I forgot to add passive aggressive af

@PapPap - A film is predetermined and will turn out the same way every time it is viewed. Free will does not apply because the film is already created and cannot be changed no matter how many times it is viewed. Likewise, if God being omniscient already knows how someone's life will turn out (because God created it that way) what need or reason does God have for jealousy? We could also argue that God's omniscience contradicts the concept of free will. If God already knows how an individual's life will turn out, are they truly able to make free choices? This is the result God would have created for them after all. Is it actually possible to surprise an omniscient being?

Replace “human” with “god-creator”

@yvilletom Humans ARE god creators.

@jlynn37 Are you a human?

Sometimes a simple meme is the only way to answer these complex questions.

The answer would be because a number of believers ready to condemn the athiest both in this life and the next tell us their scriptures are to be taken literally. If a believer says the Bible is to be taken literally, why shouldn't the athiest believe them - at least while conversing with these believers.

@RussRAB
Why would the atheist choose to believe the literalist perspective but reject the existence of the believers’ god? If he could reject one he could reject both. If the atheist sides with science instead of with the believer regarding the existence, why would he then side with the believer regarding god’s nature?

@skado - I believe I need to back up to explain, and that admit that I misspoke. The atheist does reject both the believer's God and his literalist interpretation of scripture as well as the scriptures themselves. He adopts the literal interpretation of the Bible as stated by the believer more as a hypothetical or hypothesis to agrue against the literalist perspective. It is accepting the premise as provided by the believer to demonstrate how the literalist perspective falls apart or says something contrary to what the believer claims to believe. As an atheist, he doesn't believe any of it.

@RussRAB
Yes, I think that's well stated. But the atheist goes even further. He then assumes he has "not believed any of it" when in fact he has heard only part of it. That is to say, that he has also taken the believer's word that the literal interpretation is the only one there is. So in that regard, the atheist has still allowed the believer to frame the discussion. Religious literalism isn't the whole of religion, or even its defining feature. It's the naive end of the continuum.

@skado - I believe it depends on the reason for the discussion. If it is a debate, then would it be sensible to approach a debate with a literalist without acknowledging that this is the perspective of the other person and arguing within that perspective? Literal interpretations of the Bible are also more easily defeated because the Bible does contradict itself. Other believers may recognize this to be the case and make accomodations. Making accomodations, however, brings up a whole other issue of why ignore one directive while adhering to another faithfully. Believers have their own set of arguments amoung themselves over these kinds of issues.

@RussRAB
Sure. I’m not thinking so much in terms of winning debates as just what people go home with in their heads after the dust settles.

@skado Because the none literal view is often as deviant and dangerous as the literal, and contains many of the same errors, so there is little point in separating the two.

All of the evils of religion come from the culture it generates the. The existence of a purely deist god, or not, would have, and does have, no effect on the world at all and is of little interest to anyone.

V. Putin who probably is not a literal Christian, according to many who know him, is still using the uniting of the Orthodox church as one of his major excuses, to shell buildings with children in them, among lots of other things. The literal or none literal view of god, is largely beside the point, since addopting religion for most, even if they do not have a literal belief in god, effectively makes a god out of tradition, and tradition is just as cruel, mindless and unjustified in its assumptions as a literal god. There is no reason therefore, except on very rare occasions for atheists/agnostics to make any distinction between the two, and most of the time it is better not to.