Quote Originally Posted by Keith_M View Post
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The 'Old Testament' seems to be full of hideous stories of slaughtering non-believers and includes what pretty much amounts to exterminations (or a Holocaust, if you will) of whole populations... Men, Women and Children.

It also has so many examples of people that considered Females as an inferior species, not worth as much as a Male. For instance, some guy called 'Lot' offered his own daughters to be raped by a Mob to prevent them attacking his House Guests.


It honestly has stuff in there that's the biggest load of made up bollocks you could possibly imagine, and yet hundreds of millions of people slavishly follow religions based on that nonsense.



And a question for our believers:

Wars, sexual abuse, hideous illnesses, premature deaths of children, rape, child-abuse, millions of people starving to death....

Are you telling us that your God is up there watching all this ever day and does F.... All about it yet you worship that guy? Seriously?
If people use bad things as proof that God doesn't exist, do they also balance that by attributing good things that happen to God? . If war, child abuse and rape are attributable to God's impotence or non existence then are medical advances, cancer survival, acts of charity and philanthropy and heroic rescues proof of his greatness and charity? You surely can't load the scales one way and say bad things happen = God isn't all powerful or doesn't exist. Good things happen = the work of humans and our ingenuity and goodness.

One of my favourite depictions of God is by Irvine Welsh in the Granton Star Cause in which God is just a pissed off old guy in a boozer. He's sick and tired of being blamed for everything wrong in the world, big and small and states he could fix it but he just doesn't give a ****. He then lists all the protagonists failings and explains to him how he had the power to change every one of them but chose not to and asks why he should be any different?


There are, or were, plentiful resources on the earth to be shared around so that we all have enough to eat, drink and live comfortable lives. Humans choose to distribute those resources unfairly. Rape, abuse, murder are all human acts. Humans have free will and the existence of God or otherwise is largely irrelevant to the people who carry out those actions, even those motivated by religion are carried out or instructed by humans. Likewise all the good things that happen are the result of human actions as well, even those motivated by people of faith.

I can accept all kinds of logical arguments for the non existence of God, I doubt there are many, if any, believers who don't think about them as well. I just don't think you can argue bad things happening is proof of non existence unless you are also willing to accept the opposite as balance.