> How did you come to the conclusion that God doesn't exist?

The person making a positive claim assumes the burden of proof. Your Christian friend rejected the null hypothesis that {supernatural deities exist} and accepted the alternate hypothesis that {supernatural deities exists}. What evidence is there to support/justification of the null hypothesis and accept the alternate?

Ask your friend to please present the reasons they believe in the God Horus. If you have evidence to support Horus as your God, evidence that is verifiable and falsifiable, or a philosophical argument that can actually be shown to be linked to a natural physicalistic causality-limited universe, evidence that is not an emotional or feeling based subjective experience based upon confirmation bias from prior knowledge of what your "God" image may be, please feel free to present it.

How is that justification for belief in Horus coming along?

I don't think the Christian believes in Horus. And this is the basis for the atheism worldview.

It's not so much the evidence that one can provide (unless you will accept the 'lack of evidence' as evidence) for atheism. Rather it is such an overwhelming lack of any credible evidence that one can identify, or is put forth by others, to support a belief in supernatural deities. One cannot justify rejection of the null hypothesis that {supernatural deities do not exist} and accept/justify/support the alternative hypothesis that {supernatural deities do exist}.

It is possible to argue that this same position can be used for a theist to justify their belief structure over other differing theistic positions, as many theists claim that they believe based upon a feeling or emotion and/or have Religious Faith (i.e., religious belief without evidence) that supernatural deities are real and that their religious belief in supernatural deities is correct.

However, this position of Religious Faith for their own religious worldview is often the same reason they do not subscribe or believe in many other theistic worldviews - there is no evidence to support belief in the supernatural deities of other religious worldviews; they do not have Faith in other supernatural deities. For example, do adherents to any of the following example supernatural deity triads accept or propose belief in the existence of the other triads listed to which they do not have Religious Faith (or belief without evidence)?

• Egyptian: Osiris, Isis, Horus<br />

• Canaanite – Early Israelite: El the Father God, Asherah the Wife/Consort (depicted as a Serpent), Baal-Hadad
  
• Hindu Trimurti: Brahma - the Creator, Vishnu - the Maintainer, Shiva - the Destroyer
  
• Olympian Greek Religion: Zeus, Athena, Apollo
  
• Roman Capitoline Triad: Jupiter, Juno, Minerva
  
• Sumerian: Anu, Ea, Enlil
  
• Babylonian: Shamash, Ishtar, Tammuz
  
• Christianity: Yahweh, Holy Spirit, Jesus
  
  Related statement concerning the belief in "God": We are all functionally atheists, there just is no evidence to justify support of one, or more, (depending on mono- vs. poly-theistic beliefs) supernatural deity(ies) than a Christian, a theist does.
  
  > Return and repent before its too late. Death may be around the corner...
  
  Pascal's Wager? But let's take that self-serving piece of shit statement at face value - What is the purpose of an infinite eternity in Heaven?
  
  Why? Or better, why strive for Heaven?
  
  What is Heaven? According to Christianity, heaven is the purpose of all things. Heaven is the reason we live. Heaven is the reason Christ came and the reason he died for our sins. Heaven is the motivator of all of the apostles. Nothing is more important than heaven. Family, love, money, all of these things come second to heaven. [Source]
  
  Then;
  
  What is the purpose of Heaven? Heaven is life in its perfected state. We, as creatures of God, are not designed to live in an imperfect world. We are designed to live in a world free from the corruption of sin. We are designed to live in the presence of God where we are free to worship, socialize, and discuss. This life is only a temporary existence. Heaven is where we can exist forever. The day heaven’s gates are opened is the day we begin our lives, not here on earth. The purpose of heaven is to provide a place for us to live. [Source]
  
  Then;
  
  What is the purpose of living for eternity in a perfected state with God? In a perfected state with God to provide all it would be Eternally Perfect (and ultimately, Undifferentiated) Bliss, all there is to be known would become known; eternal life in Heaven would quickly become static, unchanging, unremarkable and boring spent in worship of God. Eternal life is ultimately pointless and without merit.
  
  The real question is: Ultimately, what is the difference between heaven and hell?
  
  Nothing. Against an infinite eternity, Heaven and Hell are interchangeable.
  
  ----
  
  Here are some suggestions for Christian debate topics:
  
  
• The actions attributed to God in the bible are all of a positive morality
  
• Yahweh is and always been the one and only true God
  
• The purpose of an infinite eternity in heaven and why that purpose is good for those in heaven
  
• Evidence to support the mind-body dualism of a soul
  
• Evidence to support that the Christian God is the creator of the universe and still intervenes within the universe in a meaningful way
  
• Present a coherent definition of God and show how free will is possible (or impossible) under that construct
  
• Evidence to support the resurrection of Christ that is non-Biblical
  
• Why has prayer never resulted in the healing of an amputee to include at least one healed and fully finctional bone joint?
  
• How the conclusion of the parable of the Ten Minas concludes with a positive morality:
  
  Luke 19:27 But those enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them — bring them here and kill them in front of me.
  
  
• Genesis 3 (if you are a Genesis literalist) - Justify Christian morality against the Serpent (or Adversary) giving humankind morality (knowledge of good and evil) when God/Yahweh had decreed that humankind was not to have morality (forbid humans to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil).
  
• Why the divine or inspired word of God and Christ and the Spirit was so directed and appropriate for a small low-population tribe of desert dwellers with it's late bronze age/early iron age society applies to today's society.
  
• Why the overwhelming majority of Christians, in the one true religion for the one true and only God, seem to be only located in geo-political-socio-groups that they were born, and indoctrinated, into rather than distributed throughout other regions where other religions are prominent.
  
• Does God have free will?
  
• Why worship a God, Yahweh/YHWH, as the one true and only mono-theistic God when all historical documentation shows that Yahweh did not start out as anything more than a subordinate desert rain/fertility/warrior god to the Canaanite/Ugarit people that would later become known as Israelites (and hence to Jews and from there Christians and Muslims). During the period that Genesis and Exodus (1450-1410 BCE'ish) were (supposedly) being written, represented a time when the religion of the region was still in convergence, differentiation and displacement (synthesis and syncretism) of the polytheistic triad of the most prominent Canaanite and Ugarit Gods: El (the father God), Asherah (goddess, wife or companion to El), and Baal (storm/rain God, son of El) [though there is reference in Ugarit documents to Yahweh also being one of the sons of El] to the monolatry of the storm/rain God Yahweh and from there to monotheistic worship where Yahweh took the supreme position. References to Gods that predate, and are contemporary to, Yahweh can be found throughout the old testament.
  
  More online references with discussion the origin of the monotheistic God of Israel:
  
  
• Israelite Religion to Judaism: the Evolution of the Religion of Israel
  
• The Origins and Gradual Adoption of Monotheism Amongst the Ancient Israelites
  
• The evolution of God
  
• Ugarit and the Bible
  
  Other:
  
  
• The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel by Mark Smith
  
• The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel's Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts by Mark S. Smith
  
• A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam by Karen Armstrong
  
• The Religion of Ancient Israel (Library of Ancient Israel) by Patrick D. Miller
  
• Religions of Ancient Israel: A Synthesis of Parallactic Approaches by Ziony Zevit
  
  

Thank you for the effort! I'll try to do you justice with a thorough response.

----

> 1. God says what he needs to say to us through the Bible.

Sure it's the Bible and not Harry Potter? To anyone without your obvious bias, the Bible looks like a collection of fanciful but poorly edited fiction. God's message hasn't reached me and it hasn't reached 5 billion other humans alone among the living. In other words, if this is an omnipotent's idea of effective communication, God sucks as a communicator.

> 2. God is not inert, he sometimes does miracles

Prove this and I'll leave you alone. Has God ever healed an amputee? Has God ever accomplished a miracle that has no natural explanation?

No wait, references to the work of fiction mentioned in #1 don't count. There is not the slightest bit of evidence that your precious Bible is anything more than a stack of useful rolling papers. I've addressed this before. J.K. Rowling has Harry Potter performing scores of miracles in her books, it's really easy to create a miracle with pen and paper.

> 3. The evidence is not inadequate. If you want evidence of his existence, there is evidence everywhere, and in sheer necessity, it is pointed out that God must exist.

So you say. Your following arguments are... sorely lacking. Here we go:

> 3.1 The need of a creator
If you saw a car in the forest, you wouldn't say it randomly came into existence and over time came together by itself, because it is too complex for that to have happened.

Correct. That's easy for me to say because I know exactly what a car is and how it's made.

> In the same way, this universe and everything in it is far too complex to randomly explode into existence and come together by itself, a creator is needed and that creator is God.

Your analogy doesn't hold. The universe is not very complex conceptually, it's been satisfactorily explained how all heavenly bodies resulted from the expansion of space followed by the clumping of clouds of primeval hydrogen. Suns and the nuclear process in them? A natural consequence of packing a lot of hydrogen with gravity. Heavy elements? The ashes of nuclear fusion. Planets circling around suns? That's what happens when heavenly bodies nearly collide in a vacuum, influenced only by each other's gravity. Finally, the complexity of life on earth is neatly explained by evolution from very primitive beginnings from substances that occur -naturally- in the void of lifeless space. No magic is required to explain any of this. But I see we get to talk about this in greater depth in #4.

Still, for your interest, this video refutes Craig's Kalam Cosmological argument and is thoroughly captivating while presenting modern cosmology. Highly recommended!

> 3.2 The need for an original mover/causer
You know nothing moves by itself correct?

No, I don't know this, because I have a solid education in physics. Atomic nuclei spontaneously explode and particles fly from them - movement without a mover. Plato's Prime Mover argument dates back to a time when people didn't know anything about physics and science was done by sitting on your butt, guessing and thinking.

