Sending bears after teenagers because they called you bald once is crazy Elisha.

The best part is when God goes " see that guy over there, he believes so much in me, i will torment him beyond reason to proof his dedication to me"

There are so many of these terrible examples of god being this huge asshole. When i read the bible in my early teens, it was reading the bible that 'made me an atheist'. Seeing that people took this asshole god serious.

Over the years i did get to learn more about Jesus, he is the proto-hippy about sharing love and kindness. But somehow, very few christians follow up on his words and teachings. Christians actively chosing to be assholes when they have Jesus as a deity in their mythological fanfinction. It boggles the mind.

A screenshot of a comment I made a while back. Link to original comment

Not to mention the whole Exodus problem

The pharaoh was bad guy at first but then became a victim of Adonaiyahwehjehovahbob's torture

(I didn't mean to comment twice)

Had I been alive during WW2, I'm pretty sure myself and majority of my neighbors would have Hitler on the kill list.

You're taking those passages too literally:

When God (in verse 45) said that slaves are ok to buy, he meant that people, all from the start, each have slaves within their hearts. Things that we have sold or boughtten that are forced to pick our "moral cotton." God calls for us to set these free, free our hearts from slavery.

And as God goes on to explain the logistics of buying and selling slaves...

...He was messing around

That's a remarkably good point

It's conspicuous how adept the religious are at mental gymnastics

I always thought that it was because were looking for ways to justify their shitty behaviour, it never occurred to me that that was a taught thing

That makes it so much worse...

absolutely wild how many people out there will blast me with eye melting LED headlights and then get all pissy when I turn my halogen highbeams on

I think they missed the memo

I thought that was the Silver Rule.

When my son was around 9-10 he came home from school one day and said "everyone on the bus believes in god but me". To note, its a small bus he rides. I felt bad, was a bit upset this convo happened, but I guess its good. The conversation didnt sway him, and I did let him go to church even one time with his "big brother" from a program. He didnt want to go back. I was so conflicted what I would do if he wanted to. But thankfully, he's just no interest in pretend people, and isnt afraid to speak his mind on the matter.

punishment at home

😳🥺👉👈

'This may sound absurdly simplistic but think about it. Suppose (to take the most improbable example) you decided, or were told and chose to believe the world was created by an invisible entity who, despite all the evidence that he or she occasionally disliked us but was mostly indifferent actually loved us and thought about us all the time . Suppose, piling absurdity upon improbability, you also decided, or were told to believe , that this same person decided to split himself in two and turn one part of himself into an ordinary person like you and me and pay a visit to a desert tribe and get himself arrested and executed for treason, at which point he performed a conjuring trick, came back to from the dead, vanished mysteriously but planned to return and punish all the bad people and make everything nice (though in the meantime, the bad people could go on getting away with it and the good people go on getting buggered up by the bad people-that is, when they were not getting cancer, or run over or bankrupt. Or tortured, of flogged or were worked like beasts or raped or killed in power struggles which were nothing to do with them) Suppose you were misguided enough to believe that lot. What you would do? Would you devote all your spare hours to finding someone who would disabuse of these intently peculiar delusions, so that you could finally sleep at night? Or would you go, once a week or more, to listen to someone telling you that you were quite and every thing you believed was true and what’s more, if you ever stopped believing it, terrible things would happen to you even after you had died?'

Religious law and civil law are not very different, the latter is based on the former, historically speaking.

The difference is in who gets to judge and dole out punishments.

