What I’ve noticed from wasting too much time reading too many of the responses (too intriguing for me to go back to grading papers) is that Christians argue like liberals (referring to the political left)… badly. Completely emotional, and very little evidence. It’s called faith, why try to explain it? How could you ever CONVINCE someone to have FAITH. Contradictory, you know. However, the majority are not both Christian and liberal. I for instance am the former. I intended to say so much as I read the actual article, but too much has been said. Let me just say, I found the jokes amusing, and sadly, too true. We all know that they are true. I cut a lady off who was trying to BACK down a parking lot aisle to a spot she had passed. She yelled “Jesus loves you,” and may as well have said “but I don’t.” Wonder what she would have said if I was able to say, “I’m a Christian, but parking lot etiquette says you go forwards and when people pull out right behind you, it’s tough luck.”

All I would like to say, now that too much has been said, is this: so many of the educated people here on this site were Christians and have been educated out of it, and there are just as many people who were atheists, and set out to prove the Bible wrong, and by then end believed, such as Lee Strobel and CS Lewis. I wonder who’s smarter?

I guess we’ll all know someday… unless you are right, in which case we’ll all just be dead.

Coming very late to the discussion, but I just have to add this. In my country, Norway, we do have laws about infanticide saying that it was legal, in fact encouraging it, in certain situations. This is the Gulating Law which we have extant from ca 1100, if I remember correctly. It says that if babies are born deformed, they should be carried out into the woods and left there. (They would then either starve to death or be killed by animals, obviously.) People would also do this if they couldn’t or didn’t want to take care of the child … ie if they couldn’t afford to feed another child in the family, or if they didn’t want that particular child (say they had five sons and wanted a daughter, but the sixth child was another boy, then they might leave him in the woods and try for a girl the next time, or vice versa) … but I don’t know that this was sanctioned in the law, I don’t think so. AFAIK the law only makes mention of deformed babies. But these could be killed with impunity; in fact it seems to have been encouraged in these situations that the parents should ‘put the child out’ as it was termed.

Of course one has to understand the society that this law was written for. It was an agrarian society in a country that is almost entirely unsuitable for agriculture. The number of ‘useless’ members that such a society could afford was extremely limited. But that’s beside the point … my point is only that in some societies infanticide has been not only permitted but also ethically acceptable. However, it was acceptable because it was for the benefit of the society as a whole. Not because the gods demanded it or whatever. That’s important to remember.

I am an atheist, btw, just in case anyone wonders. :-)

- No, that is not faith, it is simple science. And it is testable in a number of ways:
A) I can simply sit on it;
B) I can inspect it for damage or wear and factor in the many times I have previously sat on it without incident;
C) I can read the label on the packaging (assuming I still have it) which should tell me the weight limitations;
D) I can study its design and construction and determine from that whether it is sound;
E) I can read up on the materials used and determine whether they are strong enough;
F) I can step on a bathroom scale to see if I exceed the recommended weight limit;

… and there might be other options I can’t think of right now. All in all: objective, measurable facts and logical reasoning. No blind faith.

Societies, in turn, have certain basic needs that must be met in order to function, such as rules governing their members’ behavior; hence laws and taboos serving to protect the integrity of the society. Many of the subsequent cultural layers are of course in direct response to local conditions (e.g. living in the Amazon rain forest vs. living on the Arctic tundra) and others have evolved from other factors, but when you strip away those secondary and tertiary layers, you will find your similarities.

“Atheism is a religion.”
response: “off is a tv-channel”, “we’re all atheist to most gods”, “atheism is a lack of belief. That’s all there is to it, everything else is sold separately”

“I’ll pray for you”
response: Please don’t. You might be praising the wrong lord(s). Might get yourself and me in trouble.

Unacceptable Response: “My walk? The hell are you talking about? Why are you asking me about how I walk?”

Translation: It’s obvious that you’re “back-sliding” and heading towards an eternity in hell if you keep this up. Please provide me with juicy gossip about your evil, but exciting, lifestyle so I can judge you with all of my friends, but secretly live vicariously through your rebellious ways.