> 3.3 The need of a standard
When you call something, for instance let's say "good", there has to be a standard upon which good is based.

This response of yours -so far- is sounding suspiciously like a copy of a William Lane Craig debate argument. Please note that all of his arguments have been successfully refuted - though not necessarily within one debate or only within debates. But regardless, I can easily address your arguments on my own.

Now then. Basic moral behavior has been shown to emerge naturally as a result of evolution. Yes, this is why theists hate evolution so much. It explains a lot of stuff that used to be attributed to God. Animals in the wild show moral behavior such as altruism, fairness, love, cooperation, justice and so forth. Even robot simulations, given only the most minimal initial instructions, develop "moral" behavior because that turns out to be a successful selection criteria for survival.

If you try to point out that humans display and think about much more complex moral situations than animals, I'll agree. But you know who invented those extensions of purely survival-oriented moral behavior? Humans did, not God. Humans look at the behaviors that promote survival and well-being in animals and humans and call it "good." They see behavior that hurts and kills animals and people and makes them suffer, and they call it "bad." Your five year old kid can grasp this concept - you insult your god when you claim this is so difficult it necessarily requires divine intervention. I recommend Peter Singer's book Practical Ethics, a thoughtful and thorough discussion of morals far more nuanced and acceptable to a modern society than the barbaric postulates of scripture. Rape a virgin, buy her as a wife for 50 shekels, indeed!

> 4.1 About the Origin of Life/Finely tuning a killer cosmos

> Anyway, for life to come together even by accident, you would need matter

Correct.

> now the universe is not infinite and even scientists know that.

I'm not sure that's certain, but it's probably irrelevant. Let's move on.

> that scientists say made the universe would need matter present.

Correct. We certainly observe a helluva lot of matter in the present-day universe (to the extent we can observe it).

> Where do you expect that matter to have come from?

An empty geometry and some very basic laws of physics (including quantum physics). This is very un-intuitive, which is why people restricted to Platonic thinking have trouble with it. But you know that matter and energy are equivalent, via E=mc^2 , right? Given the raw physics of the very early universe, matter could be created from energy and vice versa. OK, that still doesn't explain where the (matter+energy) came from. Here's the fun part: it turns out that the universe contains not just the conventional "positive" energy we're familiar with, but also negative energy. And it turns out that the sum of (matter + positive energy) on one hand and (negative energy) on the other are exactly equal and cancel out. In other words, and this is important, the creation of the universe incurred no net "cost" in matter or energy. This being the case, it becomes similarly plausible for for the entire universe to have spontaneously popped into existence just like those sub-atomic particles that cause the Casimir Effect. Stephen Hawking has explained this eloquently in his book The Grand Design but you may prefer Lawrence Krauss' engaging lecture A Universe From Nothing.

> I know for a fact that people are smarter than an explosion and even they have been unsuccessful in making organic life forms from scratch

Wrong again. It took them 15 years, but Craig Venter and his project recently succeeded in constructing the first self-replicating synthetic bacterial cell.

By way of interest, people making the kind of claims you do were similarly amazed when Friedrich Wöhler, in 1828, synthesized the first chemical compound, urea, that is otherwise only created by living beings. This achievement torpedoed the Vital Force theory dating back to Galen. Yet another job taken off God's hands.

> let alone have them survive the forming of a planet.

Now this is just dumb. First the planet formed, then it cooled down a bit, then life developed.

> Because of that, I doubt an explosion could do it either.

So you're right there: The explosion just created the planet and the raw materials. Life later arose on the planet.

> Chance doesn't make matter pop into existence.

Yes it does. The effect I was mentioning earlier is called quantum fluctuation.

> 4.2 The human brain

(skipping the comparison of man with god. I don't see it contributing anything. All of this postulating doesn't make God plausible in any way)

> 4.3 The Original Christian Cosmos

> 4.3.1. Maybe because we are after the fall, we have already lost that perfect original cosmos Paul imagined.

Wait, this contradicts your next point.

> 4.3.2 You have to give Paul some credit for trying. He didn't have any the information or technology we have today.

Thank you, this confirms my assertion that the Bible and its authors contain no divinely inspired knowledge. The Bible is a collection of writings by people who thought you could cleanse leprosy by killing a couple of pigeons.

Now, about that original cosmos: either Paul was too uneducated to conceive the cosmos as it really exists, or what he imagined is irrelevant. In any case, what you consider the "after loss" cosmos is trillions of times larger than Paul imagined; it would be silly to call this a loss.

The fact remains that the world as described in the Bible is a pitiful caricature of the world as it is known today. And Carrier's main point remains that our cosmos is incredibly hostile to life; and if man were indeed God's favorite creation, the immensity of the cosmos would be a complete waste if it only served as a backdrop for our tiny little planet.

On science and evolution:

Genetics is where it's at. There is a ton of good fossil evidence, but genetics actually proves it on paper. Most books you can get through your local library (even by interlibrary loan) so you don't have to shell out for them just to read them.

Books:

The Making of the Fittest outlines many new forensic proofs of evolution. Fossil genes are an important aspect... they prove common ancestry. Did you know that humans have the gene for Vitamin C synthesis? (which would allow us to synthesize Vitamin C from our food instead of having to ingest it directly from fruit?) Many mammals have the same gene, but through a mutation, we lost the functionality, but it still hangs around.

Deep Ancestry proves the "out of Africa" hypothesis of human origins. It's no longer even a debate. MtDNA and Y-Chromosome DNA can be traced back directly to where our species began.

To give more rounded arguments, Hitchens can't be beat: God Is Not Great and The Portable Atheist (which is an overview of the best atheist writings in history, and one which I cannot recommend highly enough). Also, Dawkin's book The Greatest Show on Earth is a good overview of evolution.

General science: Stephen Hawking's books The Grand Design and A Briefer History of Time are excellent for laying the groundwork from Newtonian physics to Einstein's relativity through to the modern discovery of Quantum Mechanics.

Bertrand Russell and Thomas Paine are also excellent sources for philosophical, humanist, atheist thought; but they are included in the aforementioned Portable Atheist... but I have read much of their writings otherwise, and they are very good.

Also a subscription to a good peer-reviewed journal such as Nature is awesome, but can be expensive and very in depth.

Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate is also an excellent look at the human mind and genetics. To understand how the mind works, is almost your most important tool. If you know why people say the horrible things they do, you can see their words for what they are... you can see past what they say and see the mechanisms behind the words.

I've also been studying Zen for about a year. It's non-theistic and classed as "eastern philosophy". The Way of Zen kept me from losing my mind after deconverting and then struggling with the thought of a purposeless life and no future. I found it absolutely necessary to root out the remainder of the harmful indoctrination that still existed in my mind; and finally allowed me to see reality as it is instead of overlaying an ideology or worldview on everything.

Also, learn about the universe. Astronomy has been a useful tool for me. I can point my telescope at a galaxy that is more than 20 million light years away and say to someone, "See that galaxy? It took over 20 million years for the light from that galaxy to reach your eye." Creationists scoff at millions of years and say that it's a fantasy; but the universe provides real proof of "deep time" you can see with your own eyes.

Videos:

I recommend books first, because they are the best way to learn, but there are also very good video series out there.

BestofScience has an amazing series on evolution.

AronRa's Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism is awesome.

Thunderfoot's Why do people laugh at creationists is good.

Atheistcoffee's Why I am no longer a creationist is also good.

Also check out TheraminTrees for more on the psychology of religion; Potholer54 on The Big Bang to Us Made Easy; and Evid3nc3's series on deconversion.

Also check out the Evolution Documentary Youtube Channel for some of the world's best documentary series on evolution and science.

I'm sure I've overlooked something here... but that's some stuff off the top of my head. If you have any questions about anything, or just need to talk, send me a message!

> Science has always been a way to understand God better for Christians.

has it? Or have Christians been forcing their 'worldview' on others for 2,000 years claiming to have special knowledge about the mysteries of existence and life after death with no other evidence than a book and their own personal 'revelations'. For most of that time, their claim to absolute truth was absolute and unchallengeable. The advancement of sciences in the areas of physics, biology, astronomy and chemistry, especially in the last 200 years, have been able to explain many of the mysteries that confounded our ancestors, and have transformed our lives in tangibly positive ways. Take leprosy: People in Biblical times thought leprosy was a sign of sin against God, and so you were 'unclean'. Of course nobody believes that anymore (to his credit, it seems Jesus didn't buy into it either). According to wikipedia: In the past 20 years, 15 million people worldwide have been cured of leprosy, which is caused by the bacteria Mycobacterium leprae. It's one example but I'm sure you can think of many more. The church has lost so much ground to science that there are only a few little islands of mystery from which to they try to claim authority and justification for their philosophies, such as:

> the Bible is kind of like an ethical cheat sheet, from an omniscient God who actually knows the answers
> even those who didn't hear about God know what's right & wrong

and you have your own theory:

> God started things off, realized natural selection was a great way to set up a diverse planet, and probably intervened a bit in the ape -> human transition.

Now, you are basically saying that the differences we perceive between a human and a chimpanzee are actually the direct result of a deliberate intervention, at a specific time in the past, by a creator god (from outer space), who engineered the development of our culture, giving us laws, clothing, marriage, and possibly music and mathematics. It's an interesting theory, but whats the motivation?

> man is different from the animals

This is the central issue. Logically, if we are animals than either animals have souls (and we should all be vegetarians, or burn as murderers), or humans do not have souls (and there is no eternal life for believers). This is a catch-22 for a bible believing christians and meat-eaters. Maybe you can say animals do have souls, but God said we can eat them so its OK. This is kind of like saying God is an asshole who arbitrarily makes up the rules as he goes along (which is a solid theological position - just ask Job: the Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away).

