Invalid Fallback Positions of the Faithful

• Don't say “it's the way the culture was back then” and that those pieces don't apply today. The inspired word of god should transcend the limits of the time, place and culture; however, as you will see in the bible verses section, if the author didn't know it, then “god” didn't know it. God didn't write the Bible...people did, and they didn't have any more knowledge than anyone else in that era...about ANYTHING.

  • If the faithful want to argue the bible doesn't apply to modern times, maybe that's the right track... Let's throw the whole thing out! They can still believe in Jesus because faith doesn't require facts or support, right? Of course, the need for Jesus is based squarely on there being an angry god that must be appeased, but that fact could be ignored like they ignored a lot of other items that are red flags to the rest of us. Again, for Jesus to be necessary, there has to be a “god the father” who is not loving at all and wants to kill us, whether by flood or by fire. Don't pretend that ugliness isn't there!

  • Not only were these teachings only applicable to a particular time, they were only applicable to a particular people: the Jews. Jesus did not preach to the gentiles. Paul decided to open it up to the gentiles when the Jews wouldn't give him the time of day (they were right to ignore him). This is just one of many liberties Paul took with Christianity when god and Jesus weren't looking. There's 0 evidence that god or Jesus were or are on board with this.

• A related defense is that it's a matter of faith in the gist of the stories in the bible, the truth revealed through them. This is nonsense. So, you believe in a story of love and redemption (why do we need redemption again?) because of brutal, outdated and inconsistent stories that don't apply to the current time? This is not good enough for me, and it shouldn't be good enough for you, either.

• Loosely related to the previous point is the “ever play telephone?” defense. The premise here is that most or all of the important stuff in the bible really happened, but the words are amiss now because the oral tradition of these stories messed them up before they made it into writing, and the numerous translations these texts went through messed them up.

  • If someone wants to argue that the bible is inaccurate, please be my guest.

  • This defense concedes that we don't know what parts of the bible are accurate and that the bible could, in fact, be WILDLY inaccurate.

    • I take it another step. The faithful assume the stories started out as true. I don't see any reason to assume that. This stuff has no more basis than the Egyptian god Nut swallowing the sun each night or the early Japanese explanation for earthquakes that involved a giant fish shaking the earth by moving its tail.

    • This religion was in a pissing contest with others, including the Greek and Roman beliefs, which have a fascinating cast of characters and many fantastic stories. Also, tales of prophesy and healing were commonplace back then. The Christian tales just kept getting taller to outdo the competition – like the 100^th round of “my dad can beat up your dad” on a grade school playground.

  • The bible is the only source for a lot of these stories, so in many cases there's no ability to fact check. How do you tell what parts were accurate and what parts not?

  • There are plenty of excuses to justify believing whatever the hell you want to regardless of the facts. Just be honest about it, starting with yourself.

  • What loving god is going to condemn us for not believing in these corrupted stories? How moral is that?

  • Isn't it easy to see how stories from other faith traditions could've made their way into the Christian texts? The flood story (originally the story of Gilgamesh) is one solid example. Considering that each religion makes claims to be the only truth and all other religions false, it gets murky very quickly when you see how they borrow from each other.

  • It's believed that the gospels were written down decades after Jesus supposedly lived. Can we trust these stories at all? Also, you'd think the apostles would've been in a bigger rush to record the stories of their master. I contend the “delay” is there because the writers didn't want to contend with witnesses being able to argue with their version of the “facts”.

    • Even conceding to the Christian belief that the earliest gospels were written in the early 50's and that Jesus ascended into heaven around 30-33, that's still a 20-year gap where nobody wrote anything about it. Shuty's theory is that people got restless and started fulfilling their own prophesies when it was clear that god or Jesus weren't going to do it for them.

  • As noted above, there were a series of human decisions about what books would be in the bible, and they've undergone numerous deliberate rewrites to fit different agendas. The bible has been revised many times: Council of Nicaea, Protestant Reformation, Council of Jamnia, Council of Trent, Council of Rome – all reassembling and removing books. Recently, the Vatican released another version of the bible to soften up certain terms of the bible, so we're still changing the bible today!!!

    • The bible is pretty ludicrous the way it is today. I can only imagine how silly it would look today if left in its original form! I've heard it said the bible is extraordinarily consistent and accurate. It should be consistent after all of the editing! As far as accuracy, I'm sure that was checked, too. Other accounts of events around that time were probably destroyed as heretical or simply modified to match. Keep in mind the church ruled for centuries and wasn't shy about abusing its power to its own ends.

