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Of course, the Communists old *said* they were atheists. In every other way they acted like a religion - coopting many of the same mechanisms. However, let us ignore that and follow your argument. Yes the Stalinists were bad atheists, but look around at the World today, there are plenty of good atheists that stand for reason and tolerance. All religions [apart from Jainism, but that's more of a philosophy] on the other hand are fundamentally violent (which is why their fundamentalists are violent). Those who are devout are 'good' at their religion but 'bad' as human beings. For example, bin Laden and team was going back to the violent fundamentals of Islam; David Koresh chose the crazed fundamentals of Christianity.

Now you can argue (as the evil Salafis do) that the problem is that a pure religion has not been implemented, and if it was then it would all be OMG ponies and rainbows and unicorns and stuff. The problem is that a pure religion (at least the Abrahamic ones) contain so many contradictions that by making peace you both follow and oppose the religion. Same for many of the doctrines.

Don't believe me? well take a look at the Skeptic's Annotated Bible (and Qur'an, and Torah). http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/
It shows *in the own words of those books* how parts of them contradict other parts. Not just one or two errors of scribes, but hundreds and hundreds of them. These books are the works of men - originally they were intended to help us, but now they are being used to control us. We have much better morals, and science, and historical knowledge, and health practices, and gender relations, and political systems, and international systems and philosophies than our first attempts at these things as laid out in these books. All the atheists are saying is, "Look these books are written by men who are woefully ignorant by modern standards; we are much smarter now, let us be evidence based for how the universe is and how we conduct ourselves and manage relationships".

Still don't believe me? Here's a pretty graph from Richard Dawkin's own site showing the inconsistencies in the Bible.
http://www.project-reason.org/gallery3/image/105/ Again, it is not just a few bugs in the document - the whole thing is fundamentally inconsistent. Once you see such a graph you have to willfully abandon your reason if you want to believe the utterly inconsistent, mindless, and lets face it, evil (incest anyone? genocide anyone) crap in the Bible or it's poor pilagerism, the Qur'an.

The Qur'an fails such an analysis even worse: the Qur'an is often Mo' PBUH making up rules so he could shag women. You see Allah did seem to intervene a lot when he wanted to get married or Aisha busted him shagging one of his other wives out of turn. Note: Aisha was 9 when Mohammed took her virginity - and whatever Mo did is what all Muslims aspire to do - and you think the atheists have it wrong?.
Citation required - well here you go (a humerous slant written by an ex-Muslim)
http://kafirgirl.wordpress.com/archive/ Analysis of the Qur'an (by an ex-Muslim)
http://kafirgirl.wordpress.com/2008/08/03/wives-part-1/ "Swimmin’ in Women: Mohammed’s wives and concubines. (Part I)"
http://kafirgirl.wordpress.com/2008/08/05/wives-part-2/ "Swimmin’ in Women: Mohammed’s wives and concubines. (Part II)"
http://kafirgirl.wordpress.com/2008/07/18/chapter4part3/ "The Women (girls, girls, girls)"

You still think the atheists are the bad/immoral guys?

Lachowicz’s campaign attracted international attention after the Maine Republican Party created a website to criticize her participation as a player in World of Warcraft, an online fantasy game.

"Colleen Lachowicz spends hundreds of hours playing in her online world Azeroth, as an Orc Assassination Rogue named Santiaga?"

...The Maine GOP is going after the Democratic state Senate hopeful, saying online comments she’s made using her World of Warcraft alias raise questions about her judgment and maturity.

I sincerely hope that Republicans are not hypocrites and go with the same zeal after candidates spending hundreds of hours playing the most popular offline fantasy game. After all, it's not like they have nothing better to do, right?