I think to separate ourselves from the animals is to deny the truth of what science has shown us about ourselves. For Christians, science may be just a way to understand God better, but for the rest of us it is a way to understand reality better. Of course Christians want there to be no conflict between faith in the Bible and reality because no philosophy can exist without being rooted to some degree in reality; otherwise it is just a fantasy.

Let me back up a second. You said you believe the Bible is true and historically accurate, and I won't ask you what evidence you have for believing that. I used to believe as you did, that the Bible is true, and so is evolution but that somehow there is no conflict and the two work together - that somehow there in the whole mix of life evolving naturally, God intervened and sent Jesus to fulfill his mysterious plan so that we can all live forever in heaven. I just didn't want to accept that all those people (including my family) could be wrong; they are obviously sincere in their beliefs. For several years I found various ways to explain it all without accepting a 'naturalistic worldview', and all that implies including a very high probability of there being no life after death. I might still believe in the Bible if I hadn't started reading science books and watching BBC documentaries... yep Attenborough offered me the red pill and i took it.

If you can pretend for a moment you were born in Africa or Asia, in some remote tribe with no written language. You wouldn't have any reason to trust in a book you could not read; everything you know about the universe has been explained to you by those around you, those who came before, those who were close in the beginning. This is the same experience as any animal that learns how to hunt or fly or build nests from their parents.

The book I mentioned, Our Inner Ape documents the social behavior and societies of bonobos and chimpanzees, written by noted primatologist Frans de Waal who has studied these unique primates for decades. It's a fascinating read and may surprise you to see how many behaviors people tend to think of as uniquely 'human' are, in fact, shared by our closely-related ape cousins. In fact, de Waal shows, all major traits are shared, including language, toolmaking, and the full range of emotional states. Within the ape societies, the apes have their own standards of 'right' and 'wrong' behavior that they enforce in the same ways we do: shunning some, rewarding others, punishing the worst offenders. They learn from each other, and pass on skills to their offspring.

Evolution, as I understand it, is the theory that explains how more efficient/adapted forms emerge from the natural processes of entropy and diffusion. The theory explains how natural processes have driven our biological development, and also why men have nipples. Biological evolution is a special case; Evolution itself is a law of Nature, at a more elementary level, in the realm of Physics or Math.

All of our languages, customs, art, music, and every other thinking pattern has evolved through these same natural processes. Basically, I'm describing Memes. Have you ever thought about Christianity as a Meme? Of the Catholic Church as an organism whose main goal is to ensure its own survival? We have been and continue to evolve, quite rapidly, both biologically and culturally. Every individual and every idea wants to survive, but not everything gets successfully passed to the next generation. Every meme and species is only one generation away from becoming extinct. Adapt or die. This is why the mainstream church is becoming warmer to the idea of evolution, why the Vatican apologized for Galileo - survival of the religion is more important than orthodoxy.

The line between science and philosophy and religion get blurred with evolution because it answers, quite elegantly, the 'big' question: where did we come from? For this reason, it is a threat to all memes based on the idea of a 'creator god' because it nullifies this concept directly. Indirectly, it has the potential to erode the foundations underneath many religions. But I don't think the ideas of evolution are really a threat to you, me, our standards of morality, our way of life or anything else. The victims are a literal interpretation of the Bible and belief in a 'creator god'. Why not let it go? If you had never read the Bible, would you really be a less moral person? really? If not for that one book all people would know nothing but evil and be totally selfish to each other? Is this one book worth deliberately lobotomizing yourself? You'll go crazy trying to reconcile it; do you want to end up like Ray Comfort or Ken Ham?

A couple other interesting books you might enjoy if you feel like taking the red pill:

Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind

Your Inner Fish

Sorry for the novel, kind got caught up in it :)

Yes, it was posted already, but not in this way. I want to post THIS to them making them think they are going to that article.

Well for starters, there will never be "one Christian nation". It is as big of a war in the country (on a much smaller scale of course) than what other religions around the world are fighting about.

That's the first thing that got me on my way to where I stand now after growing up a Christain. I lost my faith when I couldn't fathom all the religions all over the world. I read today in Sagans Pale Blue Dot there is something like 1000 religions world wide (1996 standards too). I am not sure if this includes tribes as well. Any religious person that is questing their faith too, should at least try Sam Harris: Letter to a Christain Nation. Its a very short read, I had the audio book and it was less than 2 hours. And if that intrigued you enough, then try one of the many other great books on the subject. Or about astrology. Carl Sagan is always great to start with. That is unless of course--if you ever had doubts. We are not here to convert, but to send the peaceful message of letting us be free spirits without ridicule or persecution. And remember this, more Atheists are made from reading the Bible (and not making sense of the fallacies). Knowing what science has taught us about the Universe and our small existence in it. And what is now known no longer a theory--Natural Selection. You can keep changing the ideals for what religion now allows compared to beginning of it's origin. Or you can give in. It is the wave of the future, the free mind thinkers.

Question Everything!

Free thinkers are intelligent enough to question what we feel in our heart is NOT the answer. We learned our morals from our upbringings and treating others as you wished to be treated, and that includes not just judging without knowing the facts. We are not afraid to conform to what we know is right. Like agreeing with what 93% of all scientist now agree on...or 67 of the known Nobel Prize winners. That will admit of course. They all agree that not knowing enough to know the answer does not require conforming to religion, because it's not the answer. Even if you were to say you are a Secular Diest, you're not renouncing God, you're just seeking the answer to attest your final faith if that is you don't eventually move to the dark side...I mean free side.

Read another book. Be open minded and realize

Signed

ATHEIST!

Yes, I do believe it is by chance and I don't believe one needs to posit a god as the creator of the universe to explain its existence. And if one does, then where did that god come from?

E.g., one could explain the existence of the universe as the eminent theoretical physicist and cosmologist Steven Hawking did in The Grand Design.

>In his latest book, The Grand Design, an extract of which is published in Eureka magazine in The Times, Hawking said: “Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist.”
>
>He added: “It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the Universe going.”

Source: Stephen Hawking: God was not needed to create the Universe

I know it is hard for many people to accept that chance is involved in our existence. The theoretical physicist Albert Einstein is reputed to have remarked about God in relation to quantum mechanics that "I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice", which is commonly paraphrased as "God does not play dice with the universe." Supposedly, either Neils Bohr or Enrico Fermi remarked "Stop telling God what to do with his dice." - Source. And, Stephen Hawking remarked in a 1994 debate with Roger Penrose that "Consideration of black holes suggests, not only that God does play dice, but that he sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can't be seen." Source.

Note: One shouldn't assume that the use of "God" by any of them means the notion of God commonly held by Christians today. But, their remarks do show that there has been much disagreement among eminent physicists regarding the role that chance plays in the universe.

If by chance most species of dinosaurs on earth had not been wiped out by a cataclysmic event, such as an asteroid strike on earth, 65 million years ago, the creatures posing the question "Do you really think that our existence is owed just to chance" might look something like one of the creatures depicted here.

We may simply be like that puddle mentioned by Douglas Adams.

>This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in - an interesting hole I find myself in - fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for. We all know that at some point in the future the Universe will come to an end and at some other point, considerably in advance from that but still not immediately pressing, the sun will explode. We feel there's plenty of time to worry about that, but on the other hand that's a very dangerous thing to say.

Source: Is there an Artificial God?

As to why humans tend to find certain environmental features beautiful, well natural selection offers an explanation.

>One of the most important considerations in the survival of any organism is habitat selection. Until the development of cities 10,000 years ago, human life was mostly nomadic. Finding desirable conditions for survival, particularly with an eye towards potential food and predators, would have selectively affected the human response to landscape—the capacity of landscape types to evoke positive emotions, rejection, inquisitiveness, and a desire to explore, or a general sense of comfort. Responses to landscape types have been tested in an experiment in which standardized photographs of landscape types were shown to people of different ages and in different countries: deciduous forest, tropical forest, open savannah with trees, coniferous forest, and desert. Among adults, no category stood out as preferred (except that the desert landscape fell slightly below the preference rating of the others). However, when the experiment was applied to young children, it was found that they showed a marked preference for savannahs with trees-exactly the East African landscape where much early human evolution took place (Orians and Heerwagen 1992). Beyond a liking for savannahs, there is a general preference for landscapes with water; a variety of open and wooded space (indicating places to hide and places for game to hide); trees that fork near the ground (provide escape possibilities) with fruiting potential a metre or two from the ground; vistas that recede in the distance, including a path or river that bends out of view but invites exploration; the direct presence or implication of game animals; and variegated cloud patterns. The savannah environment is in fact a singularly food-rich environment (calculated in terms of kilograms of protein per square kilometre), and highly desirable for a hunter-gatherer way of life. Not surprisingly, these are the very elements we see repeated endlessly in both calendar art and in the design of public parks worldwide.

Source: Aesthetics and Evolutionary Psychology

Or see Survival of the Beautiful: Art, Science, and Evolution by David Rothenberg

No, you certainly don't seem arrogant to me. I wouldn't assume just because someone has a different opinion on such matters that means he or she is arrogant. Nor do I downvote people just because their views don't match my own as I noticed someone did to your comments.

One of the reasons I visit reddit is to expose myself to others' viewpoints so that I can, hopefully, learn from doing so.

I would go with Demon Haunted World over the God Delusion. Dawkins may be the polemicist du jour, but I think Sagan's approach is way more effective for situations like this. He's far more subtle about making you think, whereas Dawkins' brash rhetoric can just make people instinctively defensive and shut down honest introspection.

Also, might I suggest Godless by Dan Barker? He was an Evangelical preacher for almost two decades before becoming an atheist, so he knows all about Christianity and may have an approach to which your friend might be more sympathetic.