    • Really, how hard is it to write a book (the NT) to match up with an existing older book (the OT)?

  • Just looking at the stark differences between the gospels, a literal translation is out the window (see verses section). Keep in mind the gospels are the newest books in the bible, and they're still messed up and contradicting each other. The older ones are without question totally whacked, and unlike the gospels, there aren't multiple versions of the stories to compare.

  • There are also different versions of the bible currently in circulation that vary from each other.

  • Why would god give us a set of books that can't be taken literally??? Again, why would we be condemned for not believing this stuff?

• Another fallback I've heard is about how the faithful say they “don't understand” particular passages I bring up – like the genocide in Jericho or Abraham being ready to kill his son or Jesus calling a non-Jew a “dog”. Shouldn't they understand something that's part of what they believe in? They also might try to chalk these things up to translation errors. When faced with real truth, they want to dismiss the ugliness they see and not think about it anymore. Well, by volume, there's more hate and blatantly immoral activity than anything good in the bible – just see my bible verse section. They need to realize that the verses they choose to believe are cut from the same cloth as the ones they try to dismiss and that the vast majority of the “cloth” is decidedly not to their liking. In fact, some of the more inspirational ones come right after god-sanctioned genocides in which the Jews were the aggressors. They want to weigh the verses differently when they all should carry exactly the same weight, with the sheer number of unpalatable verses absolutely crushing the scale.

• The faithful like to talk about the multiple Zombie Jesus sightings as some sort of evidence, but the sighting stories contradict each other. The apostles are described as being surprised to see that Jesus rose from the dead during 2 different sightings. Both are described as if this was the first time they saw him. In such a case, you'd have to throw one of the accounts out or concede that one or both stories can't be trusted.

• A lot of people pick and choose so much what they believe from religion that it becomes something nearly unidentifiable. I'd think the homosexual believers are particularly guilty of this, but there are so many absurdities in there that every believer MUST do it to some degree. Any people with a history of slavery should also have difficulty with the bible's support of slavery. In the bible verse section, you will see that the bible contains within it a “slavery handbook”. ...Why do so many people start with a position that requires so much amending? Why not start with a simpler "all of us connected" type of view and leave the psychotic stories out of it? It's been said that that the truth will set you free. Stopping living a lie can also bring you peace. Stop pretending to know what you don't know and trying to defend it.

• Notice how the religious dismiss evidence when it doesn't suit their purposes? Also notice how they jump at supportive evidence like a parched man in a desert lunging for a drink of water? They need to realize fully that evidence and knowledge are against them, and they need to admit to themselves (if not to each other) that evidence and knowledge have little impact on their beliefs. That's what faith is, isn't it?

• Another one is “you can't prove it doesn't exist”. This is yet another spot where they should just admit defeat. They're picking an argument that could apply to anything from the Easter Bunny to someone's pet theory about little blue men inside Neptune...and especially to opposing religions. Opening that door does them more harm than good in their argument. They're basically admitting their beliefs are on par with things they themselves don't believe are true. They're also assuming their beliefs hold weight by just existing. Plenty of other religions exist and have existed. They're putting their religion on par with belief in the Greek or Roman gods, who few believe in anymore...or with Christianity or Islam, whichever opposes the one they happen to believe in.

• Related to the previous point is that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Believers need to know that they're the ones making extraordinary claims. They're the ones making specific claims about a single god, that none of the multitude of other gods are real, a man born of a virgin, that there's life after death and lots of specifics about it. I think the only reason they don't feel more self-conscious about such ridiculous claims is that they're in the majority here in 'Merica. Being the majority doesn't make them right. There are plenty of times and places where other religions held sway – religions we all agree are wrong.

  • I, by contrast, make no extraordinary claims. I'm under 0 obligation to justify a lack of belief. Do you feel obligated to explain your lack of belief in Zeus or Thor? Same here, toward your religion.

• Most of us accept what we were taught as children. It takes effort and thought to not simply follow the herd and bow to the pressure. The generations of unoriginal thinkers who follow the herd has given it more credibility than it deserves. Also, the age of the texts adds a mystique and credibility that it doesn't deserve.