Contradictions with both parts of the Bible, obviously. Muhammad did not have first-hand knowledge of the Bible, and did not really care about it. I'm talking about the Koran having almost no contradictions with itself. You can take a look at Skeptic's Annotated Quran, it lists 32 such contradictions as opposed to 461 in the Bible, and I'd argue with most of them (numbers match the entries in SAQ):
1. [-] no one ELSE but Allah can change the text
2. [+] indeed, a contradiction (permissibility of alcohol)
3. [?] depends on exact wording, might be indeed a minor contradiction
4. [ -] being outside the Universe, this concept makes no sense. A programmer can alter a simulation in any way (ie: do anything) yet can't have a real child inside (at most can arbitrarily name some bits as one)
5. [-] plural form allows deputies
6. [-] a literary device; people then had no concept of infinity or of different flow of time
7. [-] making devils so disbelievers can choose, vs disbelievers doing the choosing -- all is ok IMO
8. [-] "when the drowning overtook him" -- ie, not a word about ultimately surviving or not
9. [?] this passage reinforces that Allah is supposed to be the god of Abraham; the fate of Christians and Jews is unclear
10. [-] the taxes go "to Allah" rather than to Muhammad. Yeah, right... a lie but not a contradiction.
11. [-] "forgive and be indulgent UNTIL Allah gives command", pretty clear
12. [-] "turned to heaven" makes sense only if it has already been created, I think the passage speaks about further refinement
13. [+] would make sense as "Allah forgives only once" but is so unclear I'll leave this as a contradiction
14. [-] nothing says it's the same battle; also a literary device
15. [-] the very next sentence (in 18:29) continues: infidels are free to disbelieve, which will put them into the Fire and under swords of believers
16. [-] whole job vs a part of it
17. [+] kind of a contradiction, unless angels and jinn are the same
18. [?] Allah is fair only to believers; unclear
19. [-] different ingredients don't exclude each other
20. [-] merciful for muslims, smites everyone else
21. [-] messengers are equal, reactions of recipients may differ
22. [-] Iblis will _try_ to put people astray, believers will stay on the "right" path
23. [+] there might be various degrees of being a true believer (as new revelation comes); I'd still count this a contradiction
24. [-] saved his household, not necessarily every single member
25. [+] a contradiction, common to all religions that try to claim their god is both all-powerful and good (aka the Epicurean paradox)
26. [+] a contradiction with no consequences, but still one
27. [-] "he sends angels with the spirit of commands" vs "we send not down the angels, save with the Fact" -- nothing wrong here
28. [-] "he does X" vs "if he wants, he does X"
29. [-] setting slaves free is a welcome charity, but slaves themselves need to behave whether they're freed or not
30. [-] same as 4, above: Allah may at most name someone created as a "son"
31. [-] you have to try, but you can't fully succeed; if shit happens despite trying, do X
32. [+] a contradiction, no consequences

So here, out of the 32 purported contradictions, there are only 7 left and 3 doubtful. I did not review all 641 contradictions Skeptic's Annotated Bible lists, but trying some at random, most seem to hold.

"You are simply lying - there is no such thing in Qur'an . If there was you WOULD be in trouble ... So yes you should listen to your own advice - look it up and you'll se it's not true ... but somehow I think you are not well intentioned and you are just trolling :)"

Surah 9. Nuff said.

The Westboro Baptist Church don't read "I Hate Fags" but "God Hates Fags". Which he does, according to leviticus el throughout the bible.

http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/gay/long.htm

You seem like a good person, your god is not.

They disagree which additional hadith should be obeyed, not about the Koran itself.

This said, Koran is not strictly without contradictions -- it's hard for a text 1400 years old to be clearly understandable by a modern reader. Skeptic's Annotated Quran lists 32 issues -- as opposed to Bible's 462 ones. I'd also assign Koran's contradictions a far lesser weight (as opposed to, say, whether afterlife exists or not), and in many cases dispute them entirely (like, "Allah cannot possibly have a child" doesn't contradict "Allah is omnipotent", it sounds more like a description of his nature, as a being transcending the world).

From what I know of this "prophet" Mohammed, he was a good guy, and just like Jesus Christ, he taught love and respect for fellow human beings.

Idiotic nonsense.

http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/cruelty/long.html

Hey, I'm talking about the guy, not the whole perverted religion. Mohammed (however you spell his name) did not write the Quran. Christ did not write the bible. Mohammed was a man of his time, a warrior yeah. His people were starving due to unfair trade practices, and he'd had enough of it and did something about it. Was he a prophet? I think he didn't believe he was. It's not his fault that a perverted religion got started after he died.

From what I know of this "prophet" Mohammed, he was a good guy, and just like Jesus Christ, he taught love and respect for fellow human beings.

Idiotic nonsense.

http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/cruelty/long.html

Better than that shit video, the problem with Islam is not the fundamentals, but the fundamentalists!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YDKv7xudLE

Longer version:
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/EndofFa

More fun facts from the source itself:
http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/cruelty/long.html

I just ask people to stop blaming the video and start blaming the Muslims themselves.

