As a clarifcation in England during the great witch hunts burning witches was almost never performed unless she had murdered her husband which was classed as a act of treason. Not sure how prevalant it was in other countries at the time …

Only in the abstract – few humans actually hew to the rules.

“the 10 commandments seem to lay out a pretty good standard of living,”

Do they? First of all, which 10 commandments are you writing about? Go here – http://www.positiveatheism.org/crt/whichcom.pdf – to see three versions, put forth by Protestants, Catholics, and Jews.

Frankly, only the commandments you mention make any sense, helping us act for the common good of society at large.

The rest of the commandments are rather dumb.

For example, is working six days, and having one holy one, as per the commandments, a “pretty good standard of living?”

I think most people would disagree. We want the option of having less than a six day work week – at least in the U.S., where I live – and we want the option to work 24/7, too.

What about the commandment that says not to take the Lord’s name in vain? Well, if you don’t believe in a god, that’s a pretty dumb commandment.

It’s the same with the commandment not to make graven images of a god. If you, Ryan, believed the god who makes that commandment is an imaginary god, then the commandment would lose it’s appeal.

What about the commandment not to bow down before other gods? If those gods are the genuine article, and the god of the Ten Commandments is a figment of imagination, then that’s a pretty poor standard to live by, too.

So only a few of the commandments are worth believing, only in the abstract, and only for those who see them as a necessary social glue.

Given how many people have affairs while in supposedly committed relationships with others, given how many people kill and steal, and given the incredible greed we humans have (for fancy cars, clothes, watches, computers, etc., etc.), it’s obvious most humans don’t practice what they preach. We only pay lip service to abstract concepts.

“Of course I can’t explain how God doesn’t have a “dad”

This would make sense if you understand there is no god. Not to mention Christians think Jesus is his own father – of course it’s absurd, and the absurdity disappears when we accept that there is no god.

“i find it hard to understand why we all generally agree on the same set of “rules”.”

Of course, we don’t all agree on the same set of “rules.” As I mentioned above, only a few of the commandments are useful social tools. And I’m willing to bet you haven’t studied the many thousands of religions that have existed throughout human history, so you don’t know what all the “rules” are, much less if they are the same rules.

“I have often wondered why non-christian people do not live more “sinful” lifestyles, if you will.”

Are you referring to atheists? Buddhists, Hindus, followers of Islam? You have no knowledge of the amount of “sinful lifestyles” led by non-Christians or Christians. And if you accept that there is no god, then you would understand that the idea of sin is another abstract concept, which can be interpreted in many ways.

“if you wold say evolution is the way we came to be then why did humanity stop it.”

Ryan, you have no understanding of evolution. If you did, you wouldn’t have asked the question above. And you both misspelled a word and left off a required question mark. How seriously should we take your question?

“If we evolved like the rest of the planet then why don’t we kill the weakest, instead of caring for them.”

I don’t think you’re capable of understanding some basic concepts, but I’ll give it a try. Evolution does not take the same path with all species. And “survival of the fittest” doesn’t mean “we kill the weakest.”

And obviously we often don’t , as humans, care for other humans. We have and have used weapons of mass destruction on each other: atom bombs, and poison gas, for example. The Germans attempted to exterminate Jewish people, Gypies and gays, and killed them by the thousands – by the millions. The United States invaded Iraq and brought about the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people based on false beliefs, and U.S. troops are still in Iraq.

Muslim terrorists murdered thousands of people in New York on September 11, 2001. In 1994, Hutus killed Tutsis by the thousands. Iraqi militiamen beat fellow citizens with batons a few days ago.

Humans have burned other humans at the stake because they didn’t believe in Jesus, or because they were supposedly witches.

This catalog of uncaring, of course, could list millions of examples of human cruelty.

You are ignorant, Ryan, of the basic ideas that we use to understand the physical processes of, for example, Theory of Evolution (which isn’t a theory). Humans have not stopped the evolution of our own species – however, we do understand it.

You have questions, you don’t understand some things. That’s because you start with the idea that there is a Christian god, and you have to rationalize like hell to make sense of the world as it is.

You apparently believe in a Jewish zombie who you can communicate telepathically; you apparently believe that a woman made from a rib was tricked by a talking snake to eat a piece of fruit from a magical tree. No wonder you’re confused about your god’s father and evolution and sin.

If you begin with the premise that there is no god, though, everything makes sense. Evolution makes sense, sin makes sense, death and hurricanes and tidal waves and sex and ice cream and wi-fi make sense.

Good luck, and I hope you find the right answers to your concerns.

Oh, and one more thing, if you wold say evolution is the way we came to be then why did humanity stop it. If we evolved like the rest of the planet then why don’t we kill the weakest, instead of caring for them. It would seem that would stop or that you would evolve past that mentality, again just tossing something up love to hear the feedback.

There are actually some flaws with this argument, but not ones that can help theism. The problem arises when we consider that without really defining “God,” we can’t really say that he is more complex than his design. He could be much simpler, like the primitive Earth relative to today’s biosphere.

However, this argument does wonders to refute the “design” argument for a creator–any creator without much evidence is very unlikely to exist unless it is much simpler than the universe, which is exactly the opposite of what theists want you to believe here. That is, once you concede that the origin of the universe is simpler than the universe itself, there clearly is no need to call this simplicity “god” and not simply “the proto-universe” or some similar term.

Note also that this argument is very effective for arguing against the very narrow notion of god Dawkins disputes in this book. He makes it explicitly clear that he is only arguing–in this particular book–against a god that is in many ways similar to the Abrahamic god. I can’t remember what specifications he gave, but I believe it was omnipotent, personal, and the creator of the universe, perhaps among other things. Such a god is indeed refuted nicely by this argument.

Finally, all this ultimately misses the real reason we should not believe in god–THERE IS NO EVIDENCE. Merely putting a label on an unknown (e.g. the origin of the universe) is not itself problematic, but placing a label like “god” that carries such baggage is. When people say the universe’s origin is unknown, I of course agree with them, but when they say, “it is unknown, therefore my very narrow and specific notion of a creator must have created it exactly according to my favorite creation myth,” I go crazy. How can you ever support this? Even weaker properties that many people consider sensible don’t really have any justification. Why must the creator be omnipotent? He certainly seems bound by a very specific set of laws. Why must he be eternal? If such a thing is possible, why not just believe the universe itself is eternal? Why must he be worshiped? As likely as not, he may not be conscious at all to receive your praise, or he may even hate it. The list goes on.

A much more reasonable statement is that we don’t currently know how the universe began, if it even did begin (it certainly seems it did), but investigating this in any way other than the scientific method, which is the only method that has ever given consistent and useful results, is pointless. And if it turns out that the answer is indeed unknowable, STOP CLAIMING THAT YOU KNOW IT.

LOL!

Damn. I’ll have to scratch context off my list. There it goes to join painting, highways, animal rights, speech-making, beer halls, sex, eating, breathing…

HITLER!!!!