I see a lot of Christian haters on this forum.

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Nothing else. Democritus and Luccipus were right.

ruveyn

And if you believe that they are right then so are you.

Let me ask you this, do you believe benevolent extraterrestrials exist?
( just a yes or no question, it's not leading anywhere along alien lines, however cool that might be.)

I do not deny the possibility, but I have no basis for believing that they do exist.

ruveyn

It seems I have company - I was thinking that myself!
It's pretty arrogant to look at the sheer enormity of existence, the inconceivable scale of even the smallest of things in our lives, and then think "is this it?". No afterlife I have ever heard of has anything to compare to the richness of this one.

So benevolent extraterrestrials could exist, but a benevolent God could not?

Pretty much. Benevolent aliens avoid the Epicurus riddle - they are neither all powerful (just more so than us) or all-knowing (have probably not even met us yet). God, by definition, is aware of us and has the power to do anything. There is no evidence either way for aliens, but all the evidence for God's benevolence is negative.

How do you arrive at that concussion?! What is your "evidence"?

Albania is mostly Islamic as well, but most Albanians were raised atheist as a result of the Hoxha-era religion ban.

On the biblical side, the sheer problem of evil is a big one. God creates humans, but without the knowledge of good and evil (which they gain by eating the forbidden fruit) and then blames them and all their descendents for a decision they were not morally culpable for.

God tortures/torments Job purely to win a bet with the Devil (rather than smiting him for his wickedness, which is apparently the party line).

God forces Jonah to leave his home, eventually having him eaten alive and forcibly taken, to tell a city full of people that they are wicked sinners and doomed to die. Having gone to all this trouble, he then lets them off. There is no consistency here - he showed no such mercy to Sodom and Gomorrah.

God decides he's made such a hash of the whole thing that, rather than fixing the problem, he decides to drown the entire world and start again with just one family. This requires the murder of millions of people, not to mention the wholesale extinction of innumerable animal species. The most galling thing about this tale is that it has clearly had no effect whatsoever on humanity, which suggests God is making stuff up as he goes along rather than following any divine plan.

God decides to test the faith of Abraham by ordering the sacrifice of his son. He later calls this off. It is telling, however, that Abraham is terrified - he finds it entirely believable that God would give such a command and doesn't dare to refuse.

God enacts revenge on a bunch of teenagers who call one of his prophets bald by having 42 she-bears emerge from the forest to tear them apart.

God gives commands that wearing glasses or mixed fabrics are abominable and that eating shellfish will see you in hell, but offers entirely reasonable advice with regards to keeping slaves and executing people you don't like.

And then there's Moses, who leads a slave revolt in Egypt. God plays both sides off each other here - plagues and torment on the Egyptians, but simultaneously "hardening Pharoah's heart" to make sure he won't let the slaves go. Once the slaves are freed, they then spent forty years wandering the deserts looking for a promised land that is still in dispute today. Oh, and he punishes them for breaking his commandments *before he tells them what they are*.

Then we get onto the new testament, which starts off with God raping a human woman to get himself born, overthrowing the priests of his own religion to set up a new one and having himself executed to pay off the debt humanity owes him due to his own incompetence (see earlier). If you believe in the Trinity (that Jesus is God), this whole routine is absurd. If you believe they are separate, God has had his own son brutally murdered to appease his own bloodlust.

Of course, one doesn't need to look at the bible for evidence. Much better evidence is given simply by looking at the poorest people in the world. Malaria, HIV, starvation, drought... God does nothing to help them. The only "miracles" we see today are so subtle they could be random chance. The only manifestations are in dreams and visions, whereas he popped up all over the place in the past. And the biggest spokesperson for Christianity, espousing love and peace and giving up your possessions, is an ex-Nazi Youth living in a palace in the middle of Rome. And he doesn't even pay tax.

Sorry, but if God's there, he's either malevolent, apathetic or incompetent. Your choice.

Well, you've got it all figured out. There is just not one good thing anywhere in the universe is there?

I find the universe itself pretty damned impressive. I don't see any reason to invoke a Creator to explain it all - it makes less sense to do so, because it doesn't answer the How of existence. Indeed, it doubles it, because suddenly you have a creator to explain too.

If there's a god, which I find highly unlikely, the Christian view of god is absurd. This perfect, benevolent being that never makes mistakes and knows everything is a logical impossibility in itself, but the presence of one bad thing - not everything, just one flaw - disproves this god. I could list a million bad things, many of them entirely unconnected to ourselves.

Of course, there could be a god that isn't all these things. My favourite approach would be to ditch the all-knowing aspect - God starts the universe purely to see what happens. Existence is an experiment, and God's interference is minimal because he wants to see what happens. Or you could ditch the all powerful nonsense (what does that even mean?) and have God influencing reality on a budget, through influencing our actions and perceptions. Not floods and earthquakes, and no way to prevent them either, but how we respond to them? That's different.

No, a truly benevolent God wouldn't invent such wonderful things as harlequin babies (google images of that at your own risk - it's not pretty). A truly benevolent God would not create Hell.

I don't have it all figured out, but I'm still thinking about it. Religion doesn't work for me.

@TF

The problem of evil does not disprove the existence of God in the way you are suggesting. As a logical proof it has been rejected for some time now. I recommend reading 'the coherence of theism' by Richard Swinburne and 'God, Freedom and Evil' by Alvin Plantinga.

It doesn't disprove the existence of god - just the existence of a nice one with any reasonable power. The fundamental problem with any arguments on these lines is the failure to distinguish between a god and God. One is a limited concept with very vague definition, the other is a specific deity with personality and history. As the same word is used for both, there's a tendency to think proving god will also prove God. It does not.

They're hypocrites.

Arguments are won through reason and logic. Truth, however, is revealed through demonstration. So, how about a miracle or two, right here, right now?

Hallelujah!

I'm a shallow and easily won over person. God, if you can manifest cheesecake before me, I will worship you. Strawberry or lemon, both are fine. No nuts please.