The Bible has it's fair share of questionable text. So...to be fair, it all depends on who reads and teaches the document. If you read any book as the truth and fact, you are in for a very dark world. One thing I've learned about religion in general is that you have to take the words with a grain of skepticism to even start to be a rational person. (I've chosen to flow on the side of non-belief myself, but whatever.)

> It certainly disproves virtually all literal interpretations of Genesis,

It is only a literal interpretation because the idiots

a) ignore the 2 contradictory version of the story
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/contra/accounts.html

b) can't read the original Hebrew. How is there an "Earth day and night" when there was Sun until the 3rd day?
i.e.
Church Father Origen wrote: âoeWhat man of sense will agree with the statement that the first, second and third days in which the evening is named and the morning, were without sun, moon and stars, and the first day without a heaven. What man is found such an idiot as to suppose that God planted trees in paradise in Eden, like a husbandman, and planted therein the tree of life, perceptible to the eyes and senses, which gave life to the eater thereof; and another tree which gave to the eater thereof a knowledge of good and evil? I believe that every man must hold these things for images, under which the hidden sense lies concealedâ (Origen - Huet., Prigeniana, 167 Franck, p. 142).

While most people here are starting from the base assumption that everything can be explained through science

Nobody claims that everything can be explained through science. What we claim is that science is the only way you can actually confirm anything. Some things are beyond the reach of science, but that's no reason to go believing in mythology.

I'm starting from the assumption that it cannot and that the Biblical account is true beyond challenge.

And what rational reason is there to do that? Especially considering the numerous ways that the bible contradicts both scientific and mathematical fact, it even contradicts itself.

Do you have a rational explanation for why you chose the veracity of the bible as your assumption, instead of the tao te ching, or the vedas, or even The Lord of the Rings?

If you start from my assumption (which many do not, but stick with me), then logically you would also have no issues with seemingly contradictory evidence showing up

If you were the least bit rational, you would realize that as soon as a single contradiction occurs you have proven your assumptions incorrect via proof by contradiction.

While most people here are starting from the base assumption that everything can be explained through science

Nobody claims that everything can be explained through science. What we claim is that science is the only way you can actually confirm anything. Some things are beyond the reach of science, but that's no reason to go believing in mythology.

I'm starting from the assumption that it cannot and that the Biblical account is true beyond challenge.

And what rational reason is there to do that? Especially considering the numerous ways that the bible contradicts both scientific and mathematical fact, it even contradicts itself.

Do you have a rational explanation for why you chose the veracity of the bible as your assumption, instead of the tao te ching, or the vedas, or even The Lord of the Rings?

If you start from my assumption (which many do not, but stick with me), then logically you would also have no issues with seemingly contradictory evidence showing up

If you were the least bit rational, you would realize that as soon as a single contradiction occurs you have proven your assumptions incorrect via proof by contradiction.

While most people here are starting from the base assumption that everything can be explained through science

Nobody claims that everything can be explained through science. What we claim is that science is the only way you can actually confirm anything. Some things are beyond the reach of science, but that's no reason to go believing in mythology.

I'm starting from the assumption that it cannot and that the Biblical account is true beyond challenge.

And what rational reason is there to do that? Especially considering the numerous ways that the bible contradicts both scientific and mathematical fact, it even contradicts itself.

Do you have a rational explanation for why you chose the veracity of the bible as your assumption, instead of the tao te ching, or the vedas, or even The Lord of the Rings?

If you start from my assumption (which many do not, but stick with me), then logically you would also have no issues with seemingly contradictory evidence showing up

If you were the least bit rational, you would realize that as soon as a single contradiction occurs you have proven your assumptions incorrect via proof by contradiction.

If you want to show that the bible is made up, or its text is corrupt, I'm going to put you through scientific method process and axiomatic logic reasoning to establish your case.

This should do the trick: http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/ .

To put in other terms, nobody can write a story about your life until after you are born, and lived some portion of that life.

Okay. But surely something divinely-inspired would make a hell of a lot more fucking sense, what with the contradictions and absurdities and all.

For the interested, check out The Skeptic's Annotated Bible. It points out all of the ridiculous and/or horrible shit that exists in the Bible. And they're fair, too - they also shit all over the Koran and other religious texts.

Hopefully this version.