Do the lectures have to be in person? Where do you live? Skepticon 5 is coming up in Springfield, Missouri and there will be plenty of amazing talks there (though they will be primarily aimed at people who are already skeptics). They have many, many fantastic lectures already posted online from past conferences, so I highly suggest perusing them at your leisure.

If you do choose a lecture on evolution, make sure it's a good one. You can't debate science the same way you can debate philosophical or theological ideas that rest upon logic alone. Everything depends on the data. Make sure it explores what would need to be true if evolution were not true.

For example, if all species on Earth nearly perished in a global flood, they would all have an extreme population bottleneck at the exact same period which would show up very obviously in their genetic diversity. However, this is not true for the vast majority of species on Earth. Cheetahs, however, are so genetically similar due to a population bottleneck during the last ice age that they can accept skin transplants from any other cheetah without an immune response. But, they are still diverse enough that the mutation rate required to gain this diversity in the span of four thousand years would be so great that the species would have gone extinct simply from birth defects.

Anyway, Ken Miller might be a good place to start. He's a Christian as well, but is basically responsible for destroying Intelligent Design.

Also, just because I think so highly of this talk, you should check this out (and here's an updated version more oriented towards effective strategy that goes over some of the same material but expands on other areas). It has tons of valuable suggestions for how to be effective in getting people to question their beliefs and avoiding common pitfalls and red herrings.

I went through a very similar experience in losing my faith; it was rough, and it was rocky. I had a lot of the same feelings--wanting to believe, just in case my doubts were wrong, feeling sad at losing what had been a huge part of my identity, but feeling relieved also...and then feeling really guilty about it. It's a real roller-coaster of emotions, and it's hard to go through; I sympathize!

I feel much better, having lost my belief entirely and let go of religion; those feelings of self-loathing, self-doubt, and fear that are given to those of us who grow up in religious settings are hard to let go of, but we are better off without them. They are not healthy, psychologically or emotionally. Someone else pointed out that the kind of relationship we're taught to have with god is very similar to the relationship you'd have with an abusive spouse; it's a connection I've made before, too, and making it gave me a lot of courage and strength, which is what it takes to walk away from an abusive relationship of any kind.

My advice? Give yourself some time to relax and breathe. It's not the devil making you have these thoughts; it's the exercise of your reason, and you should feel proud that you are intelligent and perceptive enough to see through the bullshit given to you by people whose real motive (whether they know it or not) is to control you.

Also, now is a great time to gather some information. If you've got $10, I recommend picking up Godless, by Dan Barker. It's a great book, and it made me feel a lot more comfortable with my own growing atheism; it addressed a lot of the concerns I had, and talked about some very similar experiences, and gave me a place to start looking for other information.

As for how to get to a place of being comfortable and not feeling guilty...that just takes time, as do all major adjustments. For me, it mostly consisted of examining what it was I was feeling guilty about, and then realizing that there was no objective reason to feel guilty--that I hadn't done anything wrong, and that the things I had been taught to hate about myself (doubt, questioning, curiosity, sexuality, etc.) weren't bad; all of those things are natural, and beneficial as well.

If you're having a really difficult time, I'd recommend spending some time with a support group or spending a few sessions with a counselor. There are lots of sites on the web that offer support and services for those going through the de-conversion process; do a search for "ex-Christian support group" or something along those lines and spend some time exploring, or try a place like Ex-Christian.net or Losing My Religion.

Above all, don't stop exercising your curiosity and your reason! I wish you good luck, support, and a good journey. :)

Since you are actually talking about majoring in a field of biology, I would recommend two books to start playing catch-up with what your high school science teachers misinformed you about.

The first I'm going to recommend is Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin. I'm recommending this first because the author is the paleontologist who found tiktaalik and describes exactly how he did it. He wanted to see the intermediate form specifically of the arm bones, before the well-known pattern of one bone (upper arm), two bones (lower arm), lots of blobby bones (wrist, fingers, etc.; his words from my memory at the lecture and book signing in New York).

So, when he went looking for this intermediate fossil (yes, it was not a chance find), he knew the time frame of the evolutionary change (if I remember correctly, 365-375 MYA). He picked up a geology text and looked for exposed sedimentary rocks (because they may contain fossils) of the right age in a place that had not already been pored over by other paleontologists. A quick look at a map in the book and he found that Canada's Ellesmere Island (way the fuck up north and relatively untraveled even by paleontologists) had the right age sedimentary rocks. It took 3 short summers of extreme expeditions to the island, but he found the fossil that he allowed the Inuit people who helped him to name "Tiktaalik" in the Inuit language.

It's an excellent book that explains not only about the fossil but points out that when searching for a "missing link" predicted by evolution, it is possible to actively go looking for them in the right type and age of rock. It also describes a whole host of features of human anatomy and fetal development that only make sense because of our long history as members of the taxa sarcopterygii. Yes, we're still members of the taxa of lobe-finned fish from which we evolved for the same reason we are still mammals and apes. We are still in the taxa in which we evolved.

The other book I'd recommend is more of a general book on evolution by the late great Steven Jay Gould. Gould was far less anti-religion than Dawkins and is more matter of fact about evolution and less vitriolic. He came up with the idea of "non-overlapping magisteria", an idea I personally reject quite strongly. He also, along with Niles Eldridge, came up with the theory of punctuated equilibrium. So, he was kind of a big name in evolution as well as having been excellent at explaining the concepts.

His book Full House is not only truly excellent, it also ends (spoiler alert) with a great quote from Darwin, "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."

Indeed there is! Far more so than the hubris of attempting to explain us as the creation in his own image of a narcissistic god.

As a last comment, please note that any attempt to dismiss intermediate forms is likely possible only because we're stuck with the Lamarckian binomial naming scheme that does not allow for any mechanism by which to state that a particular fossil is 63 percent of the way between species one and species two which also happen to be randomly chosen points along some random branch in the evolutionary bush of life.

TL;DR: Two book recommendations and the reasons for recommending those in particular and a bit of information about each of the books. Then, my own opinion of the Lamarckian naming scheme. Sorry, bad TL;DR. But, this post was long enough to need one and this is the best I could do.

P.S. Best wishes for success in your very important field of study!

> as I have no proof that we evolved from other animals/etc.

Such proof abounds. If you're going to debate these people, you need to know some of it.

I don't mean enough to ask a couple of questions, I mean enough to carry both sides of the conversation, because he'll make you do all the heavy lifting.

Start with talkorigins.org.

First, the FAQ
Maybe the 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution next,
then the pieces on observed instances of speciation

See the extensive FAQs index

Here are their questions for creationsists - see both links there

and then read the index to creationist claims

That's just to start. Take a look at the Outline (which starts with an outline of the outline!)

If you're going to talk with a creationist, you either need to get some idea of the topography or you'll end up chasing in circles around the same tree again and again.

Yes, it looks like a major time investment, but once you start to become familiar with it, it gets easier quickly. Don't aim to learn it all by heart - but you should know when there is an answer to a question, and where to find it.

read books like Your Inner Fish and Why Evolution Is True and The Greatest Show on Earth

I list Your Inner Fish first because it tells a great story about how Shubin and his colleagues used evolutionary theory and geology to predict where they should look for an intermediate fossil linking ancient fish and amphibians (a "transitional form") - and they went to that location, and found just such a fossil. This makes a great question for your creationist - given fossils are kind of rare, how the heck did he manage that? If evolution by natural selection is false, why does that kind of scientific prediction WORK? Is God a deceiver, trying to make it look exactly like evolution happens?? Or maybe, just maybe, the simpler explanation is true - that evolution actually occurs. (Then point out that many major Christian churches officially endorse evolution. They understand that the evidence is clear)

It's a good idea to read blogs like Panda's Thumb, Why Evolution Is True, Pharyngula, erv (old posts here) and so on, which regularly blog on new research that relates to evolution.

Make sure you know about the experiments by Lenski et al on evolution of new genes

Don't take "no proof" as an argument. The evidence is overwhelming.

Define God. What is God to a Christian? What is it that they truly believe in? Love? Kindness? Slow to anger? Show your wife a list of things that you believe in and that she believes in. Show her that you still share belief in many things.

I have not read these books but they are from former Christians. Their logic and perspective maybe helpful.
Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists
Christian No More: On Leaving Christianity, Debunking Christianity, And Embracing Atheism And Freethinking

Give her time to adjust. And, if you truly love and want to be with your wife, PROVE IT. Be romantic. Tell her you love her. Tell her you want her to be your wife. Tell her you want to grow old with her. Tell her what a great friend she is. Love notes. Flowers. Phone messages. Text messages. Facebook messages. Do whatever it takes. Even give her control of the TV remote.

I don't know of the consequences but if you have to, you can bring up the Bible verses which say that it is good not to leave a non-believing spouse, not bring up the unforgivable sin of blasphemy against God.

Good luck to you. Be patient with her.

I've had a similar obsession with the bible over the years. It made no sense to me when I was part of a church but everything opened up once I realized it's one of the best insights we have into the ancient mind and I find it fun to read now.

The top response to this post says the god of the Old Testament is the same as the god of the New but that's because they are looking at it only as a religious text. Looking at it as a historical document you can clearly see a progression over time from a Polytheistic War god at the beginning who demands blood sacrifices to a Monotheistic vengeful god of a chosen few. The New Testament is clearly written with Greek/Roman influences and a kinder god that was changed in ways to better fit and grow in that society.

If you haven't read it already, a good first book on the subject is Who Wrote the Bible by Friedman. I like The Bible Unearthed by Finklestein and Ehrmann's books are good too. There are dozens of other good overviews that show the Bible's progression from ancient campfire stories to the form we see today. After reading a few, I don't see how anyone can seriously believe the Bible is the unerring word of god.

