Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

How many times did you cut your hands?

Watching the video? Zero...

Not cooking it until Christmas Eve.

I agree. We can't know if there isn't, but we CAN know if there is. As you say, if we agree on the idea/qualities of what a "God" is, and we find definitive proof of its/his/hers (I know know God's preferred pronoun) existence, then we can know.

I'd modify that for all sides.  Don't mean to get turdy with semantics, but "proof" is only possible in mathematics and is an unreasonable standard.  I like to go with sufficient evidence, or strong evidence, or whatever you'd like to call it.  There's always some ad hoc explanation that jumps through whatever hoops necessary that can't be falsified, but which is logically possible, and precludes "proof" of something.  

What I think is important is for positions to meet some scientific standards, so to speak.  The philosophy of science, not the measuring-in-a-test-tube practice of science, I mean.  Something either needs to be falsifiable, or it should meet the criteria for inference-to-best-explanation.  Preferably both.  Otherwise, we're just arbitrarily asserting whatever we want to be true.  

The principle of falsifiability is something I think is overlooked, and shouldn't be.  If we're going to have a serious worldview on something like this, or anything, there needs to be some standard by which we could be shown to be wrong.  But I don't think the average person has ever thought about what their criteria for falsifiability would be. 

So for example, when you say "We can't know if there's a God," then by what metric(s) could you be shown to be wrong?  If an atheist says "There's no God," same thing, what conditions need to be met in order to show that's wrong?  If a theist says "There is a God," same thing again.  If it's not falsifiable, then I don't consider it a strong or worthwhile stance.  

And again, I think "proof" is overly burdensome and not realistic.  All that's needed is a reasonable standard of evidence and a paradigm of falsifiability that can plausibly be shown is avoided, and I think you've got a reasonable position. 

We're not fish swimming in a judeo-christian sea.  We may have been at some point, but that would have been a low point, imo.

The ten commandments are very nearly garbage, as the first 3 are about how easily-offended that god is.  The rest are obvious things - and yes, I can say they're obvious, because when they're done to you, you feel shitty and angry and victimized.  It's the simplistic golden rule idea.  Gee, when someone I can about is murdered, I hate it.  When someone takes something of mine, I hate it.  When someone lies and makes other people think less of me, I hate it.  So if I do any of those things to someone else, they hate it.  And these are people I have to live with and among.

Duh.

But no mention of slavery being bad.  No encouragement to not rape anybody.  Those might have been a little better than "Don't take the lord's name in vain." 

Humanism or the golden rule or whatever you'd like to call it is vastly superior to the ten commandments.  The judeo-christian sea so many people MAY be swimming in is full of absurdity, guilt, and horse shit.  It's a list of rules obviously made by bronze-age goat herding men, and it's unimpressive.

*I do enjoy the discussion, tho

I do too, and I wish this platform lent itself to more detailed discussion and a better back and forth.  Because you've raised a lot of common (and legitimate) concerns about Christianity in particular (maybe theism in general).  They all have satisfactory answers and I think you're seriously misreading/mischaracterizing/misunderstanding the worldview you're taking aim at there, but unfortunately this isn't format to lay it out.  If you think I'm TLDR in normal circumstances, even if I had time to type the wall of text that is rolling around in my head after reading that, I'm pretty sure no one here would read it. 

I would offer that your final statement, to use your own language, is a summation of diatribes obviously made by a possibly angry person who doesn't seem to understand the tenets of Christianity at all and has constructed a straw man to attack, and it's unimpressive.  (If that sounds unproductive....well, yeah.)

I would offer that your final statement, to use your own language, is a summation of diatribes obviously made by a possibly angry person who doesn't seem to understand the tenets of Christianity at all and has constructed a straw man to attack, and it's unimpressive.  (If that sounds unproductive....well, yeah.)

Not angry at all....sort of frustrated how such an absurdity ever gained traction in the first place and came to be the dominant ideology for the society I was born into.  
I do find it funny how you use the phrase "tenets of christianity" as if there's one set.  Which sect?  Which tenets?  Do you need to be orthodox?  If not, why not?  Do you need to be baptized?  Do your good works matter?  Can you speak in tongues?  Find Jesus' image in toast?  Is everything good a gift and everything bad something you deserve?  Do you merely need to let Jesus into your heart?  Is the cracker you eat twice a year the actual flesh of your god?  Does a few words of prayer absolve you of your sins?  

Allow me an art analogy:  christianity claims to be the perfect color, while incorporating the entire color wheel.  It's silly.  It'd be embarrassing if it wasn't so widespread....which, for an outsider, makes it look more embarrassing for its practitioners.  

We've whittled down the gods from the thousands down to the hundreds down to one......we'll all be better off when that number is zero.  That's a claim on the future with no evidence.  But I find it childishly obvious.

0% of people pleading to be struck down by a god while taking it's name in vain have been struck down at all.

MANY religious claims have been deemed false by scientific inquiry.
No scientific theory has ever been deemed false by a religious discovery.
The only thing that has ever improved upon scientific discovery is further scientific discovery.



lol, I think I just came up with an original oxymoron!

0% of people pleading to be struck down by a god while taking it's name in vain have been struck down at all.

you don't know this