You know, you can just admit when you're wrong. It's not painful or anything. Shouting insults and running away is childish. So is pretending that you're just joking around when moments ago you were quite serious.

You made some outrageous and extreme statement. You couldn't back it up. Just accept it, move on, and next time remember: you're just as prone to idiocy as the people you love to insult :-)

Okay, my new Catholic friend, What about This?

How many gods are there?

You know, I really have no desire to wade through the fictional accounts you call the bible to call out each and every preposterous notion that's put forth there. As such, I'll just let you go on lying to yourself and others while deluding yourself as to how the dogma of Judeo-Christian religions is really true when it's not.

It's really no skin off my nose if you (or anyone else) want to believe that a collection of stories conceived, passed down through oral tradition, edited and then held up as the *literal* word of a power that doesn't exist. You go right ahead. If it makes you feel better, I suppose that's not necessarily a bad thing, unless it causes you to decide that since you're right and the non-believers are wrong, you need to remove them from the living to protect the fantasy.

My argument isn't with you anyway, it's with the bible thumping morons (and there are many tens to hundreds of millions) who do believe in young earth creationism and/or its poorly disguised sibling, Intelligent design. Those who believe that whole rising from the dead thing. Especially after several days. You have to wonder just how much brain damage that would cause.

In any case, I personally believe that some of the ideas presented in that work of fiction do have merit in helping us to live together. However, unless you strip out the supernatural and the downright dotty stuff, the bible remains a work of (uneven) fiction -- which is a poor foundation to base any clear, logical theories about the origins of the universe or the processes that operate within it. I'll leave such speculation with ideas rooted in the scientific method. It's so much more flexible and using it to confirm or refute theories has shown itself to be much more reliable in describing and predicting the behavior of the universe and its contents.

If you have any interest in continuing this discussion, I suggest you give Mr. Dawkins a call and engage him. I'm done. Have a nice day.

Bullshit. I have Ph.D in physics and I am observing Muslim. The dichotomy is false and its enough that your Christian right-wing crazies are perpetuating it. Don't join the bandwagon from the science side.

How can a PHD in Physics deal with these ABSURDITIES in Quran and be an 'observing muslim'? http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/science/long.html PLEASE EXPLAIN US.

What, you mean like this? Or this? Or this? Or this? (And yes, those are many different passages, just the same domain)

What, you mean like this? Or this? Or this? Or this? (And yes, those are many different passages, just the same domain)

What, you mean like this? Or this? Or this? Or this? (And yes, those are many different passages, just the same domain)

What, you mean like this? Or this? Or this? Or this? (And yes, those are many different passages, just the same domain)

That's not what the scripture says. If they were walking at the beach, there would be no reason to fear sinking, the boat would not have been threatened, nor would there be any reason to get back in the boat.

Science is the empirical study of how things are. Religion is the normative study of how things should be.

Except that religion can't help but make empirical claims that routinely contradict the reality science reveals to us, and quite often in extremely absurd ways. If you want to subtract all the ridiculous claims of religion and jettison the supernatural elements and say instead that religion is "the study of how things should be" then you've just described moral philosophy. I've no problem with moral philosophy as such, but I have not seen anyone actually behave as if that's all they believed religion was.

It's all well and good to quote-mine the bible and say everything else is just details, except when the overwhelming majority of your fellow believers use those details to justify very damaging and immoral behaviour. And if the foundation of your morality is divine authority and the immoral prescription is in your holy text (and the new testament is hardly the moral exemplar), you have very little cause to argue with them.

It's hard to me to come to the conclusion I'm wrong when I'm not presented with good arguments why I'm wrong.

I suggest you to read the many, many replies I've got to my original post, they are interesting even the many that simple amount to "well yeah? you suck!". I also posted replies to most of them, I found the exercise refreshing tough it's growing old.

To honor you I did watch the video, since I can't ask you to read this much without giving you some of my attention. Sadly I'm underwhelmed by that video.

You seem to be making an appeal to emotion, that believing in contradictions is not a sign of a little mind but rather a sign of the wonder of humanity.

I call bullshit. Yes, doing stuff we know to be "impossible" (or just very hard) is exhilarating, thus we anticipate this gratification and purposely engage in wild crusades.

But that is just one instance of mental compartmentalization. In fact it doesn't even require mental compartmentalization because these crusades always have goals that are deemed virtually impossible, not *actually* impossible.

