Isn't the common interpretation that a third of the angels rebelled against God (sinned) and were thrown out? That sure doesn't sound like they're inviolable. I gotta admit, I didn't know "inviolable" was a word.

Before answer let's read some verses from Exodus:

And the LORD said unto Moses, When thou goest to return into Egypt, see that thou do all those wonders before Pharaoh, which I have put in thine hand: but I will harden his heart, that he shall not let the people go.

4:21

And the LORD said unto Moses, See, I have made thee a god to Pharaoh: and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet.

Thou shalt speak all that I command thee: and Aaron thy brother shall speak unto Pharaoh, that he send the children of Israel out of his land.

And I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt.

But Pharaoh shall not hearken unto you, that I may lay my hand upon Egypt, and bring forth mine armies, and my people the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great judgments.

And the Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD, when I stretch forth mine hand upon Egypt, and bring out the children of Israel from among them.

7:1-5

And the LORD hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he hearkened not unto them; as the LORD had spoken unto Moses.

9:12

And the LORD said unto Moses, Go in unto Pharaoh: for I have hardened his heart, and the heart of his servants, that I might shew these my signs before him:

And that thou mayest tell in the ears of thy son, and of thy son's son, what things I have wrought in Egypt, and my signs which I have done among them; that ye may know how that I am the LORD.

10:1-2

And I will harden Pharaoh's heart, that he shall follow after them; and I will be honoured upon Pharaoh, and upon all his host; that the Egyptians may know that I am the LORD. And they did so.

14:4

And I, behold, I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians, and they shall follow them: and I will get me honour upon Pharaoh, and upon all his host, upon his chariots, and upon his horsemen.

And the Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD, when I have gotten me honour upon Pharaoh, upon his chariots, and upon his horsemen.

14:17-18

Now then. God uses two tools to make creature "sinful" - outer and inner. Outer: God arranges circumstances which make "sin" possible and even compelled. Inner: God manipulates minds of creatures, ruling them as robots, zombies. Such way god wheels and deals.

We have no access to information how "third of the angels rebelled against God". But I'm sure it was exactly like with pharaoh.

Religious beliefs bother me for a few reasons, the main ones being:

1) it worries me that educated adults can still believe in Gods and magic with not one solid bit of evidence or logic to support it

2) the church is one of the richest, corrupt & most powerful organisations in the world, that has influence over things it should have no part in

3) horrible atrocities are committed on a daily basis because of religion. When you hear of something awful someone / a group of people, has done, it is pretty much always someone with a mental illness , or because of religious beliefs.

You should note that Pharaoh continually hardened his own heart, until God finally hardened it for him. I've always seen this in the light of addiction. You engage in a behaviour long enough, that in the end you have no control left, and you must engage in it.

Without looking up any verses, the bible states that God does not tempt, so I'm not sure about that one.

As to your greater point, read Romans 9, it explains with some detail about Pharaoh. This is where the debate of predestination begins, so you do have a point, I guess it depends on how you interpret it. Check out chapter 9 though.

I can't fault you for being bothered, but it depends on the extent of it. There is a difference between having a distaste for religion, and between having contempt for individuals.

I'm a pretty normal person despite me being a Christian, if we met, I wouldn't make your life miserable or demand anything from you, so I would find it odd if you dismissed me simply because I believe in God.

Read book of Enoch http://book-ofenoch.com/chapter-84-sect-xvii/

God not just uses already existing "vessels of wrath", he creates them.

Your hermeneutics are top notch, you extracted quite a bit from a story about cows.

Seriously, I don't know if I follow your reference to Enoch.

"Story about cows" it is whole history of jews told thousands years before birth of Abraham. If you don't like story about cows you may refresh in mind yourself story about Antichrist told in bible. Fate of poor fellow was decided thousands years before his birth.

Sure, but they're not mutually incompatible or exclusive. Also, the level of contempt can vary from mild to full on contempt of the kind that I feel for people like Ken Ham, not because of his differing beliefs, but because of his complete refusal to contemplate an alternative reality. He thinks that nothing could change his mind. I'd feel the same way about anyone but it occurs more with religion than another belief system purely because of the nature of what is taught and because of 'faith'.

I wasn't planing on bringing up faith again but it's hard to discuss the nature of religious belief without mentioning it because it's exactly what causes religious belief to differ from any other kind of belief, it relies completely on faith

So I guess for me, the contempt stems initially from knowing that someone is using faith, something that I regard as the laziest and most dishonest form of thinking that there is. I feel contempt for faith, so naturally I'm going to feel some measure of contempt for those that employ it, and, I'm going to feel fairly secure doing so because even those that employ faith will themselves dismiss others for doing the exact same thing.

See above. If I know someone is employing faith, in any context, not just religious, that's an irreconcilable difference of world outlook for me. I'll never be close to someone who thinks like that.

I think your 1st point is worth some debate and your 2nd point is fair. However, I think your 3rd point is weak.

I realize this argument has been popularized by really smart guys like Hitchens and Dawkins but I still think it is a poor argument. Lumping together all people with spiritual or religious beliefs and then making a general descriptive statement about "them all" is not helpful.

It is more instructive to address the specific beliefs and religions that you think are harmful. When you generalize about "religious people" now you are also talking about Buddhists, Bahia, Sikhs etc.