I know I'll never convince my family members that Christianity is wrong so I've focused my efforts to get them to understand the bible was written by man. Even if we grant them that a god actually spoke to Moses and Jesus is his literal son neither man wrote the words in the book. Later men took the stories and wrote them down. The books of the Torah were finalized 600+ years after Moses is supposed to have lived. The Gospels were written 50 years after Jesus is said to have died. These writers were not gods and to say they were divinely inspired is a cop-out. They interpreted what they heard but these men were also products of their times. They practiced blood sacrifice and accepted slavery nor did they have a fraction of our understanding of the world. It's why you can't take the book literally.

There may be truths in the Bible but you have to look behind the words to find them.

Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why is a wonderful and much more complete picture of where we stand in textual criticism of the Bible.

And what the author fails to point out is that if you take the best translations of the best texts (many not available when the King James Version was written) and compare them, you just don't get that many differences.

The King James is often more poetically written, even with some slight inaccuracies in the process.

As a theist, I find the process of textual criticism fascinating, and it reinforces my belief that the very heart of Christianity isn't in its theology, but in the First and Second Commandments (as reportedly taught by Christ):

• Love God with all your heart
  
• Love your neighbor as yourself
  
  Nothing there about making my neighbor conform to my morals and ethics. Everything there about me treating my neighbor with respect and honor, as I would want to be treated myself. Coupled with other teachings of Jesus, and clearly the idea that we are supposed to police the behavior of others is not Christian, despite any issues of textual criticism. We are instead to police ourselves.
  
  Edit tl;dr: Anyone who invests heavily into theological concepts that hinge on just a word or two in these texts is already playing with fire. On the other hand, committing to the core ethical and moral teachings in these texts is pretty safe.
  

Overviews of the evidence:

The greatest show on earth

Why evolution is true

Books on advanced evolution:

The selfish gene

The extended phenotype

Climbing mount improbable

The ancestors tale

It is hard to find a better author than Dawkins to explain evolutionary biology. Many other popular science books either don't cover the details or don't focus entirely on evolution.

I will hit one point though.

>I have a hard time simply jumping from natural adaption or mutation or addition of information to the genome, etc. to an entirely different species.

For this you should understand two very important concepts in evolution. The first is a reproductive barrier. Basically as two populations of a species remain apart from each other (in technical terms we say there is no gene flow between them) then repoductive barriers becomes established. These range in type. There are behavioral barriers, such as certain species of insects mating at different times of the day from other closely related species. If they both still mated at the same time then they could still produce viable offspring. Other examples of behavior would be songs in birds (females will only mate with males who sing a certain way). There can also be physical barriers to reproduction, such as producing infertile offspring (like a donkey and a horse do) or simply being unable to mate (many bees or flies have different arrangements of their genitalia which makes it difficult or impossible to mate with other closely related species. Once these barriers exist then the two populations are considered two different species. These two species can now further diverge from each other.

The second thing to understand is the locking in of important genes. Evolution does not really take place on the level of the individual as most first year biology courses will tell you. It makes far more sense to say that it takes place on the level of the gene (read the selfish gene and the extended phenotype for a better overview of this). Any given gene can have a mutation that is either positive, negative, of neutral. Most mutations are neutral or negative. Let's say that a certain gene has a 85% chance of having a negative mutation, a 10% chance of a neutral mutation, and a 5% chance of a positive mutation. This gene is doing pretty good, from it's viewpoint it has an 85% chance of 'surviving' a mutation. What is meant by this is that even though one of it's offspring may have mutated there is an 85% chance that the mutated gene will perform worse than it and so the mutation will not replace it in the gene pool. If a neutral mutation happens then this is trouble for the original gene, because now there is a gene that does just as good a job as it in the gene pool. At this point random fluctuations of gene frequency called genetic drift take over the fate of the mutated gene (I won't go into genetic drift here but you should understand it if you want to understand evolution).

The last type of mutation, a positive mutation is what natural selection acts on. This type of mutation would also change the negative/neutral/positive mutation possibilities. so the newly positively mutated gene might have frequencies of 90/7/3 Already it has much better odds than the original gene. OK, one more point before I explain how this all ties together. Once a gene has reached the 100/0/0 point it does not mean that gene wins forever, there can still be mutations in other genes that affect it. A gene making an ant really good at flying doesn't matter much when the ant lives in tunnels and bites off its own wings, so that gene now has altered percentages in ants. It is this very complex web that makes up the very basics of mutations and how they impact evolution (if you are wondering how common mutations are I believe they happen about once every billion base pairs, so every human at conception has on average 4 mutations that were not present in either parent)

This all ties back together by understanding that body plan genes (called hox genes) lock species into their current body plans, by reducing the number of possible positive or neutral mutations they become crucial to the organisms survival. As evolutionary time progresses these genes become more and more locked in, meaning that the body plans of individuals become more and more locked in. So it is no wonder that coming in so late to the game as we are we see such diversity in life and we never see large scale form mutations. Those type of mutations became less likely as the hox genes became locked in their comfy spots on the unimpeachable end of the mutation probability pool. That is why it is hard to imagine one species evolving into another, and why a creationist saying that they will believe evolution when a monkey gives birth to a human is so wrong.

Hopefully I explained that well, it is kind of a dense subject and I had to skip some things I would rather have covered.

There's also the cyclic model; there's also a Wikipedia article on the cyclic model. That model seems to mesh better with Hinduism.

>If you are a Hindu philosopher, none of the above should surprise you. Hindu philosophy has always accepted the notion of an alternately expanding and contracting universe. In his book Cosmos, Carl Sagan pointed out how, in Hindu cosmology, the universe undergoes an infinite number of deaths and rebirths, and its timescales are in the same ballpark as those of modern cosmology. Here is a quote from Cosmos:
>
>"There is the deep and appealing notion that the universe is but a dream of the god who, after a hundred Brahma years, dissolves himself into a dreamless sleep. The universe dissolves with him - until, after another Brahma century, he stirs, recomposes himself and begins again to dream the cosmic dream.
>
>Meanwhile, elsewhere, there are an infinite number of universes, each with its own god dreaming the cosmic dream. These great ideas are tempered by another, perhaps greater. It is said that men may not be the dreams of gods, but rather that the gods are the dreams of men."

Reference: The Conscious Universe: Brahma's Dream

Or for the Big Bang model, one might address the question as Steven Hawking has in his book The Grand Design.

>He adds: "Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.
>
>"Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist.
>
>"It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going."

Reference: Stephen Hawking: God did not create Universe

In any case, one can ask "where did God" come from as well. One can say "God has always existed", but one can say the universe always existed or there were other universes before this one, etc., also. Our limited intellects and knowledge of the universe may keep humans from truly knowing the answer indefinitely.

How the universe was made?

I think the real crux of the question you're asking is how can something come from nothing? (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong; I don't want to speak for you) Let me just start off by saying there is no definitive scientific answer to this question... yet. However, there are very prominent research scientists who have tackled the question and come up with very cogent theories (backed up by current mathematical models).

I won't pretend to understand most of these theories as I'm a biologist, not a physicist. There is one recent book written on the very topic called A Universe from Nothing by Lawrence Krauss (he is a published theoretical physicist and cosmologist). He posits that particles do in fact spontaneously come into existence and there is scientific proof and reasoning for how and why. I haven't gotten around to reading it myself (it was just published this year), but I've been told it's good for the layman on the topic.

Now let me move on to some of the problems with this question. Perhaps you yourself don't have this supposition, but the supposition many theists make with the question (where did the universe come from?), is that if it can't be answered than God must have done it. This is a logical leap that defies rational reasoning, and is a leap theists have been making for millenia. What makes the tides go in and out? We don't know; must be God. What causes disease? We don't know; must be God. Where did the universe come from? We don't know; must be God?

It's what's known as a God of the gaps; wherein anything that can't be explained is conveniently claimed to have a divine explanation. Until a rational scientific answer comes along and religion takes a step back. There will likely always be gaps in our knowledge base (most definitely in our liftetimes). That doesn't mean we should make the same mistake as our ancestors and attribute these gaps to God. It's okay to simply not know and strive to understand.

Another huge problem with your question is that the theist answer only serves to further complicate the original question.

1. How can something come from nothing?
   
2. Well it can't right? So God must have created that original something.
   
3. God is something. Go back to step 1.
   
   Theists tend to skip that third step, or explain it away as God just always existing. Yet the universe always existing is something that is logically unacceptable to them. If anything, throwing God into the equation only makes it more complicated. A sentient being capable of creating the initial state of the universe would be more complex than what it is creating (meaning God is more complex than the universe). Trying to explain than how God came into being is more complicated than the original question, so nothing has really been answered or solved.
   
   If you're really trying to stump atheists, the best common theist argument I've seen is the cosmological constants one (how are they so fine tuned?). No doubt there are answers, but that's one of the better arguments out there. I won't go into it here, just search for it.

The evidence is all around us. Start with the fact that, by helping to focus the process of natural selection, we generated broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower and kale from a wild mustard plant known as Brassica oleracea. Similarly, all dog breeds are descendents of a small population of wolves. In the end, though, to get a handle on the specificity, power, scope and sheer quantity of evidence you (and she) will need to dig a little deeper into the subject.

That being said, if you're interested in a (relatively) quick explanation of what Evolutionary Theory actually is (and a little of the evidence for it) I'd suggest Evolution in Cartoon Form by Darryl Cunningham. It's long for a cartoon, but amazingly short for the number and depth of ideas about evolution it conveys.

Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne is an excellent book, written for general audiences with an interest in science, which lays out the evidence clearly and concisely. I'd suggest it as a good place to start. Dawkins' Greatest Show On Earth is also great and I personally prefer his writing style.