Real mental compartmentalization includes lots of silly stuff I'm not even going to list because you can find them online, like here.

So, really, there is a difference between finding gratification in challenging goals, which is what the video is about, and actually believing two opposing things simultaneously, which is what the video *claims* to be talking about, but fails.

Also what I've said is not bias or ignorance, is based on what I've learned from many sources, but got specially in depth from this book (which I referred to in another of my replies, see? I told you you should read that.).

Here is the reference again, its a free download online http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

The Christian God as described in the bible, especially the old testament, certainly would approve of killing, even genocide. http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/cruelty/long.html

The Bible condemns adultery

Not all of the bible.

Then again, trying to get a consistent stance on anything out of the bible is just silly.
The only thing you can bet on is that God is angry at you for something.

the idea that God created

This is hardly an idea unique to young-earth creationism. Indeed, nearly all religions who recognise gods believe (at least one of them) created the earth/universe.

the role of assumptions (worldview) in interpretation of evidence

Confirmation bias is a well-known effect, particularly in scientific circles, and pretty much by definition not something that only the "opposite" site can be guilty of. Hence my sig :P

unprovable assumptions in the application of some radiation dating methods

Which are those? The ones I know of (like the differing amounts of atmospheric C14 throughout history) are calibrated against, and shouldn't give an error of more than a couple of hundred years out of 20.000 or so (verified with ice core samples containing wood). That's already 3 times the biblical age of the earth, never mind what happens when you use (and compare) any of the other radiometric dating methods that all put the age of the earth squarely above 10.000.

The idea that radioactive decay was different in the past might actually be true, but again that's been shown to be only a few % at best (with the exception of Rhenium 187), and is not going to turn 4 billion into 6000.

the idea that the Earth itself could be much younger that theorised

Yes, I've seen those ideas, but I've only seen biblical evidence (mostly arguing about the interpretation of "yom", or day). I'm sorry, but biblical evidence just isn't going to convince anyone who doesn't already believe in the literal thruth of the bible.

As someone with some years of theological study behind me, the usual anti-religion and anti-bible rants bore me to tears with their general lack of rational study or often even reasonable intelligence.

Yes, but let's not lump the sarcastic one-liners of Skeptic's Annotated Bible in the same category as, for instance, errancy.org, who makes a genuine attempt to analyze biblical errors in the proper context.

Making an informed decision on what we believe to be true is a basic start to that end.

Yes, but this implies a willingness to change your believes when new information comes to light.

To be more interested in learning than fighting is to be commended. In such case I should direct you to the Skeptic's Annotated Bible section on women, if you're looking for the worst New Testament misogyny you'll find high concentrations in 1 Corinthians 7-14 and 1 Timothy 2-5. (Perhaps not-so-coincidentally immediately prior to Paul in 1 Timothy 6 telling slaves to keep-on-slavin' because not to do so would be blasphemy.)

There is a similar treatment of the Quran here. In terms of sheer quantity, the Bible beats the Quran by about a factor of seven. Qualitatively, IMO the Old Testament is worse than the Quran, but the New Testament is better. Degrees of injustice and inequality are not something to brag about though.

To be more interested in learning than fighting is to be commended. In such case I should direct you to the Skeptic's Annotated Bible section on women, if you're looking for the worst New Testament misogyny you'll find high concentrations in 1 Corinthians 7-14 and 1 Timothy 2-5. (Perhaps not-so-coincidentally immediately prior to Paul in 1 Timothy 6 telling slaves to keep-on-slavin' because not to do so would be blasphemy.)

There is a similar treatment of the Quran here. In terms of sheer quantity, the Bible beats the Quran by about a factor of seven. Qualitatively, IMO the Old Testament is worse than the Quran, but the New Testament is better. Degrees of injustice and inequality are not something to brag about though.

Luke 22:36.

Frankly, while I find the idea of burning any book abhorrent I think that spitting in the face of these radicals of Islam is more important than not. Either bring your religion to 21st century and join the rest of us or shut the hell up.

There are over 1 billion Muslims in the world, and several million living in the Western world. What percentage of them will resort to violence as a form of protest when these books are burned? Even a few thousand people is several orders of magnitude less than 1%. So it's hardly representative of the Muslim world. In a similar vein, Christians burnt down the Saint Michel theater in Paris, putting 13 people in hospital, just to protest against the film "The Last Temptation of Christ", so it's hardly like Islam has a monopoly on its followers wanting to restrict freedom of speech. (The Bible actually insists that blasphemers" should be killed by Christian congregations: "And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying ... he that blasphemeth the name of the LORD, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him.")