• “There are lots of things in science that don't have evidence but are still true.” Things can be true without evidence, but usually in science we see certain phenomena (that we know exist) and try to create an explanation for it. Also, those explanations have to be plausible to have credibility, and to be a true theory, the explanation has to be testable. Religion is not testable or verifiable, and the whole idea of faith is believing without (or in spite of) evidence, which is completely unscientific and intellectually dishonest. Don't pretend science and religion are even in the same league. In my case, I do feel there's something beyond this life, but without any available proof, I can only say that's a feeling I have. You won't catch me adding a whole bunch of specifics to those thoughts, arguing with people on this point or trying to police others' viewpoints on the matter to protect my fragile, unverifiable viewpoint. I don't feel there's ever a license to blindly believe in something based on feelings alone, especially if that something is riddled with contradictions and implausibilities. I don't understand the smugness and the certainty of some people with their unsupported beliefs. Again, these views are rather mainstream (less so now, fortunately), but believers need to understand how extraordinary their claims are and how much extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, which is clearly missing. They need to know they're on defense, not offense...just like someone trying to make you believe in Thor.

• Some claim science requires faith of its own.

  • Read about the scientific method (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method). Science has humble aspirations. It is a tool or method by which we find out about the world. That method could, theoretically, lead to proving there's a god or that the power of prayer is real.

  • Yes, the facts supported by science can change, but if you look closely, you'll see that's generally because previous research wasn't done well or there was a confounding factor (the research was about how A might lead to B, but factor C we didn't know about before was a main or partial contributor to B). Generally, changes like this actually reflect progress in our overall understanding. The backbone theories of science don't change often.

    • Do you give up on using computers or cars because they change (advance) often? They advance when they change, do they not?

  • In science, it's okay to be wrong or to not know, although pretending to know something you don't will get you laughed at (as it should in all areas of life). The whole idea in science is to advance by filling in those areas of uncertainty with better and better knowledge. It's iterative and adaptable. Religion has the opposite tendency. Notice how the religious try to answer EVERY question with certainty? There ARE gaps all over the place, and there's no good way forward to answer those. Religion has evolved A LOT over time, but it can't do so quickly without losing face. The response to uncertainty is to go back to the basics expecting to find some form of truth there (seems backwards to me), or they pull the “you gotta have faith” card which is basically saying “shut up and don't think about it”. You see the back-to-basics (fundamentalism) a lot in the Muslim world, and they put teeth into it like the Christians did during the Inquisition. It protects their faith as well as possible...and drives their world back into the bronze age via the ignorance and intolerance religion both requires and carries with it.

  • Any scientist claiming the ability to rule out god or something like it is wrong in the same way the religious are wrong. One can't prove a negative, and we don't have much data on this realm yet, if it truly exists. I admit that to be fair, but the religious should not take this as license to believe absurdities. If you are to be honest with yourself and with others, one should still be reasonable and examine facts. Do like I do: rank ideas according to likelihood. Believing everything is made of atoms is something I view as highly probable based on research, but even that idea is open to being falsified (string theory definitely modifies a lot of that). Believing that the god of the bible is real seems extremely improbable to me (see the bible verses section), but I still have to allow for it pending further evidence. If I had to choose a non-eastern religion, I find the Greek and Roman gods much more believable, mostly because the battles and interplay among them seem more likely to lead to the world we live in. One all-powerful, all-knowing and all-loving god doesn't go far in explaining much about this world – especially the bad parts that involve children getting killed and the like, especially when it's in its name.

    • Being a person of integrity starts with being honest with yourself, even if you don't like the facts you find.

  • Sam Harris states that the core of science is intellectual honesty. One has to weigh evidence even if it goes against your pet theory or what you wanted to see. The religious, on the other hand, are intellectually dishonest (and not just a little).

• Pascal's Wager countered by the Atheist Wager:

  • If god is good, it won't care if you believe in it.

  • If god is insecure and has anger issues, we don't know what behavior it will reward or punish.

  • If there is no god, well, it doesn't matter at all.

  • In any of these 3 cases, being good makes the world a better place for ourselves and for others.

  • Choosing your belief based on the odds? ...Is your god dumb or gullible? If not, it will see why you choose to follow. Besides, can you really choose your beliefs like you choose your breakfast cereal or your clothing for the day? Belief and professing belief are not the same. In fact, professing belief without being able to internalize it is dishonest, even if you're trying to “fake it until you make it” or are trying desperately to hang onto your "god high".