But if you're going to go with Dawkins, I can't help but also suggest The Blind Watchmaker. It's purpose isn't so much to provide all the evidence for evolution, but more to explore the underlying philosophy, implications and further insights which stem from the fact of evolution.

Becoming educated about evolution is a great ride, but its full impact might not be available in a quick, easy format.

Hope this helps. Have a blast.

Edit: I'd also like to second Loki5654's suggestion of Talk Origins.

Lead by example and let it go from there. Let him ask questions when he's ready. If he asks why doesn't he go to church like his friends do, you can tell him that you don't really believe in God, that you think you and your family are still good people, but would he like some information? Encourage him to ask questions and develop his own opinion.

Here are some resources for you, too.

Website: Atheist Parents

Books: Parenting Beyond Belief and Raising Freethinkers

Good luck, and congrats on your new family! You'll be a great parent. :)

There's more to chrisitinty than just the resurrection. What about Adam/Eve? Moses and the Exodus? Pretty much the rest of the OT? I mean, if Adam/Eve never existed, then why the need for Jesus? Basically there's no reason to think they did exist. There's no evidence for them. Same for Moses and the Exodus. No evidence of ~2M people wandering around for 40 yrs. To put that into perspective, that would be like everyone in modern day Austin, Tx picking up and roaming the mid-west without leaving a trace. Can you imagine that? And I don't even need to talk about Noah's flood, do I?

As for your other specifics, #1: There is no contemporary accounts backing up the bible's claim of a resurrection. Nothing about about the temple curtain ripping, an earthquake, the sky going black for 3 hrs, or (and this is one of my fav's) not a PEEP about dead saints coming out of their graves and were "seen by many". All of these were certainly note-worthy events but yet...*crickets*. The historians who do mention are people who lived after Jesus's time and were not eyewitness's. They're just relaying what was told to them and even that can't be considered reliable. The one that Christians like to point out is Josephus where he talks about people worshiping a guy named Jesus. Aside from just saying there were christians, which means nothing because it's like pointing out we have scientologist today, most historians consider that passage a later addition because it doesn't fit within that particular works. Kinda like seeing Darth Vader appear in a Star Trek film.

#2: What were their names? Where do they live? Where's their accounts? 10 million people saw me fly around in the air by me flapping my arms! Must be true because soooo many people saw it. Oh, who are they? Just ... people. No, I don't know any of their names but trust me, they saw it!

See how that works?

#3 & #4: Whether he was even buried by no less than a member of the Jewish high council who was calling for his death just the night before is a matter to cause one to raise their eyebrows but let's go with it. Let's assume he was. Which do you think it more likely: That someone removed the body? Or that he rose from the dead?

#5: Read up on the Heaven's Gate cult. All died for their beliefs but I'm gonna go out on a limb here and declare that there was no UFO waiting for them behind the Hale-Bopp comet. Seriously....if you never heard of it, this was back in '97 so may be before your time, read about it. Then I can point out the 9/11 hijackers. They obviously died for their belief's yet I don't see christians rushing to convert to Islam. I don't doubt the sincerity of their beliefs but that doesn't make it true. I can believe that I can fly if I flap my arms hard enough but something tells me that if I jump off a cliff, gravity is gonna prove that belief off.

There's a lot more to this than what I've written here. Books have been written. I would recommend that, if you're interested, start with anything from Dr. Bart Ehrman. He's the chair of the Theology Dept. at the Univ. of N. Carolina. He's a proper authority on this issue. I've read/listened to pretty much every book he has. Might want to start with "Misquoting Jesus". It's the first book I read from him and the stuff I read in there blew my mind. Stuff that you're not likely gonna hear at your school. There's other accounts of Jesus outside the bible and most christians would certainly clutch their pearls over the "Greater Questions Of Mary" account. There's also numerous Youtube vids of his lectures, talks, and debates. He runs a blog as well that you can access for $25/yr which he's pretty good at updating regularly. Money goes to charity.

Might also want to look up Candida Moss who wrote " The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom" She's a NT scholar as well and I learned a lot by reading her book. Like, did you know there were ISIS like groups of christians roaming the area back then? That groups of christians demanded to be killed?

One last book I'd like to recommend is "The Dark Side of Christian History" by Hellen Ellerbe. While I've not found much on her, she does a great job in citing her sources. What will you learn? Know where the phrase "Kill them all, let God sort them out" came from? While I can't recall the specifics, there was basically two groups of christians fighting and the leader of one, when asked how will we know our own from them, proclaimed to kill them all, God will know his own! This book helps to disabuse people of the notion that christianity has been nothing but loving and caring, not to mention persecuted, through the centuries.

Hope this helps and good luck!

>new source that disputes the existence of Jesus.

There are no sources which dispute the existence of Moses or Romulus but that doesn't mean we should start accepting them as real historical figures.

>Jesus and other similarly or worse attested characters like Hannibal and Alexander the Great.

Alexander is way better attested than Jesus, we even have more evidence of Pontius Pilate than Historical Jesus.

>no respected expert in the field believe in it.

There are several, most prominent ones are Robert M. Price who holds double doctorate in NT studies and Thomas L Broody who's also a biblical scholar.

>Neither Koresh or Jim Jones had a large following

At its peak Peoples temple had a following in upward of 20,000 so i don't think its a right comparison but yeah Koresh or Marshal Applewhite kinda fits the bill.

>but is more rickety than any of them. It doesn't explain why or how. There are no sources supporting it.

I suggest you read some works on Christ Myth theory because all those point were covered by many authors, here's a good introductory article and as for books, Richard Carrier's On the historicity of Jesus is pretty comprehensive and there's also The Christ Myth by Arthur Drews which you can download freely.

Which god?

If we're talking about Yahweh, then consider that those who claim he's all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful believe in a god that is logically impossible. See Problem of Evil.

Aside from that, we all have plenty of evidence that gods (including Yahweh) were made by humans. See A History of God part 1. We have historical and literary evidence that Yahweh used to be one of many gods worshipped by Hebrews but that members of the cult of Yahweh took steps to cement Yahweh as being the only god.

On top of that, there's no credible evidence to suggest that gods need to exist. Our understanding of the natural universe so far does not require the existence of a god to explain anything. So far it appears that the universe is capable of being as it is without the intervention of any supreme being. Consider reading Lawrence Krauss' A Universe From Nothing. Youtube talk by Krauss here.

On top of that, people who believe in a god have yet to present credible reasons or evidence for a god. This is how the burden of proof works: people who claim something are required to provide evidence to support that claim. Consider that, if such reason or evidence were presented, you'd never ever hear a Christian say "you just have to have faith" ever again.

So I'll ask you: why do you believe, since it seems there's no good reason to?

There seems to be something about the age of 14 that makes this situation come up. :) Just a week ago there was a similar thread to this one in which a religious mother came to this subreddit asking for advice on how to understand her 14-year-old's atheist views. Here's the thread, in case there's any useful information in there.

Unfortunately your son seems a lot "angrier" than the one that was the subject of that thread. Sorry to hear that, it sounds like it's pretty rough. However, it also sounds like the two of you have already made some excellent progress reconciling your differences and views, so that's promising, and the fact that he's 14 gives both of you plenty of time to come to a better understanding of each other before he heads off into the world and opportunities become fewer.

One idea that comes to mind to possibly help dial back the antagonism your son feels toward religion might be to get him a book about the philosophy of atheism, so that he can maybe develop a more nuanced view toward it. Often extreme viewpoints come from a lack of understanding of the issue - extremism is simple and easy.

I haven't read a lot on the subject myself so perhaps others will have better suggestions, but one book I came across that seemed pretty good is The Portable Atheist, which is a collection of essays and articles from a wide variety of prominent nonbelievers throughout history. You might even find it interesting yourself (I imagine you'd want to give it a read before passing it along anyway, just to be on the safe side :).

I do tell my child there's no good reason to believe in a God. I don't tell him there isn't a god.

Take the Yeti for example. I don't think there's a good reason to believe that the Yeti exists, but I don't think we can rule it out entirely quite yet.

I'm agnostic towards the Yeti, just like I am towards the deist, panentheistic, and pantheistic gods. I don't think they are either necessary or likely, but they are plausible.

On the other hand, I'm pretty sure YHWH as seen though the Bible is total bullshit, just as I am quite sure that there isn't and never has been a flying unicorn.

I teach my kids appropriately. Having the appropriate amount of confidence in your conclusions is a critical part of rational thought and the scientific method. Every part of our knowledge should have error bars on it. When we forget this, we become fundamentalists, no better than the religious. Surety is great, but the goal is to make our surety match the available evidence, and not overclaim for what we know.

And yes, I am a Bayesian. ;-) (Gentler explanation and high level "small words and sock puppets" overview).

[BTW, if you do have little noodles, I highly recommend Parenting Beyond Belief]

Not by a Horseman, but during my deconversion I found 50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God by Guy P. Harrison to be helpful. Since you've already read The God Delusion and God is Not Great you may not find anything new in it, but for someone wanting a gateway book toward more militant literature, it's a good one. In it the author gently refutes common theistic reasoning. It might be a good one to recommend to budding atheist friends.

As to your question about whether God Delusion is thoroughly critical of religion, I feel that yes, it is--I think Dawkins spends a good deal of time explaining why we should be intolerant of religious thinking.

> If there isnt a creator then how did all this life get here?

Abiogenesis is our best working guess for now, but there's a lot of work left to be done. The key thing here though is to be honest and admit that we don't have all the answers rather than wave our hands and say that it was a magical sky faerie.

> I under stand the big bang, at one point all the matter in Universe was compact then it all expanded outwards, well from school I learned that matter cannot be created nor destroyed. How did all that compact matter get there in the first place? I dont know.

