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You, as a human being, are and despite your best efforts, will always be, a pathetic, weak, stupid creature
That's not a fact. That's the cornerstone of the abusive and evil philosophy embraced by monotheistic religion. It is predicated on brainwashing people to think that they are more flawed than they are, and that they need religion to cure them of this disease that is humanity. We luminous beings. Our moral abilities are not insufficient. Pretty much this whole argument is a result of the biblical stories about god depicting an evil and vicious creature who does not live up to modern ethics. This god was fine with rape, slavery, bigotry, execution of people for apostasy, the absolute authority of kings, torture, mutilation, genocide, war, and a host of other things that bronze age people thought were okay that we do not. The only way to hold god up as a pillar of morality is either to subscribe to a moral code that is frankly evil (consider Tigger as an example) or to simply ignore the bad parts, which suggests a lack of authority on the part of god, so why bother with the god argument and not just figure out what's moral? Or one can invoke the "mysterious ways" argument, which is utter nonsense. If god is manipulating us for what we have only his word are good ends, then god cannot be taken at face value and is not a credible source of morality, may be outright lying to us, could be malevolent, could really be the devil in disguise, or any number of other explanations. If god can deceive us in one manner, then there's no reason to trust him not to do so in others.
God is nothing more than a bronze age king with super powers. He acts like one, and has the priorities of one. He is no more a source of morality to us than Attila the Hun.
I think the problem is that many people are anthropomorphizing God, Christians and atheists alike. And in fact, many holy scriptures attach human attributes to God, to different degrees -- in the OT, you can read God is jalous, angry and so on. In the NT you read God is loving. And so on. That's why in popular belief over the centuries, you got an athropomorphized image of God: I.e. that generous old man with a long beard sitting on a cloud, or anything to that extent. That's how many Christians still teach their kids about God, and that's what many atheist zealots are (rightfully) attacking (I'd tell them: The God you don't believe in, I don't believe in either).
But I believe God is a principle. Human attributes we attach to God are just analogies to give us means at the hand to get some understanding of God at all. But it's not the truth. God is entirely transcendent, and the comprehended (creation) can never understand the compreheding (God). Maybe God is just a manner of thinking.
God is already anthropomorphized. It's in the creation story. It refers to god having hands, and creating humans who look like him. Other gods from other cultures were literal anthropomorphized versions of animals and natural forces. That old man with the beard, that's Zeus. A lot of the Christian interpretation of god is based on Zeus. That's why he knocks up a human woman. "Deus", the latin word for god, and essentially the first name given to the Christian god, is simply a derivation of Zeus. In Greek, Zeus isn't pronounced "zoose", it's "zey-oose", just like "day-oose". I know that you don't believe in that god, but it's important to understand where that belief comes from. Through its historical origins, we can understand how it affects out culture now and understand why it shouldn't.
A transcendent spirituality, more like Deism, is fine. Go ahead and feel great about that. But a god that's just a principle or a manner of thinking doesn't care about how we have sex, if we go to church, if we have abortions, if we listen to rock and roll, or if we obey religious authority figures. The anthropomorphized bronze age Zeus-king definitely cares about those things, because he is just a mythical king with magical powers.
That's true. Our misunderstandings and much of the zealotry comes from considering that God is one of us. Just another bloke only with some kind of power and maybe a master plan.
I wasn't taught that way and thus, I never really understood those kinds of things like: God hates fags; or God doesn't love X or Y or something. Or God wants you to clean your dishes. Something... seems rather silly.
Then you should be siding with the atheists. Very few of us attack spirituality in general. And we'd be absolutely content to let you believe whatever you want so long as beliefs aren't used to obtain political control over people who don't ascribe to them. If you or German Guy don't try to tell other people (like me) what we can or cannot do, without objective, secular reasons for doing so, then we have absolutely zero conflict.
I’m not an atheist because evil exists, I am an atheist because I have yet to be presented sufficient evidence that a god or gods exists.
That said, the presence of what we call evil wouldn’t be evidence their isn’t a god. Rainman could be right. Maybe what we perceive to be evil isn’t evil in the eyes of God (for the sake of this discussion I am referring to the Abrahamic god.) Sure, most of us think raping and mutilating children is evil. But that just might be our puny little human minds failing to grasp the bigger picture. Maybe if we knew as much as God knows we would think that rape and dismemberment of toddlers was just fine and dandy. How arrogant of us to think the world would be better off without such things.
And yet god doesn't give us the information that could assist us in making those choices. We clearly hold raping children to be evil. If god doesn't agree, then he ought to tell us why, so that we can find peace and harmony with this situation. God's withholding of information, like irrefutable proof of his existence, creates tension, strife, and puts more evil in the world. And if he is doing evil unto us "for our own good", then the whole free will idea is out the window.
I don't believe the Bible should be considered the literal word of God. It's a document about the development of man's understanding and image of God. These scriptures were the best possible view of God man was capable of understanding when it was written. Today, we're further.
Then please join the atheists in opposing use of the bible and its backwards morality to control modern people. If that were settled, and our society were ordered according to factual, scientific, and secular principals, then the conflict between theists and atheists would be almost entirely academic, and would simply consist of a search for the truth, which is always a good idea.