• Religion deserves its bad reputation. People try to separate faith from religion, saying religion is the political apparatus while faith is personal. If you don't have people with faith, the political apparatus has no power. It is the believers who make up (and fund) a religion. What else is there? Religion does some sick things as well as some good things...and plenty of things that only benefit the religion itself and its power structure, which is clearly a waste of resources. Personally, I'd like secular organizations to do what good work religion currently does, but that's probably no surprise. Many of the religious vote against secular help for those in need (republicans and their strong tendency to cut public programs)...is that what Jesus would do? Do they want less competition for the church as a way of justifying the church?

  • I'd love to see churchgoers take an active interest in where that money trail leads...especially the politics it funds and what it's doing to curb condom use in AIDS-ravaged countries. I'd like to see if that offends any of their morals.

  • The 10% income donation rule was from when the church was the welfare system. They're mostly out of that business, and the expected donation amount didn't drop. At least the church of that time seemed to charge a flat tax – unlike the republicans they now support – who would advocate 10% for the middle class and 1% for the richest people in their inverted tax scheme.

• It's obvious that the topic of religion has some sort of protected status, and the religious depend on that. I can attack someone's unsupported and irrational political views all day, but attacking their unsupported and irrational religious views is supposedly a wrong. Even people who might agree with my view sometimes rush to protect faith on the grounds of freedom of religion. I'm not trying to persecute anyone, but I do think the lack of support and rationality behind those beliefs should be pointed out. As I show in multiple areas, we all pay a price for so many believing so irrationally, especially when different groups believe different and irreconcilable things.

  • Again, ideas don't deserve respect, people do.

  • If someone expresses an opinion that's easily falsifiable or is intolerant, I'll call them on it. They should be confronted on such things as long as it's a verbal-only confrontation. People act like I must respect opinions (and religion), but I don't. I only need to respect physical and legal boundaries and their rights as a person. If they don't want to engage on religion or any other indefensible position, they should keep it to themselves. We have free speech on both sides.

• I've seen people get up in arms whenever I bash religion even though they don't buy into a lot of what's in the bible, either. It's more just something they “relate” to. It's a bizarre thing to see someone agree with me on a lot of my individual points against religion yet believe in it without question. Again, they believe in that stuff because of a book whose contents they largely question when given specific passages to look at. There's a significant disconnect there, and it doesn't seem to bother them. It's like they're just running this religion program in a loop. It seems clear that program was installed when they were young and defenceless and worked its way into the base of the brain. It runs undisturbed by reason, evidence, or anything else of the sort. How else could an intelligent person believe the premise but largely reject the points behind it?

• One person said that they'd like Jesus without the bible. I think she was reacting to the ugliness in the bible when she said that. I also think she wasn't finding the story she wanted to believe. I think if others really look at the bible, they also won't see what they want to believe in. In many cases, the message of Christianity being taught doesn't match up with the bible well at all. Christianity continues to reinvent itself to keep its followers through changing times. It's ironic then that science is faulted for changing over time. Both change, but only 1 is supposed to. Science has a built-in method to do so while religion does not. Religion should not be able to change without losing face, but somehow here we are in a modern era with a religion that continues to evolve (even though it's not supposed to) and people still willing to believe in it.

• Some point out how perfectly designed we are for life on this world. It's clearly the opposite; we adapted to life here. If we find life on Enceladus, are you also going to suggest that life there was created first and then Enceladus was created for them? What about how the flu vaccines need to be adapted each year because the viruses are evolving? Would you say that viruses or bacteria that attack the human body are adapted for their environment (us), or would you say we were built forthem? Did god create the viruses and bacteria first and then make humans specifically for them to colonize? The answer is clearly NO, and why would the creation of humans be any different?

  • Also, we're not perfectly adapted – all of the diseases we can get, inability to survive weather, limited visual range, inability to drink salt water (the most common type on the planet), need to eat frequently, issues with food pathogens and parasites, ease of choking thanks to the shared food/air pipe, wasted structures created in embryonic development (growing a tail and a full coat of hair, only to reabsorb it), etc. The fossil record clearly shows that over 99% of all species that have ever lived...are extinct. That's A LOT of waste for an "intelligent" process! Also, consider that we have flightless birds and snakes with pelvises. Also, the bible doesn't accurately depict the structure of the earth, sun and moon. You'd think god would've given these people at least one profound insight or clue about unseen reality or the future.

