I'd rather be out changing the world for Christ.
Can you all say that?

And newsflash: if you actually looked at objective facts, they point to the TRUTH, which is Christ. The only reason people feel compelled to slam Christians (and not Islam followers, Buddists etc) is because we are a threat. We know the TRUTH. I'll be praying that you'll come to know Him too. Because until then, you will remain cynical and unhappy.

Somebody had to stick up for the Christian teens on this forum.
I'm glad God put me here in a position to do so.

If you know that Yahweh is bogus, what need is there to “re-think” about him later? Do you do so about Zeus or Thor? Having been raised without religion in an atheist family, it is very easy for me to see religion for what it is. Every atheist creates a social network without need of a church, and inded most people who claim to be religious do the same thing. Religion is a purely social experience, but this is not understood by those who think their god is real, and who have been conditioned to think they have a “soul” and an afterlife that they will “lose” if they leave their religion.

Atheists have no such fear, and as belief erodes, it will lose the ability to coerce people into belief through social pressure.

The world’s two largest philanthropists, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, are atheists. Heck, the biggest atheist of the last century, Andrew Carnegie, was also an atheist in a time where atheists were even more discriminated against than today. And all the major Canadian charities are non-religious – United Way, The Cdn Cancer Society, The Heart & Stroke Foundation, etc, etc. Unlike religious “charities”, the point of these charities is to help people, not (a) advertise a religion, (b) try to lend legitimacy to some religion, (c) help religionists score brownie points with their deity and buy their way into an afterlife, or (d) peddle religion to people who are emotionally vulnerable.

Between my voluntary military reserve service, the coaching of sports teams for my three children, helping at their school, and teaching children music for free, I really don’t have any other hobbies.

When atheists do charity, they do it out of a genuine desire to help and for the good feeling it gives to the donor, not for the combination of reasons above that religionists run charities. We aren’t looking for some sort of reward after we die. Take your “morality requires belief in fairies” bigotry and stick it up your arse.

The good news is that within another generation, god-belief will probably be the minority belief, and that can only be good for Canadian society.

This is true? I work with youth on a regular basis and I have NEVER heard ANYONE describe this generation of young people as “more responsible and mature”. I have heard this generation described as the “most entertained and under-challenged” generation of all time. That’s true.

Oh, unless you’re just full of it, and there is plenty of evidence to suggest that there was a historical Jesus. Many people spend their whole lives devoted to the study of a historical Jesus. Also, even the ancients realized that paganism influenced the development of the Church and its customs, especially in terms of philosophy. It was quite fine with it, rationalizing it in terms of granting to pagan gentiles the capacity of divine revelation.

I could talk about the influence various mystery cults have had on the development of Christianity and how Christianity influenced the development of various pagan mystery cults and other Hellenistic sects in many different ways. I will indulge you, because I find such a subject deeply pleasurable, if you calm down and stop being such a jerk. I will tell you that your theory is Jungian and Joseph Campbell inspired crap, whose methodology has been debunked for about 20 years in respectable historical departments but still finds an audience among the ignorant in popular culture.

Oh, no he got away. Oh well, maybe another couple hours of virulent insults will get you what you want.

And don’t worry. The sky does not fall if you stop believing in the Easter Bunny, and it doesn’t fall when you realize “Jesus” is a figure of myth, either.

It is especially not the same thing as saying a Jew from backwards Galilee who was crucified by Roman authorities is capable of raising himself from the dead because he is the messianic son of God. It was just incredulous to say such a thing 2000 years ago as it is today. The burden of proof is indeed on us to prove it to the skeptical mind, and here is the kicker: we have to draw upon revelation, imagination, trust and hope rather than a logical argument to make our case.

So no, an atheist is not the same as a theist.

You think environmentalism and social democracy are bad, but believing in an imaginary friend and getting told stories about miracle births and the sinfulness of using condoms by pedophiles in black robes is all good?

You probably voted for the Con-Servative party, didn’t you, you clever thing.

Atheists are just impatient with stupid beliefs and the people who believe them. Just like you’d be impatient with someone who knocks on your door and tries earnestly to sell you on the idea that the invisible Easter Bunny is watching us all. Here’s your homework for the day: Go read jesusneverexisted.com for a few hours. Then report back.

“Reginald Bibby, the University of Lethbridge sociologist who heads up Project Teen, says the grey zone of those who believe in God, but don’t regularly practise an established religion, is rapidly emptying out,”
how does he know? which is more important; direct communication with G-d or falling prey to a certain man-devised doctrine/circle of belief, whose “Christian” purpose and validity has been tampered with according to the “Christian” version of Hebrew scripture? real belief has no denomination or building.

Anyone who uses this statment to support the claim that atheists lack a moral compass is either very confused, or is deliberately being misleading. Without seeing the actual survey results it is impossible to tell if the fault lies with a poorly worded paragraph in the magazine article, or in a surprisingly odd survey interpretation by Reginald Bibby, the Board of Governors Research Chair in sociology at the University of Lethbridge.

Some clarification from staff reporter Kate Lunau would be great!

In the first place, this is an argument from consequences that does not address, at all, the actual question of whether such a boogeyman actually exists. It may very well be that there is no boogeyman demanding our good behaviour and that, if people become aware of this, they will indeed start behaving badly. Should we then all sign on to a lie and start burning anyone who threatens to tell the truth at the stake?

Next, the boogeyman, real or fake, has never seemed to be very effective at keeping people from being bad. Indeed, some of his most ardent believers are among some of his most egregious offenders. If we are supposed to cling to the lie because it will make us better people, then why has it failed to do so, so far?

Even given that the boogeyman exists, and given that he can be a guide to right behaviour if followed properly, how are we to choose amongst the conflicting messages he has apparently sent to us? Should we rest and pray on Friday, Saturday or Sunday? Pork: in or out? Just how many wives are we allowed to have? etc etc.

Science also says boys are smarter than girls, whites are smarter than blacks, gays get AIDS far more than hets, having children out of wedlock or from divorced families does harm children, gays are more pedophilic than hets, that men pay far more taxes than women, that multiculturalism fails on every conceivable level, and that every single atheist society – Lenin, Stalin, Kun, Mao, Pol Pot, Kim Il Sung to name a few – has been a batsh!t crazy tyranny featuring famine, gulags, persecution of the intelligentsia, mass jailing and execution, forced marches to the countryside, economic disaster, and persecution of anything that moves.

That’s what science says, all of the preceding is factually accurate science, do you agree with it? I do, you, as a politically correct lamb, do not. Much of lib-left public policy is based on junk science, such as the belief we can throw money at schools in ghettos and they will produce geniuses. Ergo, we own science.