'Religion has mastered one remarkable skill: surviving without evidence. For thousands of years, gods have been proposed, worshiped, feared, obeyed, and defended yet never independently verified. This is not a minor oversight. In every other domain of human knowledge, claims without evidence are discarded. Only in religion are they protected, revered, and shielded from scrutiny. Atheism begins with a simple, unromantic question: Where is the evidence? Not the feelings, not the traditions, not the anecdotes but the verifiable, testable, independently confirmable evidence. When that question is asked honestly, belief systems that rely on revelation and authority rather than observation begin to wobble. Faith is often praised as a virtue. In practice, it is an admission of ignorance dressed up as confidence. Faith exists precisely where evidence does not. No one has “faith” that gravity works or that germs cause disease. Those are facts established through experiment and replication. Faith only enters when knowledge fails. If faith were a reliable path to truth, different religions would converge on the same conclusions. Instead, they contradict one another on every fundamental claim how many gods exist, what they want, who they favour, and what happens after death. Billions of believers, thousands of gods, zero consensus. Why should we treat any one of them as special? A popular apologetic claim is that religion “invented” science or was its primary driver. History tells a messier story. Scientific progress emerged when thinkers began questioning authority including religious authority and insisting on evidence over scripture. Copernicus, Galileo, Darwin, and countless others faced religious resistance, not encouragement. The Catholic Church condemned heliocentrism. Protestant leaders rejected evolution. Even today, creationism and intelligent design attempt to smuggle theology into science classrooms despite overwhelming biological evidence to the contrary. Another common claim is that without God, morality collapses. This argument misunderstands both morality and human behaviour. Moral systems existed long before monotheistic religions and vary widely across cultures. Empathy, cooperation, and fairness are products of social evolution, not divine command. If morality truly came from God, believers would behave demonstrably better than nonbelievers. They do not. Study after study shows no consistent correlation between religiosity and moral behaviour, and some of the least religious countries score highest on measures of social trust, equality, and well-being . Prayer Fails the Most Basic Test. Prayer is often described as powerful, transformative, and effective until it is tested. Controlled studies consistently show that intercessory prayer has no measurable effect on recovery, illness, or outcomes. In some cases, being told you are prayed for worsens outcomes due to performance anxiety. If prayer worked the way believers claim, hospitals would replace ICUs with chapels. They do not. Why? Because when lives are on the line, even believers trust medicine, not miracles. Why is scepticism encouraged everywhere except religion? Why are children taught to question advertisements, politicians, and strangers but not gods? Why is doubt framed as intellectual honesty in science and rebellion in theology? What would happen if religious claims were held to the same standards as scientific ones? If holy books were treated like hypotheses? If miracles required evidence before belief? Would anything remain? Atheism Is Not Nihilism It Is Responsibility. Atheism offers no cosmic rewards, no eternal surveillance, no divine forgiveness loopholes. That is precisely its strength. Meaning is not handed down; it is constructed. Morality is not outsourced; it is owned. There is no god to blame, no plan to hide behind. If this life is the only one, we know we have, then cruelty is less excusable, not more. Kindness matters now. Justice matters now. Truth matters now. And that is what makes atheism unsettling not that it removes meaning, but that it removes excuses. If faith is a reliable path to truth, why does it produce contradictory conclusions? Why are religious claims exempt from the standards applied to every other claim? If morality comes from God, why do moral intuitions change over time and culture? What belief would you abandon if evidence disproved it and why should religion be different?'

I don't think that most "lack" a conscience. I do think their conscience is either malformed or severely stunted.

I don't disagree with your general point but

Traits such as cooperation, reciprocity, and concern for others can improve survival and social cohesion, giving individuals who possess those traits an evolutionary advantage over those who are consistently uncooperative or harmful

Doesn't explain animals that are predators like say sharks. They don't cooperate yet they thrive. You could say that even immorality is an evolutionary trait because it gains you an advantage gaming a system built on trust.

All I mean is you can point at any biological organism and say "the reason it is like this is because it is evolutionarily advantageous" and you wouldn't really be saying anything more meaningful than "it is the way it is because that's what's best for it". It's a near perfect example of begging the question.

It's a bit painting the target around the arrow.

That's a good rule of thumb, but it runs into difficulty when you map it to the marco scale.

Whether we're talking individual human capacity (Dunbar's Number) or a question of public policy (for instance, in the Trolley Problem scenario) or even just common accounting and logistics principles, people become indistinguishable from things in significantly large numbers and anonymous contexts.

Bureaucracy has a de-humanizing effect on individuals. But bureaucracy is fundamental to administration of large populations. I don't know how you square this circle without committing some degree of "sin".

It rings consistent with the Wiccan Rede (Do no harm) and the ethic of reciprocity, aka The Golden Rule.

Curiously this sheds light on the common sickness of the ultra-wealthy, who are surrounded by sycophantic courtiers who readily agree with their every word bur also want a taste of their sweet, sweet lucre. Inside weeks, they start seeing themselves as experts in everything, and everyone else as NPCs.

Well, there is good as in beneficial and bad as in detracting. As my dad said, “about 85% of people are just trying to live their life, not bad or good, but there is the other group that is troublesome” — black markets, affluence against commoners, etc.

Ricky is GOAT.