Coexistence is awesome.

Originally Posted by Alvis Oswin

and just because you follow a religion, doesn't mean you have to believe in everything about the religion, nor must you adhere it.

why doesnt it? if you follow a religion why are you allowed to pick and choose and still say you follow that religion?

sure, you can obviously take bits and pieces and suit them to your life and morals values, but if you FOLLOW a religion, shouldnt you, you know... live by everything it says?

Originally Posted by Alvis Oswin

If I believe that to treat your neighbor like yourself is the most important rule in my life, would that harm you or anyone?

yeah because how would people treat stangers!

It's wasn't my intention to start a debate on religion in this thread.

All I wanted to say was that, as an atheist, I felt like you called me out for entirely the wrong reason.

Religious debate can be taken elsewhere...

I didn't assign hate to you, hate was your choice! Rethink hate.

Why would you be antitheist? If you don't want us to force our beliefs on you, which I never have, please don't force your beliefs on us, thank you.

I can't make bad people leave you alone, the best I can do myself is leave you alone, or help you understand others.

Don't turn into the stereotype, stereotypes are REALLY bad.

Why is believing in God insulting to intelligence? You were never there when the Earth was being formed, no matter how it got here in space, so you wouldn't know, and your world views are worth no more and no less than anyone else's.

People who believe that Heaven exists can feel offended by people who only believe that what they sense exists because that means that there is no Heaven, and that means that there is no guaranteed punishment, whether it's permanent or temporary, and that means that you could be as evil as you want and get away with it, and be as virtuous as you strive to be without any recognition, which makes the universe a very uncomfortable and meaningless place.

Yes, I already mentioned that we're seeing things from the same angles. :b

Should you? I suppose that if you believe that a deity wrote something, you should believe it, but it is in common agreement that most, if not all, religions were written by humans. And I do believe that a lot of the Bible was written by men who wanted power. Besides, we have functioning brains, we can judge which rule is better, treat others as you would treat yourself, or an eye for an eye? In the end, treat others as you would treat yourself is more constructive.

Sorry, can you rephrase that? I can't understand this grammar.

Originally Posted by Alvis Oswin

Why would you be antitheist? If you don't want us to force our beliefs on you, which I never have, please don't force your beliefs on us, thank you.

Hitch explains anti-theism...

This is not only explaining anti-theism, it is also explaining anti-religion, and again, you don't have to follow a religion to believe in God and you don't have to believe in everything about a religion just because you follow one. This video you have posted is hardly relevant. Also, this man is stating his bare opinions, he has made so many debatable propositions that degrading them would take hours, and I am not that desperate to prove him wrong.

Originally Posted by Alvis Oswin

I didn't assign hate to you, hate was your choice! Rethink hate.

No, my point exactly is that I don't hate people who believe in god, but in your original post, you imply that I do. You call me out as an atheist, saying, "Don't be so hateful; is it really so bad that I believe in god?" Atheists don't hate religious people. We just don't share their beliefs. Even antitheists don't in general hate religious people; in general, they hate the religion.

Why would you be antitheist? If you don't want us to force our beliefs on you, which I never have, please don't force your beliefs on us, thank you.

I'm antitheist for a lot of reasons, but I don't think they're for this thread. Foremost, I think belief in god kills rational thought by encouraging people to fill in gaps in their knowledge with easy, convenient drivel, rather than by actually expending the effort to search for the correct answer.

Don't turn into the stereotype, stereotypes are REALLY bad.

And they totally don't exist for a reason. When you violate personal liberty as deeply as you do by, for example, passing Proposition 8, people are bound to get aggressive and defensive. I know that I was ready to punch some homophobes in the teeth.

Why is believing in God insulting to intelligence? You were never there when the Earth was being formed, no matter how it got here in space, so you wouldn't know, and your world views are worth no more and no less than anyone else's.

See above: it encourages people to fill in gaps in their knowledge with meaningless crud. No, I wasn't here when the Earth was formed; but, thanks to astronomy, I can watch other planets a lot like the Earth being formed, and I sure don't see any sort of god hovering over them with a tube of superglue and an instruction manual.

People who believe that Heaven exists can feel offended by people who only believe that what they sense exists because that means that there is no Heaven, and that means that there is no guaranteed punishment, whether it's permanent or temporary, and that means that you could be as evil as you want and get away with it, and be as virtuous as you strive to be without any recognition, which makes the universe a very uncomfortable and meaningless place.

Ah, yes; the old "there's-no-basis-for-morality-without-god" argument. Again, I don't want to debate religion in this thread, but if you're only being virtuous because you're striving for recognition, aren't you being vain, rather than virtuous?

Well, I'm glad you don't hate. :)

There is no correct answer. That is a reason that I believe that God exists, because God is omniscient, and he is the only one who knows the truth. If I was to argue that God doesn't exist, than the truth would become the 'popular opinion', but the original popular opinion was that the Earth was square, and now we know that it is not true that the Earth is square, and if you don't accept the popular opinion, you're basically saying that there is no absolute truth, because let's say that person A thought the sky is green, but people b to z think it cannot be green, but according to this logic, neither are true or false, which means that there is no truth without God, even if we cannot know the truth until he audibly tells us, and even then, you'd be the only one who knows, and then no one else would believe you unless they were told as well.

Well, if I didn't want anything from being virtuous, I might as well be evil, but I don't want to be evil, I want to be virtuous, so is it entirely vanity? Maybe, for me, it is actually harder to deliberately hurt someone than to be nice, and thus, it's not vanity, it's just a part of who I am, and recognition is just a bonus.