It's ok to not know - that's honesty. This excellent book by Lawrence Krauss is fascinating. If you don't have access to it, there's also a talk he gave a few years back.

> I guess I'm getting old enough where my own opinions are forming I'm just trying to decide what I want those opinions to be.

Remember that ultimately our opinions are just that - opinions. The universe is as it is regardless of what we may wish to be true and what we may believe.

Hinduism was just an example. Maybe I should have been a bit more to the point. Sorry.

Wikipedia list well over 100 "religions and spiritual traditions". Please list which ones you investigated and justify your claim that each lacks 'evidence'.

Just because someone was an atheist, or a Hindu, or a Jew, or a Muslim, and then 'found evidence' leading them to believe a different religion was "correct', or had more 'evidence (however you'd like to term it), doesn't really mean anything for anyone aside from themselves. I assume you realize that just as many people who 'found evidence' for Christianity have also 'found evidence' for Islam, etc, whether you personally did or not?

I'm sorry, but you do seem to be going Da Vinci Code here. Why would the majority of the planet not know about "very specific, measurable prophecies" in the Bible. I don't think what you're terming evidence is what a scientist terms evidence. Full disclosure, I'm a scientist. If you're talking about a phrase in the Bible saying something like "great powerful nations will go to war" being prophecy of WWII or something like that, well I don't know if that's worth my time to discuss quite frankly.

On a final note, you may find this book interesting Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed at All . I have read the Christian Bible, the Quran, the Torah, and a few other religious books, so I implore you to look at something more critical of what you're terming 'evidence'. To be honest, in the spirit of the Holidays, if you promise to read it, I will literally buy it for you. Paperback, audiobook, whatever you like. That's not a joke.

Remember that there are multiple ways to interpret most parts of the Bible. It's very easy to scoff at the literal view that many fundies take, but not all Christians take the bible literally. If i'm asked to swallow the creation stories in Genesis as actual accounts of how the world came into being, i can't but roll my eyes. However, when I view the creation stories in Genesis as mythology, I can appreciate them as poetry on the same level that i appreciate the mythology of ancient Greece. So, approach the bible as you would Homer or Ovid (but with less coherence to the stories).

Also, remember that the authors of the bible were usually using fictionalized or fantastical stories to relay something that actually happened. Quick example: Jonah and the whale. Though many fundies take this story as literal, it was actually written as an allegory for Israel not heeding their God's instructions. Jonah is Israel, being swallowed by the whale is Israel being taken into captivity as punishment for ignoring their deity. This type of interpretation holds for quite a few of the old testament stories.

Also, learn about how it was written, and who it was written for. Gain a sense of literary context, if you will. I recommend this book for an overview of how the Torah was written. It's actually pretty interesting.


tl;dr: If you read the bible the way fundies do, you'll end up with a poor understanding of it, just like the fundies. If you approach it as an academic, you'll understand their own sacred text better than they do themselves.

>I'm hoping to hear from others, especially Liberty grads, who have had similar experiences of losing/leaving faith while or shortly after receiving an evangelical Christian education.

Not exactly what you asked, but I really enjoyed the book The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University by Kevin Roose -- Roose was actually just a college junior at Brown when he decided, instead of doing a semester abroad like many other students, to instead transfer to Liberty university for a semester, even though he wasn't a fundamentalist, as a kind of cultural exchange that he could write about. This wasn't really a de-conversion story, like Dan Barker's Godless, but it still provided an interesting perspective and I won't spoil the last chapter for you but there were some surprises based on what happened while he was there.

I was a Jehovah's Witness for the first 24 years of my life. Very devout.

It's hard for me to know what these particular folks' motivation for being in the JWs is.

Here is what helped me:

Problems With a Global Flood, 2nd Edition: Witnesses are very literal about their interpretation of the bible. If they actually read this page it will go a long way toward dislodging the cornerstones of their faith.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html

Finding Darwin's God by Ken Miller: A book about evolution that is not directly threatening to religion. It's written by the head of biology at Brown University. The science is solid. The theology is unsurprisingly weak. This book changed my life.

http://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0060930497

If they make it that far, give them this one: Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris. Not all of it applies to witnesses directly (they're not young-earth creationists, for example), but a lot of it still applies. This will supply many final nails for the coffin.

http://www.amazon.com/Letter-Christian-Nation-Vintage-Harris/dp/0307278778/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1291101892&sr=1-1

One thing to keep in mind is that they're very unlikely to seek any of this out on their own. They'll view it as a sin. Your best bet is to print these texts out or buy them. Both books can be purchased on Amazon in used condition for almost nothing. Tell them you'll read their books if they read yours and hold them to it. That culture has a very strong intellectual conscience. Most witnesses are really decent people. They're just stuck in a totally stupid mind-trap.

Good luck! You're doing a great thing by trying to help these people.

On evolution:

I urge you to read some books on the issue that aren't written with a fundamentalist Christian slant. The science is decisive, and the distinction between "macro" and "micro" is itself a religious confusion. (as others have already pointed out).

On the Big Bang: The biggest problem with the Big Bang is that we don't know how it happened. That is a problem, and scientists are working obsessively to solve it. But saying "God did it" buys you a whole host of new problems. How did God happen? Who created God? Why did he create the universe? You haven't answered anything by saying "God did it": you've just kicked the can down the road and added an additional unfalsifiable and unsupported assumption.

Also, the evidence for the Big Bang is all around you: look up background microwave radiation,distribution and evolution of galaxies, the abundance of light elements, and the expansion of space.

On the supernatural:

Any thinking that starts with "Do you think it's possible that..." is a HUGE RED FLAG. Almost anything is possible, but usually the sort of logic that must be defended with a "Well, it's possible..." is absurdly improbable. This is a good example. Yeah, it's possible that an entire other world could be layered on our own - but it's more improbable than winning the lottery, and I don't buy lottery tickets.

If I had to explain the fundamental difference between the way I think about the spiritual and the way you think about the spiritual, it would be this. You ask "Is it possible that..." and "Do you think that maybe..."

I ask "Is there empirical support for..." and "Does the evidence support the assertion that..."

As for the hope that human consciousness continues on....

Nope. This is it. That sucks, and I'm sorry. It's among the hardest pills to swallow about being an atheist - but it's true whether you believe it or not.

If you want a good book that will help her feel she's not alone in her search of things other than a god, I HIGHLY recommend "Godless" by Dan Barker

http://www.amazon.com/Godless-Evangelical-Preacher-Americas-Atheists/dp/1569756775/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1252981216&sr=1-1

Dan was a former Evangelical minister, grew up with believer parents, and was as steeped in evangelical, fanatical thinking as you can get. Then one day, he started to think for himself. After a divorce from his then wife, and many other things that ruined his life at that time, he is happier than he was ever during his time in the church. He is happily remarried and is now a co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

http://ffrf.org/

The book tells the story of his early life in the church, his fall from grace as it were, the reasons he believes Christianity is faulty, and what he as an athiest has to look forward to in life. One o fthe best books I've read in a long time.

I agree with you that it is sometimes difficult to wade through the devotional (and mythicist!) to find proper historical materials!

My absolute favorite beginner resource are these Yale Religious Studies courses, the Old Testament series in particular. The professor has done an amazing job of putting the Bible in its historical context. Grab a Bible and do the assigned readings as "homework" - she does let you skip the boring bits, I promise!

My favorite text is this How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture Then and Now, which compares how modern believers interpret the Bible compared to how it would have been received by its original audience.

If you are particularly interested in archaeology, 'The Bible Unearthed' might be a good option, though I think it does presume a fair amount of familiarity with biblical history.

Here's a list of more online resources, though they are not so much for the beginner.

If there is a particular topic you are interested in, I can try to point you towards something more specific.

I just found about him this year, but reading him (specially his essays on "arguably" or stuff edited by him, like "the portable atheist") has inspired me not only to be more foursquare and vocal in my stance against the religion I apostatized from, but to rekindle my lukewarm, dormant and forlorn love for poetry and literature, he was an eloquent man, and he has inspired me to be eloquent (and proud of being circumloquent) again, despite my engineering degree and technical day-job.

Adieu, Hitch.

I think an excellent book for any questioning christian to read is Godless by Dan Barker. He used to be a fundamentalist evangelical christian, and he clearly articulates and lays out his reasons for his eventual deconversion. He has some excellent youtube debates as well. He's a great guy.

The reason I often enjoy some of his talks more than other big name atheists is because he knows the bible and christianity backward and forward. He has a strong understanding and knowledge of the bible, and is therefore quite easily able to dismantle its credibility and legitimacy.

Many instances in which Jesus is referred to as actually being God or of divine origin in the bible were antiadoptionistic changes made to the texts by theologians in order to discredit a group best described as messianic Jews (the Ebionites). They believed that he was born via the natural union of Joseph and Mary, and that he was given a special calling by God that invested him with divinity only after his birth.

By this theology Jesus did not preexist creation and was truly a normal human being until after his crucifixion. The prevailing Christian groups who opposed this wen to extreme measures to wipe the group out, especially because they demanded that all Christians would also have to be Jews, as Jesus was, and this required circumcision and kosher eating practices: two things not very popular in the classical Roman empire.

See these excellent books for extensive details about Biblical alterations and pre-orthodox Christianity:

Misquoting Jesus

Lost Christianities

No worries, David, I totally remember what it was like being a student; the last couple weeks of any quarter were always the hardest.

I would want to add that this isn't "my position" so much as "the scholarly consensus". I'm not a theologian or a biblical scholar, I rely on those who are more educated in these matters to inform me. You'll find this is the case with most atheists you meet; we place a lot of value on the words of scholars, particularly specialists in the field we're studying.