  • Even if we take the science and DNA out of the evolution discussion, you had to have noticed that parents pass on traits to their kids. If one early family was better at having kids, there will be more of their traits in the human population, right? How about how flu vaccines need to be updated each year because the viruses have changed? What about how our species selectively bred wolves into the many types of dogs in a few hundred years? Evolution has had much more time and many more possible traits to work with.

  • Also, where's the part where we credit god with malaria, AIDS, Alzheimer's, mosquitoes, ticks, viruses, the Candiru fish, round worms, tape worms, botflies, etc? That's only the human suffering from other parts of "god's creation". Animals suffer far more from other elements of “god's creation”.

• Stars are billions of light-years away, so the universe is VERY old. The bible likes to talk about stars falling to earth. Size-wise and distance-wise, that makes 0 sense. While we're at it, let's talk dinosaur bones. I understand some people actually don't believe in dinosaurs because they don't fit into the bible's timeline. This is an over-the-top example of what the religious need to do A LOT to keep their faith going – purposefully ignore real logic and evidence while ALSO purposefully ignoring the inaccuracies and falsehoods in the bible. They're being illogical in 2 ways at once.

• We look and act like we're >90% monkey. As a comedian once said, if I make a sandwich that's 96% shit and 4% ham, are you going to call it a shit sandwich, or will you call it a ham sandwich and eat it?

  • We act like animals because we are. That's why we'll never live up to the rules in the bible, which gives the religious a reason to say "see how bad we are; we need religion to save us".

• Christians like to blame free will for the evil in this world and why so much evil happens within church walls, but keep in mind the godless have exactly the same choice between doing good and doing bad. I think the good atheists do should count double because we don't do it out of fear.

• Partially repeated from the faith section: Faith cannot differentiate between 2 rival claims or religions. It has no mechanism to do so. This doesn't provide much hope of us ironing things out, does it? ...If you've decided to be religious, how do you choose, and how do you defend your faith once you've chosen? Why is their faith different than a believer of another faith? If multiple faiths are paths to the divine, why pick just one, and why does each faith explicitly say it's the only path? It's a serious stretch to say there are multiple paths to divinity when each path excludes all others.

• The religious like to claim there's reason or evidence to believe. ...If that's true, why do you need faith? DO you have faith at that point? Is that grounds for god to send you to hell?

• Copied from the Morals section: Some people believe that believing (having faith) is itself a moral virtue. How is a person improved by believing the implausible without evidence? We've already demonstrated that being in god's house or close to it doesn't impact morality, and we can assume most of these people (thinking specifically about priests molesting children) believed what they were preaching on Sunday. I think a far better character-building exercise is to figure things out for yourself and to think logically and rationally about what you're all about and what you really do know and don't know.

• The birth time of religion was a time ruled by superstition where fantastic stories of magic and miracles were common. If you brought a person from that time to our current time, they would have little to contribute and would struggle to survive in our age. Would you have any use for their technology or science? How about medical treatment? Would you submit to their medical advice on, well, anything? On moral direction, you'd find them extremely simplistic and very brutal – probably quite like the stores of the OT.

• Do you really believe in the virgin birth? How about all of the other past religious stories about virgin births, like Horus? What's with using the birth canal as only a one-way street? I say show me a woman who had a virgin birth, and I'll show you a woman who was raped (okay per the bible) OR who knows how to have a good time between the sheets (not a bad thing).

• Read about the Life of Apollonius (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_of_Apollonius_of_Tyana) if you want to see one source of the Jesus myth. Read up on Horus if you want much of the rest of it. Try Gilgamesh if you want to know where Noah's ark and rainbow references came from.

• Do you believe the bible has ultimate truth? How can this be so when the gospels directly contradict each other about how Jesus ascended, where he went afterwards, who saw Zombie Jesus, whether the stone was rolled away already or if it was moved by a great earthquake when people came to see the body, if there were Roman guards around the tomb or not, if said Romans survived/fainted or not, what (or even how many) shiny happy people were in the tomb to greet people looking for Jesus' body? The bible clearly claims that it's to be taken literally (see the verses section), but passages in the gospels and a lot of other areas directly contradict each other, so what do you make of this? ...This is historical fiction, with emphasis on FICTION. After all, that's what we call books that aren't true. THERE IS NO POSSIBLE WAY THE BIBLE CAN BE FULLY TRUE. To not admit this is to be intellectually dishonest.

