Christians believe in the virgin birth of Jesus. Materialists believe in the virgin birth of the universe. Choose your miracle. - Glen Scrivener

Here is another quote i just found:

To be an atheist is almost certainly to be a materialist (i.e. only matter and laws that govern matter exist). And materialists also believe in a miraculous conception and birth — of the universe. They eschew the term “miraculous,” since miracles “don’t happen.” But call it what you wish, they believe at some point in the ancient past the universe (or universes) was born without a parent(s). This wasn’t merely a virgin birth — the universe gave birth to itself, completely unintentionally. - Jon Bloom

Given a "from the goo to the zoo to you" worldview, what exactly is wrong with genocide? In the scheme of things, who cares what one bag of chemicals does to another bag of chemicals? We're all gonna die anyway, right? In the scheme of things, you, your loved one's, your thoughts, your dreams, your writings, your art, and your passions are ultimately of no more value than the vomit that your cat spewed all over the carpet last night.

Just like you, I am allowed to apply reason. I am even encouraged to apply reason. You might want to try it sometime.

Psychological reductionism is the last refuge of someone without an argument. - Dennis Prager

I tough it was bad to try to take the place of god ?
How would you know if he won’t comeback and make another book ?
How would you know if an “update” isn’t need it like with the Old Testament ?
Why was an updated need it in the first place if gods knows everything ?

Human beings come about by virtue of biological reproduction called sex ... I guess we have to say this for the benefit of true believers. We don't know how the universe came about, so to conflate the two, virgin births and "virgin universes," is a glib little dishonest gimmick. Some of these true believers have so forfeited their moral agency that they put in print for the world to see that they can't fathom what is wrong with genocide or what value great art has on their own, but only if some big daddy magic man tells us could we possibly know such things.

So if someone, say, murders some child, what difference does that make, hell, the child was only going to die anyway eventually. Thus they turn the mortality inevitably associated with life into some kind of nihilistic cancellation of life, and their religion into a compensating death defying magic act. They lie blithely and callously in defending this state of affairs, imagining it to be moral to do so. How could I possibly know what is right or wrong, say murder, rape, slavery, unless some supernatural authoritarian is telling me??? What other standard could there possibly be. Unless there is this magic authoritarian to tell me, I can't see any difference between, say, my daughter living to the ripe old age of 80 ... and me murdering her tonight and raping her in the basement. What difference does it make without the supernatural ruler??

What is it that is being totally sacrificed in this worldview?? Any decency, any humanity, any soul. With depravity like that, no wonder they came up with the evil human nature thing.

No it isn't.

How do you know that genocide is wrong? Did the "Big Bang" tell you?

How do you know that murder is wrong? Did the "Big Bang" tell you?

Who or what determines what decency is? And by what authority does he/she/it derive that authority? The Big Bang? Popular vote? Donald Trump? Tea leaves? Jon Gruden?

Playing "god" violates the First Commandment.

I don't know that He won't make another book. God can do whatever He wants.

Because the New Testament covers everything up to the End of the Age.

Because even though God knows everything, His people do not. God informs us on a "need to know" basis (so-to-speak).

In one instance you were speaking with authoritative and knew it was final .
In another you put a lot of emphase on maybe …..

I guess god can’t ever be wrong by design .
If he write something it’s the only eternal truth .
If something changed it was to fulfill (“adjust” or w.e words ) an incomplete work .

From the start Your already setting up yourself to be deceived .

My answers were not inconsistent with each other.

Your first question inquired as to whether I thought that God might make another book. I said: "God can do what he wants."

Your second question was whether God might need to update the book. Since God doesn't need to do anything, the answer to that is "No."

In other words, God could write a new book, but doesn't need too write an additional book.

Your whole appeal reveals abject authoritarianism. Your whole spiel presumes that someone has to tell you. "Somebody tell me what is right and wrong, that is cast in stone, can never change. Oh, it doesn't work like that? Why not?"

Nothing much works like that. Nobody knows for sure all the answers to morality questions and situations, you have to think about it and apply values. "Yeah but if we make up a supernatural ruler then we can be spoon fed the answer, we can claim the answer is cast in stone, never changes, is omniscient, etc." Yes, and funny, you can do the same for mathematics, medicine, cosmology, pretty much across the board. But for some reason, even zealots understand that they have to think, learn, figure it out, get things wrong, try to correct them, be uncertain about many things that we don't know or that could change with better understanding. Hello to the real universe ... if you please. If you don't, supernaturalist authoritarianism, faith, superstition ... will do. Then we are free to believe that the guy that says stone unruly children and gays, kill witches ... he is the one with perfect moral knowledge.

+1

Some people just need leaders to fulfill their life , others are leaders of their own life , shrug .

What bothers me more about the absolutism of the bible is , why it’s so right while other religious books are so wrong ?
What makes the bible truth more real than any others ?

At least with science you actually test truth to believe in it …
Faith is the actual definition of believing without knowing …..

So why a faith of someone should have more weight on others with different faith ?