So, you're comparing a religion that put 13 people in the hospital to a religion that kills hundreds of thousands? Muslims have posted more than 13 beheadings on the Internet, all in the name of Islam.

Also, you should really get educated before you start quoting the Bible. The quote you used...:

And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying ... he that blasphemeth the name of the LORD, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him. Leviticus 24:13-16

is from the Old Testament, yet, you attribute it to Christians, who no longer follow the Old Testament. Christians believe in The New Covenant that changes "Eye for an Eye" to "Turn the Other Cheek". Unfortunately, I don't think facts will change your opinion.

There are over 1 billion Muslims in the world, and several million living in the Western world. What percentage of them will resort to violence as a form of protest when these books are burned? Even a few thousand people is several orders of magnitude less than 1%. So it's hardly representative of the Muslim world. In a similar vein, Christians burnt down the Saint Michel theater in Paris, putting 13 people in hospital, just to protest against the film "The Last Temptation of Christ", so it's hardly like Islam has a monopoly on its followers wanting to restrict freedom of speech. (The Bible actually insists that blasphemers" should be killed by Christian congregations: "And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying ... he that blasphemeth the name of the LORD, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him.")

The problem with that statement is that Mosaic law doesn't (read: shouldn't) apply to Christians. Most of the Old Testament laws were obsoleted by Christ. See the Sermon on the Mount for a non-comprehensive list. While I certainly don't agree with the Paris theater burning fiasco, I also don't follow that the Bible encourages such action, if read properly.

And, of course, all true Scotsmen read it properly.

"Christians burnt down the Saint Michel theater in Paris [wikipedia.org], putting 13 people in hospital, just to protest against the film "The Last Temptation of Christ"

They burnt down a theater to protest a shitty movie, I have no problem with that ;)

"(The Bible actually insists that blasphemers" should be killed by Christian congregations...."

How ironic that you quote Leviticus 24:13-16, because Leviticus 24:20 says "fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; the injury inflicted is the injury to be suffered."

Which is where we get the "eye for an eye" idea. I don't see too many one-eyed christians, do you?

Oh and if you're going to bash scriptures try not to get your quotes from The Skeptics Annotated Bible because it makes it just too easy (and harder to believe).

There are over 1 billion Muslims in the world, and several million living in the Western world. What percentage of them will resort to violence as a form of protest when these books are burned? Even a few thousand people is several orders of magnitude less than 1%. So it's hardly representative of the Muslim world. In a similar vein, Christians burnt down the Saint Michel theater in Paris, putting 13 people in hospital, just to protest against the film "The Last Temptation of Christ", so it's hardly like Islam has a monopoly on its followers wanting to restrict freedom of speech. (The Bible actually insists that blasphemers" should be killed by Christian congregations: "And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying ... he that blasphemeth the name of the LORD, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him.")

The problem with that statement is that Mosaic law doesn't (read: shouldn't) apply to Christians. Most of the Old Testament laws were obsoleted by Christ. See the Sermon on the Mount for a non-comprehensive list. While I certainly don't agree with the Paris theater burning fiasco, I also don't follow that the Bible encourages such action, if read properly.

Frankly, while I find the idea of burning any book abhorrent I think that spitting in the face of these radicals of Islam is more important than not. Either bring your religion to 21st century and join the rest of us or shut the hell up.

There are over 1 billion Muslims in the world, and several million living in the Western world. What percentage of them will resort to violence as a form of protest when these books are burned? Even a few thousand people is several orders of magnitude less than 1%. So it's hardly representative of the Muslim world. In a similar vein, Christians burnt down the Saint Michel theater in Paris, putting 13 people in hospital, just to protest against the film "The Last Temptation of Christ", so it's hardly like Islam has a monopoly on its followers wanting to restrict freedom of speech. (The Bible actually insists that blasphemers" should be killed by Christian congregations: "And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying ... he that blasphemeth the name of the LORD, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him.")

Francis Crick, one of the discoverers of the DNA double helix molecule said that it was so complex and so advanced, that the likelihood of it being a product of evolution (read CHANCE) is the same as the likelihood that a tornado blowing over a junkyard will produce a Boeing 747 jetliner!