• As you will see, there's so much hate in the bible, and it can be used to legitimize hate here and now. Aside from that, the “good news” and offer of forgiveness and salvation rests firmly on believing that we're severely flawed, if not evil. In order to believe the “good news”, we have to first believe that we're deserving of eternal damnation AND that our “heavenly father” wants to torture and kill us – whether by flood or by fire. For all of my flaws, I'm not deserving of that. Neither are you. This is how we were created, whether by god, by evolution or by some other means. We should not be punished for being as we were created.

• There are many passages of the gospels that are written from an omniscient narrator perspective instead of by a reporter on the scene. How do we know what Jesus said to God while Jesus was alone? The gospels are written as stories, not as first-hand accounts. What's more, the gospels clearly copy and correct each other, with Mark being the original. John's account is much different than the others, and the author is clearly trying to pump some strength and machismo into his main character.

• Nazareth did not exist when Jesus supposedly lived. The people who made up the gospels much later on clearly weren't aware of this; they just knew it existed when they were writing.

• The gospels differ on why Jesus was supposedly born in Bethlehem. One states that Joseph had to go back there for a Roman census because of his lineage to David. The census is not supported by any other sources, and it would've been a break from procedure (and from common sense) to have people go back to ancestral homes to be counted for tax purposes instead of where the people actually lived and made their living.

• When historians study ancient texts for validity, they want to see other works or records that agree with what the particular text says. That sort of critical analysis is completely missing when the faithful look at the bible. When such analysis is done, the results are not flattering. Whether we're talking about a census, a decree to kill the firstborn of every house, or even any mention of a Jesus that fits the bill, it shows the bible COMPLETELY unsupported by other books or records of its day. The logical conclusion is that the NT was made up by Greeks much later on. That's why there's so much disagreement about the day or year of anything concerning Jesus. It was written too late to be by anyone who could've been there.

• The Sea of Galilee does not exist. The only possible candidate is a landlocked lake a few miles across - certainly not a body of water that could provide the rough waters and storms the NT talks about. The Greeks loved to write about ocean adventures, so they plopped a couple in like turds in a punch bowl.

• The earth supposedly came before there was light. Never mind that earth's necessary elements came from supernovas/stars.

• Let me get this straight, an all knowing, all powerful and all loving god created us and the rest of the world then hid itself away, answering the occasional request (sometimes with a “NO”) while children starve and people kill each other, often in its name. It gives us a capable mind and ability to make our own decisions, yet in order to avoid this being's wrath, we must not use these tools. This was my first objection to faith, and I keep coming back to it.

  • This sounds parallel to an abusive relationship where a person says “if I can't have you, nobody can”. Any human who says that is extremely unhealthy and abusive, and they need to get help immediately.

• There isn't a single statement or sentence in the bible that couldn't have been written by humans from that time period. Couldn't god have thrown in 1 amazing revelation? Also, instead of curing a few people of leprosy, why didn't Jesus eradicate it from the planet or even just his chosen people – the Jews?

• Why pray to an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving god? If that's all true about god, wouldn't it already take care of you as best as possible? If it answers your prayers against it's better judgement, isn't it doing you a disservice?

• The religious are quick to jump on anything science hasn't figured out yet as a place where god fits. This is a selfish attempt to retard progress and learning about the world just so they can feel better about themselves and their irrational beliefs. Unlike religion, science adapts to new information. It has a built-in corrective mechanism. Not knowing means we don't know YET. Whether or not god did it, we can still try to understand it. If these people had their way, we'd stop learning and searching for answers.

• The religious think they actually added something to the conversation or actually simplified something unknown when they say “god did it!”. NO, a being capable of creating all of existence would have to be more complex than what it created. That means adding god into the mix only makes the questions harder to answer. We know WE exist in this reality, but we don't know about god. Let's focus on what we know is real. If a creator exists, it has clearly left us to our own devices.

• Do you see where it's a ridiculous (man-made) loop where god hides himself away so we can exercise free will as to whether we believe in him or not, but then he'll destroy his creation that choose the wrong “free will” path? It gets even more absurd when you factor in his omniscience and omnipotence, which should make the whole damnation piece he keeps threatening us with unnecessary.

• Considering the number of Hells associated with different religions, even if you go all Christian (not just say you believe but follow all the rules, too), the odds are stacked against you.