Ever felt goosebumps listening to music? Ever had the same looking at an incredible view or work of art? More accurately described as autonomous sensory meridian response? Often it’s experienced in church by believers who attribute it to the holy spirit. I get the exact same thing at really good gigs. God or just human response to something that we really enjoy?
As I get it and believe in Ole more than I believe in god, I claim human nature.
As written above, these explanations aren’t good enough for me anymore. Sorry. 
But to everyone his/her own way of looking at life, that’s totally ok. It’s part of the beauty of it, and I wouldn’t want to have it otherwise.
A fair assessment of the story other than the sin of the Sodomites was not bum sex, but their lack of hospitality to strangers. (We are never told what the Gamorahites got up to!) 
The moral of the story is that god, at least the god of the old testament, is vindictive.
We not uncommonly interpret the trials sent on Job as God’s testing of him.
But that is not his purpose as it is described in the story as we have it.
It begins with God boasting to Satan how blameless and upright his servant Job is. Satan makes the not unreasonable suggestion that a man so blessed with prosperity could hardly help being good, and asks ’Does Job fear God for naught?’ (Job 1.9).
This annoys God and he makes a wager with Satan that Job would remain faithful whatever the circumstances, and he specifically invites Satan to slay Job’s servants and his sons and daughters, and later to infect him with loathsome diseases.
This does not suggest to me that God was testing Job so much as that God wanted to score a petulant point off Satan, and in order to do this he is willing to sacrifice the old man’s whole family.
Vindictive does not seem to me at all too strong a word.
The god of the old testament is a very nasty, jealous, vindictive, murdering thug who’s blatantly crap at design. JC doesn’t change the OT nor renounce it (as mentioned)
Why anybody would want a celestial dictator like this is beyond me.
I like the (possibly apocryphal) story of the French polymath Laplace, who visited Napoleon to present his models of celestial mechanics. Napoleon asked him ‘how can you write of the universe and not mention anywhere it’s creator’. Laplace replied ‘I find it works just as well without that hypothesis’
If it works without god, then there is no good reason to put god in there. And I don’t personally buy the argument that ‘This doesn’t make sense to me, so I’m adding god to it’. Cleverer people than you or I who have spent their lives studying evolution and biology have found no need of a god to explain to wonder and diversity of the natural world. In the words of Laplace, if works just as well without that hypothesis.
People have been trying for a very long time to disprove evolution by natural selection, or insert a creator into its mechanics, and if they are right, their task should be an easy one. Like all good theories, it’s very easily disprovable if incorrect. That it hasn’t been, is proof of its robustness.
At this point in time there is simply no wriggle room. Evolution by natural selection is objectively true, and anyone who disagrees is just wrong.
A sobering thought, as put forward by Richard Dawkins, is that the evidence for evolution by natural section is so overwhelming and verifiable, if there is a creator he is actively trying to fool you into not believing in him. That should be concerning to anyone who believes in an interventionist god.
Many of the atrocities, wars and mass deaths of the last 100 yrs or so have been at the hands of the atheist, irreligious and secular. I find it a lazy trope to say that religious types are violent warmongerers, while atheists are enlightened peace lovers, progressing the species and creating a better world for everyone.
Stalin, atheist. Killed 9 million. His atheism didn’t seem to give him much peace in his heart did it? Neither did it have any restraint on his evil. Persecution. Suffering. Stymying progress? Yep, it’s all there with this one.
Hitler hated Judaism, of course, but he also hated Christianity. He thought it was for the stupid and old women. His enlightened stance killed 6 million.
They were evil men of course, but let me add, evil and atheist, evil and secular/irreligious.
It won’t do to set up a construct that says religion retards the species and promotes suffering, persecution and war; while atheism creates a better world for everyone. It’s lazy and inaccurate.
PS - as for living in the here and now, the Christians I know absolutely do that, and they work diligently to make the part of the world world they touch a better place. I can give dozens of examples of this easily. They give of their time, resources, skills, hard cash, the lot.
It’s not fair to suggest they are doing life, here and now, in such a way as to not make it count, as it’s only a dress rehearsal. From my experience it is quite the opposite, and I’ve never seen a more generous and engaged bunch.
Sorry for the confusion.
I do not have lung cancer and I don’t smoke.
I gave this as a quick fire example of someone who might suffer as a consequence of their own choice in life.
The concern is touching though, good people here, thank you!
Glad to hear it
I think the moral of this thread is “each to their own”
Live and let live people
A quick word on Sodom and Gomorrah, to add more texture to the discussion. Everyone who is angry at God, or the idea of God since they don’t believe, says it was because of homosexuality, ergo, God is a monster. That’s the surface look. Now let’s go deeper.
Was it because of non consensual sex? They wanted to force themselves, and that was dead wrong?
Going deeper again, we might not be familiar with Ezekiel 16:49 which says, “Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, over fed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.”
Definitely adds more texture than the initial homosexuality observation.
Wrong wrong wrong. Ask Ken Hovind and Ken Ham about the scientific fact that god hid those bones in the earth to test us.
Or just watch this, blissful 
There are much longer versions
And then the comedy throwdown:
Going deeper on sodem and gomorrah.
Do you write comedy professionally? You should
Ha! Euphemism unintended.
Just wanted to add to the initial observation that it was about homosexuality, as it was much more than that.
No they haven’t.
Let’s deal with this one first. Hitler was a Christian. He wrote frequently about doing God’s work, described himself as a Christian on several occasions, and a Nazi Moto was even God is With Us. His justification for his persecution of the Jews and his hatred of that faith was that they killed Christ and had blood on their hands.
He also incorporated Nordic religions and Ayrian mysticism in to his beliefs.
So you can’t claim he was an Atheist. He wasn’t. He was, in his own words, a Christian.
You’re on better ground here, and you can throw in Pol Pot and the North Korean dynasty in here if you want. But you are still wrong.
Christopher Hitchins visited North Korea, a country we consider to be secular, and described as terrifying religious place.
What these regimes have in common is that they have deified a living ruler, substituting an imaginary god for devotional worship of a leader. Kim Il-Sung is still the leader of North Korea, despite having being dead for 27 years. Stalin’s was worshipped like a god until his death, and his word could not be challenged.
To put another way, and I think I’m quoting Hitch, these are not states showing an excess of reason.
The UK, with its official state religion and Bishops in the House of Lords, is less religious that Soviet Russia. It’s not what you say you are, it’s how you act. And the USSR acted like a theocracy, only with a living god rather than an imaginary one.
(By the way, one of Stalin’s first acts following the revolution was the re-establishment of the Russian Orthodox Church, knowing full well he needed the endorsement of a religion to embed his tyranny)
Also, the first concordat that Hitler signed was with the Catholic church. Until his death, his birthday was celebrated from the pulpit of every Catholic church. The fact that the Catholic church accused the Jews of deicide till 1964 might have had something to do with the holocaust.
Shamelessly stolen from Hitch.
The ‘Hitler was an atheist’ thing is the most ridiculous assertion made by religious people. It’s only true if you literally ignore everything about how he behaved and everything he said.
On Hitler, he was raised Catholic and departed from the faith. By their fruits you shall know them? Or something like that, Jesus said. Hitler definitely not a Christian. Doesn’t pass the sniff test, at all.
Sorry, it might be inconvenient but Hitler was guided by christianity.