First of all, the quote you're thinking of was said by Fred Hoyle, not Francis Crick. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hoyle. Second, the quote was referring to abiogenesis, not evolution. Third, Hoyle was an astronomer, not a biologist. Fourth, order comes from disorder all the time; the tornado itself arising spontaneously is an example of that. There is no reason to believe it is not possible for a self-replicating molecule to be created as a result of a chemical reaction, and evolution takes care of the rest.

So you could have eons of time between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2. This is when the dinosaurs existed. There is much more information about this, but all of it is without any contradiction to science or the bible.

By the way, there are LOTS of contradictions within the bible itself; see http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/contra/by_name.html. We won't even start on places where it contradicts science.

That is history prior to Christianity. No where in the New Testament will you violence being condoned for the followers of Christianity to participate in.

After a quick search on the internet I found plenty of counter-examples to that claim. One example: "For God commanded, saying, Honour thy father and mother: and, He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death." (Matthew 15:4). How is telling people to kill disobedient children not condoning violence? Perhaps you should try listening to you own advice:

you should at least research the facts before you make claims

No where in the New Testament will you violence being condoned for the followers of Christianity to participate in.

Nope, only God gets to be cruel in the New Testament.

Paul is an easy scapegoat, as in many ways he was an interloper given credence by later church conferences, but no such exists for muslims. The Quran is written by one man (who borrowed lazily from other Abrahamic religions), and the priority of its teachings are chronological. Whatever was said of a thing last would be given the greatest weight, and all the peaceful parts are earliest when the religion was only tenuously established. The later parts are more violent because the 'Prophet' felt emboldened by his established power base and didn't care about peace so much anymore.

There is no 'extremely peaceful' 'true Islam'. I would recommend you look at the violence section of Skeptic's Annotated Quran. (They also have a chronological index of suras.)

If religion changes as the world changes, what is the point? That's a completely secular attitude, and antithetical to Christian doctrine that believers are supposed to be separated from the world (per 2 Corinthians 6:17).

Abrahamic religion is not compatible with relativism. The whole point of the divine in Abrahamic religions is that it is an immutable, unchanging, rock-solid foundation to which everything else is relative, and by following it and not the capricious material world and society you can attain righteousness. It is completely irrational to think that X act is sin to an eternal immutable God in the year 100, but X act is A-OK to the same God in the year 2100. Either X act is a sin against God's moral law, or it isn't. Period. Forever.*

If you say that any given contemporary society decides morality, you are placing the authority of right and wrong with society instead of God. That makes you clearly a weaker Christian, if Christian you could still even be called. I myself was a Christian from age 3 to 17, during which I was required to study the Bible five days a week for NINE YEARS (and 3rd party Biblical criticisms, ugh). I'm not just some jackass pulling things I don't really understand from SAB (though it is a great resource).

It is unnatural and unreasonable to raise up a single book and say 'everything in here is right' and the human spirit bridles against it. Of course you want to look at it and say 'well X in the Bible is good and Y in the Bible is bad.' However, here you have just become secular. That's what I do with all books. I decide what's right and wrong in all of them, trying to synthesize the best and use them productively. I get to do that because I am secular. I decide. If you are a Christian, God decides. It is up to God to say what is right or wrong, sinful or righteous, not you, not your priest or pastor, and sure as hell not 'contemporary society.'

Where does interpretation and translation come into this? Sects. Catholics, Gnostics, Copts, Lutherans, Unitarians, Baptists, Episcopalians, Anglicans, etc. etc. on and on. Each believes they know the 'real' meaning. Some are more tolerant than others of competing interpretations, but sectarianism by and large does not deny the primacy of scripture. Sects are affected by social change, but as I mentioned earlier, (the Judeo-Christian idea of) God is not. Which sect is closest to the ideal I don't care, but it is an absolute, because the moral law of God must be absolute. Otherwise judgement day would be pretty retarded:

'Alright, who's next. Bob Dingo, you committed X and are damned for it.' Bob says, 'Hey, wait a minute, you just judged Bill over there, he did that, but he was damned for something else!' God says, 'Oh, well, yes, but you see you did it the 1920 in the US, and he did it in the year 2020 in the UK. Didn't you know sin was relative to social conditions? Guess I forgot to tell the apostles that, terribly sorry, enjoy hell, next.'