It amounts to homerism ... my religion is better than yours like my home/favorite team is better than yours. Also special pleading, indoctrination, etc. Nothing wrong with leadership, following great leaders can be a powerful influence to the good. Leadership and authoritarianism ... very different things.

Richard Dawkins asks "true believers" if they suddenly discovered that god was just a fairy tale whether they would then just go about cheating, stealing, raping, & murdering. Virtually all of them respond "Of course not!" and Dawkins would then argue that therefore their morality came not from a perceived deity but from a similar place from which atheists get their morality (the golden rule, feeling of empathy, kindness, respect for the magnificence of life, social justice, etc).

I'm scared to ask lagtight this question.....

Good point !

True believers build the whole scheme and religion out of primitive psychology of superstition, magic, the supernatural, demons, devils, ghosts, miracles, faith ... but if you bring any modern psychology into it they claim foul. It's just archaic, primitive, clinging to ignorance, sacrificial of reality.

The problem is that true believers are so heavily invested in their delusion that they simply can't give it up. It's their whole worldview! It's the very basis of their social lives, their view on morality, their self-worth, and comforts them in the face of death.

That's a lot to give up!
It's like Morpheus says to Neo in The Matrix": We have a rule. We never free a mind once it's reached a certain age. It's dangerous. The mind has trouble letting go"

IN CONTRAST: If I (as an atheist) were presented incontrovertible, verifiable, objective, & repeatable evidence of an omnipotent deity that violates all we know about science, I would have to accept it. I'm not saying it would be easy but (for example), aspects of quantum mechanics and general/special relativity seem absolutely nuts but they have been proven over & over & over by experimentation.

Reality is a *****! ;-)

Personally, the reason I’m a non believer of the bible and all other ideologies of gods as we know it is simply this .

If they are so omnipotent, truthful and powerful , why chose a langage That means and proves nothing by itself , to transmit their diktat ?
Being very menacing toward someone not following his “teaching” while purposely using a medium of communication that is easily disputable and unprovable???

The real langage of the universe is math , physics , etc.
Why didn’t he chose those if he really wanted us to be obedient apostle ?

Do parents really loves their children if they would keep punishing them but never be clear on what they expect their kids to be like in a clear manner ?

You don't want blind obedience, you want moral agency.

Normally, God is giving everything for free. We are an informatic product, thats why its easy for him to give everyone food, houses and travelling via clicking away for free. Its so easy to do for God.
But not in this world. Here, he is not talking and it feels like, he isn't there. Here ego and money rule almost everyone.
God was just talking to 10 persons so far, war is taking place and starving people are >10^9 people.
Why God shouldn't talk to everyone? Sounds like a weak God, but look at the universe, the atoms/molecules and love. God can't be weak.

War, starving and so on are easy to defend for the one of a kind. Why is this stuff is taking place?

That's a huge point and the doctrine insists blind obedience as a virtue and parroting the morality of in fact an ancient, superstitious, ignorant, bigoted culture while ostensibly the morality of an omniscient god. So they cement the ignorance and superstition as coming from omniscience. Quite a problem.

"I am going to have my son tortured to death instead of just saying, 'I forgive you.'" The over-the-top super theatrical nature of this reveals it for what it is: story and drama. They upped and upped and upped the sacrifices until it was a version of god himself being sacrificed. Then, in an era of hotly dueling religions, they stood back as if to say: "Beat that!."

Fwiw , many gods “asked” sacrificing life to change the weather to have better crops and stuff like that ….

Just to show how insanely far entire civilization can go solely on faith ….
It’s a mindset that hopefully from here to a couple of thousands years later , will disappear with education and a more scientific reasoning.

Human are on the right track , it just take time .
A lot less gods today exist compare to 2-3000 years ago .

The problem is that our society currently is heavily biased in favor of religion. In the United States, simply taking your kids to church Sunday morning:
1) Costs nothing
2) Has a large social component (People get dressed up, meet friends, sing songs, etc)
3) Is overwhelmingly viewed as a positive thing to do. (Did you ever hear someone get criticized for taking their kids to church?)

How many regular church-goers pray (alone) at home where they don't get the positive social feedback? VERY few!
So simply going to what is essentially a weekly party (albeit a lame one), makes you (in the eyes of society) a "good person"! The only way to stop the insanity is to have something replace the church that makes people feel good about themselves.

Bread and circuses, same as it ever was.

Guilty as charged btw.

Give me some gladiators and mead, plz. A bet and a wench makes it all the better.

He did say 'I forgive you'.

But there's no money in that so the elites of the time had to tweak the message.

And the poor peasants are still lapping it up to this day.

Never kill the goose that's laying the gold eggs. Never.

Sort of like the liberals in CA who want to have affordable housing for the poor but not if it effects their property values.

Everyone wants to see themselves as the good guy.
Most of us can't even begin to rate ourselves by any objective standard. Fee fees are okay but the concept of a God who is all good is a more objective benchmark.

Of course people still disagree. So the concept of a God that would sacrifice himself to save humanity is probably a good idea. Not that many Christians have problems killing people they disagree with. But the concept was good for a try.