebulous deity.

What I’m doing now again, is to copy your comments into the comment form on your behalf. This time I’m not re-wrapping them either, apologies to others if that makes them a bit harder to read.

The following three comments came in via email, the first two on the 17th in the morning, the third on the 18th in the afternoon (for Africa and European timezones).

If we humans are just hereby chance, why is there a galaxy, planets, why would space exist?

Why does the existence of humans predicate the existence of galaxies? The latter existed billions of year before the former. As did planets.

He created eve from one of adams ribs because man couldnt be alone,

You know men and women have the same number of ribs? Count them if you don’t believe me.

The law of genesis where everything produces after its own kind, He created the law of gravity, so we wouldnt float everywhere. He gave man dominion of all He created.

Do you know what cell theory is?

Do you know what Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation is, and why it is a a special case of relativity?

As for your third statement, citation needed.

Your next few sentences seem to put the cart before the horse. These are not things made for our pleasure or use. We have evolved to derive pleasure from or make use of them. It’s the other way around. I’m expecting you to mention how perfectly the banana fits the human hand next…

Pleasure when we have sex, theres no reason why we should have pleasure in sex.

Sorry, what? You honestly don’t see an advantage to experiencing the act of procreation as pleasurable? Would you want to engage in sex if it was painful?

He created beautiful flowers

Do you know what flowers are? They are the sex organs of the plant. Flowers evolved to facilitate the process of sex, nothing more.

Man imitates God in some ways.

Oh, the irony! This is exactly, 180 degrees bass ackwards.

I’m sorry, I can’t address the rest of your posts. I give up. You seem to think that the world is a marvellous place, which it is, and that this automatically equates to the existence of a deity, which it does not. You seem to think that god is the answer to these things, when we as humans have managed to figure out explanations for nearly all of them, and where the application of those explanations has shaped the world around you to the point where you can wax lyrical about your beliefs to someone across the world at the speed of light, and not see the irony in denying the science that brings you such marvels. Mostly, you seem profoundly ignorant. If you have access to a library in meatspace, please try reading up on some of the things you feel support your god. You owe it to yourself to know something about this incredible universe you live in.

the Lord loves He chastens and scourges every son whom He recieves.

This is not the action of a loving god. This is the action of a megalomaniac with sadistic tendencies.

I read quickly u said something about not been born again, if ur not born again, ur spirit is still dead, thats why u never received revelations from God.

My spirit is dead, inasmuch as I don’t have one. Don’t worry, this is a universal tendency.

Your soul is ur mind, will and emotions, its where u make ur decisions.

It is manifestly not some incorporeal thing that survives the death of the brain. You are simply the general functioning of your brain. When the brain stops work that final time, so do you.

We cannot create our own thoughts, they come from God, and if ur not born again, most of it if not all comes from satan.

Citation needed.

What we told the prebeleiver today is that man cannot create blood, blood comes from God, it is what keeps us alive.

What?

Every single vertebrate on this planet creates their own blood. This includes humankind. Just as every vertebrate creates their own muscle tissue/sweat/urine/gametes/skin cells etc. Why makes blood so special it needs to be made in a god-factory?

God created us from dust which science proves today, alot of scientists beleive in God.

Firstly, science doesn’t prove. It disproves.

Secondly, whether scientists believe in god is unrelated to whether humans are created from dust.

Thirdly, there is no way, shape or form that science has upheld the hypothesis that we are created from dust. It is utterly false.

Isnt it funny that the christians are the optimistic happy ones and the people who deny God have nothing to look forward to?

Two things:

The fact that a believer is happier than a sceptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. – George Bernard Shaw

Secondly, do you have any non-anecdotal evidence to show that believers are generally happier than sceptics?

They think when they go to the grave thats it.

Actually, this is what I believe. You think this makes me an unhappy person? That’s rather a large assumption to make based on your limited contact with me.

We are here for a reason. We r not here by chance.

The only reason that can be remotely construed for our existence here is the byproduct of the evolutionary history we share with each and every other organism on this planet. It is a history rife with blood, pain, waste, death and yes, chance.