If you want to make the primary decisions about right and wrong in your life, be secular. If you want to abdicate those primary decisions to God, be religious.

*The exception being Christ's fulfillment of Judaic Law, but that was something God said would happen from the beginning of sin (which is itself a violation of the concept, but religion isn't rational), and it is understood to be a one off. So until Christ comes back and says different, the New Testament is absolute and immutable as a moral code and defines sin vs. righteousness.

Agreed. If you can read http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/ and still believe in the Bible, you are beyond reason. There is more logic and especially more mercy and internal consistency in stories of Santa Claus than the intolerant, slavery-promoting, sexist, inconsistent, genocidal torturer worshiped by the Jews and the Christians. If you can read, say, the Book of Genesis, the Book of Joshua, and the Book of Revelations and not conclude your deity is a vicious maniac, you lack the ability to reason.

Internecine wars are infrequently caused by different texts (though that has happened in the case of the Gnostics and Mormons etc.) but rather caused by different interpretations of one text (the Bible specifically is a schizophrenic mess that alternately approves/confirms and denounces/denies the same things all the time). Just because some people prefer to interpret text A as dogma B and others as dogma C does not negate that the text is still treated dogmatically.

And believe me I don't think of religious people monolithically in terms of education or intellect. C.S. Lewis is not on the same plane as Tammy Faye Bakker.

However, you're making a crucial mistake by trying to put reason into a box and saying 'well, it makes sense inside the box, so therefore it makes sense period'. Reality doesn't work that way. I can imagine a system with all kinds of backwards abstractions, I can say 'in this building up means down' and then say 'I'm going upstairs' while going to the basement. That may make sense in the system as I've designed it, but to the objective person looking from the outside in, that's irrational nonsense. If the assumptions you talk about cannot be rationally understood first, whatever 'reasoning' proceeds from irrational assumptions is systematically abstracted nonsense.

Alternatively, there's The Skeptic's Annotated Book of Mormom.

So far Christians and Muslims are competing for a track record on violence against followers of other faiths, with jews in for a late start.

Late start? Read the Bible. Jews had plenty of genocidal know-how back then.

http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/says_about/end.html

They don't mean ANYTHING, from a philosophical or theological perspective.

Huh?
It pretty clearly points out that we weren't designed or at least that the designer isn't omnipotent.
I'd say that has a very big theological impact (see: Genesis).

True, Jefferson was a slave owner, but that's aside the point. I believe there's a logical fallacy in that kind of reasoning.

"delve that far back into history to decide what a religion believes"

But, we dont need to. Go read the Koran. Taste the cruelty and hatred. I'm sure you can find the links to the cruelty in the Bible too here.

And there's been plenty of Fatwas about infidels and such things. And that they want to see the flag of Islam over the White House. That hatred has never been gone. Too bad, though. I'm sure the world would be a much more interesting place if we had free communication from the lands that created Algebra and so much schools of thought the past ages. Now, they care nothing of rights (especially women) and are willing to see horrible things happen to those NOT of their religion. At least, Christ taught that of compassion towards all... Too bad that Christians aren't the same.

"One of the things Thomas Jefferson did get right, though, was separation of church and state"

True, he was right about that, for sure. However, I just highlighted the fact that this wasn't the first time we went against Muslim Pirates. That was more of a fact than a "Ban Islam!!!". Of course, since I cannot read Arabic, I cannot comment on what the nature of the Quran says. I can, however, read translations. And they are violent. Even moreso than the Bible, on average and sheer number. Both books share good and bad, but the bad is just so overwhelming that I can accept neither.

And yes, I am a citizen of the USA. And no, I'm not busting on Muslims. They did it to themselves by letting the fanatics take over their religion and many of their "important" peoples. It was just my opinion that their religion seems disgusting. It's a fact that they treat their women like cattle, and that they have accepted actions like this before.

You know, after Septerber 11, 01, I was waiting for a mulla to denounce the bombings. I watched the tv news. I watched the internet. None ever did.

Also realize that the Christian church grew out of the Jewish religion, where "spilling one's seed" or other non-procreative sexual acts were condemned, since that was not Yahweh's purpose for sex.

You're giving the church a bit to much credit here.

The purpose of sex is to make more followers, any activity which doesn't result in more worshipers is denounced.

be fruitful and multiply Gen. 1:28 - sounds like a mission statement to me.