I have no doubt that you are a 'normal' person in every other way, which is one of the things that concerns me most about religion.

Intelligent people believing in what boils down to supernatural beings with magic powers, based on nothing but the words of unknown people with unknown motives, from a time of very little understanding of the world around us, is crazy to me.

I was brought up Catholic fwiw.

I think each atheist should start a 'my vision of the atheistic utopia', thread. Let's see how functional it is and project which problems will arise from your model. Only difference from reality is we'll assume there are no theists who exist.

I think you'll see that there are still going to be a massive amount of poor people and fights breaking out between the various adherents of differing political philosophies.

Indeed. Agnostics and strong atheists will probably start fighting about how unlikely it is to know anything about God or God's existence.

As long as there are any divisions in belief, you'll have fighting.

Not because one side is right or another is wrong, but because fighting is fun:

while life is generally (and comparatively) boring.

I'm not saying a world with no religion would be perfect, obviously not.

But things like priests telling Africans that condoms are a sin, making the HIV situation 10x worse is hard to take.

A good 'why' question right now would be why God decided to kill 10,000 people in Asia the other day?

God only decides things for which the outcome is positive.
When the outcome is negative God wasn't doing the deciding.

To abstain God from any responsibility for negative outcomes....

we invent 'the Devil' or 'Satan'.

We then realize that without God, Satan wouldn't exist either, making God entirely responsible again.

Whenever I arrive at this level of analysis with a theist, their last line of reasoning is to essentially give up and resort to:

God works in mysterious ways.

To which I usually answer: your mum works in mysterious ways. Childlish, but not any less childlish than God's mysterious ways.

Sometimes people have learned all they can in certain situation, they die, then get reincarnated into a different situation, or perhaps they've qualified to return to heaven.

A body dieing just isn't that big of a deal to God. Sometimes even the good die young - see Jesus.

The argument that 10,000 Asians whom likely had no regard for Gods laws and/or lived in squalor, have died, shows God is unjust, or that he must not exist, isn't very compelling to me.

That God decides who and how many die and when they die:

based on mysterious reasons.

Is a much more compelling indication of his existence and justly morals.

Most dreadful is not that people die. Most dreadful is that 95% of them goes to hell. It is not their fault, it is their destiny. There are two sides, outward, what god said:

And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

And hidden, what he thought while:

Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth. I will tantalize and kill you, humiliate and mock you. You will live your short and squalid lives of earth and after death go to hell and will even not be aware about it. And despite of all it you whatever will be fruitful and multiply, because show must go on and place of dropout specimens should be refilled by new ones.

Are you for real? So their lives were less important because of where they were born???

And death isn't a big deal for God.. yet his son (him) dying for our sins (which makes absolutely no sense btw) is basically the entire basis for the Christian faith..

To sum up.. what we are all supposed to be eternally grateful for, wasn't that big a deal. And if you happen to be born in an area that hasn't been influenced by Jesus, you deserve to burn in hell for all eternity through no fault of your own.

You are exactly the kind of theists I DO have contempt for. You should be ashamed of yourselves, you are a disgrace.

God is a creation of human perception, thus cannot create. What creates is a perception itself that attaches any imaginable feature and abilities to the fruit of their own mind or Any other external doctrines.

From what I understand you're not pleased with predestination. I don't really think Calvinism is a theological slam-dunk, to bring back Pharaoh, we are told God hardens his heart only after he hardens his own heart several times.

If you're gonna hit me with the argument from free will, I can concede there is a point there, but I think the paradox arises from the fact that the idea of God is not a logical one.

I hear what you're saying, I just can't relate to it. When I wasn't a Christian, people who would call themselves "spiritual" and do hokey things kinda weirded me out, but I would still look past that to who they were as people, and to this day, I'll be friends with anyone who is a good dude, no matter if they have beliefs which I think are silly.

I understand the part where it's crazy to you, but are you like MB, and put a wall up between such people? I'm not saying you guys are wrong in doing so, I just don't personally see it. Maybe it's cause I am that crazy person in this scenario, but still...

God handles minds of creatures for two aspects:

1) To make creatures to do evil each other and to harm to themselves.
2) Not to let them realize who is indeed in charge of all of it.

That is why creatures can't understand each other - because they are really not able to, god has embedded blocker in their minds. How it works it is easy to see on example of you. So I wash my hands, I'm powerless here.

Why do you think 1)?

Don't you think you have the choice whether to do evil or to live like Christ preached on the Sermon on the Mount? Why promote the golden rule in the first place?

I think if you guys would add these components to your understanding of God's plan, things would seem a lot more sensible:

1) Human beings are Angels that God booted out of heaven for not accepting that God is the only one suitable to make law.

2) Earth is Hell.

3) There is reincarnation and a body dieing isn't the end.

4) There is an allotted amount of time for the souls to "get things right" again, but eventually time to repent ends, and the bad ones get stamped out for good.

5) The way back to heaven isn't chanting a slogan like "Jesus died for my sins", but rather, emulating him by perfecting oneself and proving their allegiance to God by serving him even to death (of the body).

6) Serving Him means instituting His laws and commandments. That's the gospel of the kingdom.

Furthermore, God's governmental plan includes dividing all the land into self sustaining estates/farms. (numbers 33:54) This way, no one is forced to essentially be a slave and negotiate from a horrible position for wages. One can truly be economically "free".