How is He supposed to call when you are turned away?

OP has to be a gimmick. Nobody could be this big of a douche without trying very hard.

In regards to the topic, I can understand not believing in organized religion and the things they try to pass off as truth. In regards to God, though, I always thought that our very existence clearly points to there being some higher power, or creator. This is why I think atheists are dumb. At worst, people should call themselves agnostic, not atheist. To me, the whole concept of atheism is dumb. There is zero proof that there is no creator and plenty of proof that there is, or was, one.

Easy game.

I can try choosing to believe in God for a week as much as you can choose to believe you're an Apache helicopter for 10 minutes.

Saying to yourself "I believe in God" most definitely does not mean you believe in God. Belief is more of a state you're in than something you do, and what you believe often isn't directly available to you and has to be inferred.

Don't worry about that. He know how to do it better than you. Because it's His business .

Sigh.

And there is zero proof that there are no purple unicorns or flying elephants. That does not mean that there are purple unicorns and flying elephants. The burden of proof is always on the one making an assertion, and it is perfectly reasonable to reject the assertion in the absence of proof of the assertion.

There really needs to be some sort of mandatory Introduction To Logic course required in public schools.

Go ahead...

Einstein most definitely didn't believe in a personal god. Also, your list is noticeably absent of any modern day intellectuals. I'm not saying there aren't any, but listing people from who lived centuries ago when there were still a lot more gaps to be filled by a god isn't overly impressive. At the very least, they should have lived after the discovery of DNA.

In the same way he did with Pharaoh?

Belief in God is faith. Faith is an unbreakable sense of strength throughout your entire life. I hope you find it someday.

wait, did second chance confirm he went to business school? lol if so ... business school, nice

Fail...
Einstein, as it has been pointed out by others in the thread, did not believe in a personal God. He believed in the "God of Spinoza" (a codeword for 'Nature", i.e, he was an atheist).
Strong cases have been made for Bacon and Descartes stating that although they openly argued about their belief in God, in fact, they just participated in the old philosophical pastime of the "noble lie" ( i.e, professing their belief in public and being atheists in secret) largely because of political reasons. In that regard, see Laurence Lampert's excellent book on Bacon, Descartes and Nietzsche.
Cheers

That is the gist of it.... Faith, as such, has very little to do with reasoning or rationality. It is essentially a psychological phenomenon. Therefore, arguing that intelligent people become atheists and dumb people remain theists (although true in a broader way) simply misses the point.

What then is the point? The point is this: You either have the courage to find "strength" in your life from factors other than faith (and the probability of an intelligent man doing this in his life is significantly higher than a dumber man), at which point faith becomes redundant and you become for all practical purposes, an atheist; or you cannot find other sources of strength (such as financial stability, meaningful personal relations, an intellectual "quest" or calling such as scientific research etc.) to give meaning to your life and you remain a theist (in a way, you are stuck with theism, but you do not realize it).

The issue, as I mentioned above, although being related to intellectual capacity and reasoning in a roundabout way, is primarily psychological.

Cheers

It should be noted that Turtle's post did not say "believes in personal God". So the nitty pointed out of Einstein really doesn't detract from his point.

Einstein was not a pantheist. He did not believe that "God" was nature. He did believe that there was a God outside of nature. Huge difference.

Not really... Einstein explicitly wrote that he believed in the "God of Spinoza". If you are familiar with Spinoza and his views regarding God and religion, you will realize that Einstein's phrase is a rather polite way of saying that you are an atheist in the 1950s. Since Einstein also said things like "God does not throw dice" etc. people, for understandable reasons, associate him with a belief in God. This is simply not correct. The guy simply believed in an orderly and majestic nature, not God.
Cheers

Einstein was not a theist by any reasonable definition of the word.

Not correct. Here is a challenge for you: Would you please point out where in his writings Einstein said that he "believed that there was a God outside of nature"?
Thanks in advance

Yes... exactly.

Nothing wrong with business school if you go to a top one for finance

Ugghh...Straussian "history" of philosophy. It is of course possible that Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, and other people who claimed to be theists were lying. But the Straussian decoder-ring method of showing this used by writers like Lampert doesn't.

Anyway, it doesn't matter. OP is pretty clearly a troll--and a successful one based on the length of this thread. But we don't need to appeal to the past to find intelligent, educated theists. Many of the most prominent living philosophers are theists (e.g. Kripke, Van Inwagen, Plantinga). Insofar as anyone is willing to agree with OP's claims they are only demonstrating their own ignorance and biases.

Nitty? Do you really think the difference between what you believe and pantheism or deism is just a nitty detail?

Have you read Lampert? He is, although quite knowledgeable about Strauss, definitely not a Straussian. Read his "Leo Strauss and Nietzsche" (which is one of the best books ever published on Strauss or Nietzsche; admittedly I was drawn to Lampert not because of his interest in Strauss but because of his masterpiece on Nietzsche, named "Nietzsche's Teaching), you will be pleasantly surprised.

How about the fact that we exist? Or are you intentionally being obtuse?

I don't see much truth in this. At least not personally. I don't believe due to being weak or afraid, and I'm doing pretty well in my life. Thinking about it some more, this paragraph is almost as bad as the OP.

Cool, I think I'll try this faith thing out. This Nigerian King just emailed me with a seemingly fantastic offer. I'm gonna put my faith in him. I mean, I have no reason to believe he's telling the truth, but that's what faith is for!