But yes, the documentary hypothesis is fascinating. There's an excellent book on this by Richard Friedman, a preeminent scholar on this hypothesis. I highly recommend it! (because I know as a college student you've got loads of free time to read, lol!)

http://www.amazon.com/Wrote-Bible-Richard-Elliott-Friedman/dp/0060630353#_

Good luck on finals!

This guy was an evangelical Christian who loved the church and Jesus so much that he went on a life long quest to get the original text the best he could. He learned Hebrew so that he could read the Old Testament in the truest form and then learned Greek so that he could read the New Testament in the truest form. He served as a preacher before going on to get his bachelors, master and then PHD in New Testament studies. Why do I tell you all of this? Because he knows the bible better than 98% of Christians and he LOST HIS FAITH once he learned how altered, butchered, and rewritten the bible was. I'm going to trust this guy over you.


His Wiki

(I have two boys 2 & 5)

"I would highly prefer her to be atheist as well"

I think this is mistake number one. I think you should want her to be rational and skeptical, atheism is typically just a byproduct of these vastly important characteristics. In the end, atheism is right and if you raise a kid to question and be skeptical, religion won't win I promise you. It can't, it ONLY works when people are convinced as children and raised to believe doubt is wrong. Teach Doubt and you will be fine. Right now my five year old tells me he believes in god, last week he didn't. I don't really care because he is 5 and that is what kids do. Don't worry too much about that part is my advice. Don't worry about other people so much trust that you can raise a daughter who is intelligent enough to come to the rational decision on her own. I don't know about you but that decision is still probably the most monumental decision I've made in my personal life and I cherish going through it and getting to this point.


On death, I say just be honest. Tell them about how are bodies break down and go back into the circle of life. All of that stuff that actually happens and is really quite beautiful. Kids can handle reality better than fantasy I think, because kids will naturally have questions and being able to have REAL answers is key.


Here are some good resources that helped my wife and I quite a bit.

Raising FreeThinkers: http://www.amazon.com/Raising-Freethinkers-Practical-Parenting-Beyond/dp/0814410960/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334847247&sr=1-1

&

Parenting Beyond Belief: http://www.amazon.com/Parenting-Beyond-Belief-Raising-Religion/dp/0814474268/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_2

> For the past 2-3 years, I've grown uneasy with the things I've heard and have been taught over the years.

From our perspective this is a good sign! Throw another baby on the BBQ lads, one of us, one of us /s ;)

> I'm feeling pretty lost and a little scared since pretty much all of my family is religious (they would never abandon me or disown me if they knew but the thought of disappointing them hurts...a lot).

Be careful! When it comes to religion you don't know what people are capable of and this sub is littered with tragic stories of people who thought they knew their families, but didn't expect what happened when they let on they were doubting, came out, or were outed.

To sum up if you don't have some kind of independence (namely financial) be discreet in your movements to keep the peace. That doesn't necessarily mean lie (though you can if you want), it means don't reveal all at the drop of a hat, gotta look out for #1.

> Which leads me here. Both sides of this religious debate hold biases

Unfortunately that's not really true, we don't hold bias when attempting to ascertain the truth regarding gods existentialism.

In fact most atheists (being skeptics) hold religion to the same standards of evidence as everything else, and try to remove as much bias as possible i.e. you'll hear the scientific method (methodological naturalism) bandied about a fair bit in atheism, because that's the best method we have for reliably producing results.

Oh yeah that's one other thing you gotta reconcile. Absolute truth (or falsity), doesn't exist. You can only say what is true with X amount of certainty based on how good the evidence is (i.e. how much there is, quality/standards, etc).

> So I'm looking into maybe some books, documentaries, research papers...anything really addressing the validity of the bible, the historical evidence, the contradictions, etc.

Be my guest : http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/

That's notes regarding what's contradictory in the bible when read literally, can't remember if they included the "poetic" bits in it. The thing is though most of the bible is supposed to be read literally, there are a few poetic bits yes, but just like any book the author sets the context for reading.

So whenever you hear a Christian saying : no it's supposed to be "interpreted" like this... that's generally code for

"oh shit bible says something wrong, better try and make excuses by putting it in a different context (than the author intended) that makes sense for the modern day".

Which is completely wrong, you don't get to read Harry Potter and put him in the star wars universe (although that would be kinda fun), nope JK determines the context.

Sorry got a bit ranty there, but it's one of my pet peeves.

> I'm trying to find sources that are mostly impartial, so nothing that goes into the subject that actively tries to prove or disprove.

Self-contradictory? You just said you're looking for resources addressing the validity of the bible... that's literally asking to prove / disprove things in it.

No one's forcing you, and it can be scary / frustrating. But you should know that even if you don't accept the bible as true anymore it doesn't make you an immoral monster i.e. morals are independent of religion...

But you gotta make up your mind, you either care about "the truth" or not, you're either going down the rabbit hole or not. Pandora's box once opened is not so easily closed and once you see, it's difficult to unsee.

If you want some "softer" titles, i'd recommend:

https://www.amazon.com/Letter-Christian-Nation-Sam-Harris/dp/0307278778/

Or any of Bart Ehrmans books:

https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/wiki/recommended/reading#wiki_bart_ehrman

To save you some time, most of the bible is either:

• Made up e.g. story of moses/egypt, genesis, etc.
  
  
• Stolen... "appropriated" from other religions, mainly zoroastrianism which influenced all the messianic religions of the time : judaism, islam, christianity e.g. Ahura Mazda = God, Angra Mainyu = Satan (responsible for demons), Zarathustra = Jesus.
  
  
• The result of "chinese whispers" i.e. where there could be a story that was based on some truth (e.g. Noah's Ark / epic of gilgamesh / Atrahasis / King Ziusudra), but it was retold over and over again so many times by word of mouth before it was recorded in writing that it only faintly resembles the original story.
  
  All the best, feel free to ask questions here.

1. Have I always been an atheist? No, I was raised in protestant christianity.
   
2. If you have not always been an atheist, what were you before and what changed your mind? First? Learning science and realizing that I could prove that the Bible is fallible through independent analysis of reality, rather than depending on what other fallible people told me was true in contradiction to what I can prove to be true. Second? Realizing that not only is the Bible fallible, but that it is massively self-contradictory ... which led to: Third? Discovering conclusively that the Bible is a hodge-podge of mythological tales that have been edited, redacted, and cobbled together numerous times over the last ~28-2900 years to serve the agenda of men ... which led to: Fourth? Discovering that christianity as it is known today didn't exist some 19-2000 years ago, and that what you currently practice has very little in common to what christians in the first century CE practiced and/or believed ... which led to: Fifth? Discovering with an almost perfect certainty that Jesus never existed as a human being, and that the people that lived in the early to middle of the first century CE never believed that he did ... Paul certainly didn't, and he wrote the first books that were later included in the new testament.
   
3. If today, Jesus Christ appeared to you directly and showed you that He exists, would you be willing to follow Him and His teachings for the duration of your life? Why or why not? Why say "Jesus Christ"? This is as likely as saying that the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, the Ghost of Christmas Past, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or Xenu might appear in front of me to demand the same thing, and just as ridiculous a hypothetical. So, let me ask you a much more pertinent question:
   
4. What would it take for you to reconsider your faith in christianity? I can reasonably prove that Jesus never existed and is a historicized mythological construct based upon first century mystery religions syncretized with messianic Judaism (read me). I can absolutely prove that the old testament was redacted multiple times based upon the political and religious views of the time of the redaction/edit (read me). I can absolutely prove that the creation myth of Judaism was based in Canaanite mythology and later was syncretized during the Babylonian captivity (i.e., it's bullshit) and that life evolved through natural processes (read me). I can point to thousands of contradictions, impossibilities, and outright lies in your "holy book" which undermine any claims made by any of the Abrahamic religions (which is a funny title, given the absolute certainty that Abraham never existed ... nor did Moses, or any number of other prominent figures in Judeo-Christian historical mythology). I can point to the faith of members of any other religion, note that it's no weaker than the faith you have in your own, and point out that faith alone in the face of reason proves nothing. I mean ... I could go on forever on this subject, but honestly: you're asking us what it would take for us to believe, when in reality the more important question is what it would take for you to stop believing a tall tale simply because someone told you it was true in the face of actual, verifiable reality.
   
   For my part, I'd believe that Santa Claus was real if I could objectively, scientifically, and reliably demonstrate such a claim. I'd believe that Vishnu, Horus, Odin, or Zeus were real for the same reasons. In fact, I can conjure up any number of fanciful scenarios in which strange, supernatural claims could be verified and "believed" by atheists, because that's how we operate: we believe in reality, however strange it may be. Just because such a fanciful scenario can be imagined, however, doesn't give that scenario any sort of validity. Your claims are as baseless as someone that wants me to believe they have an invisible and undetectable dragon in their garage that will burn my invisible and undetectable spirit FOR ETERNITY if I don't fork over 10% of my income and obey their every incomprehensible and often immoral edict. So put yourself in the position that you so "cleverly" thought you'd put us in: what would change your mind?
   
   Oh, wait ... you don't even want to question your "faith"? That's what I thought.
   
   edit: Watch this, pause, and reflect on your beliefs.

If I may make a suggestion? Ask her to read 50 Reason People Give for Believing in a God. I'm currently reading it to see how well it's arguments are presented compared to The God Delusion. I wanted to find a book to give to my "devout" Catholic wife to read, but I found God Delusion to be too confrontational and condescending (at least to a faithhead's point of view). 50 Reasons is written in a much more understanding and placating tone, and so has a much better chance of sparking doubt than any other piece of atheist literature that I've read so far.

I used sarcasm quotes for "devout" because even though my wife considers herself Catholic, she holds many social values that go completely against the church's official doctrine. She supports gay marriage, safe sex before marriage, and the use of condoms. She knows that she is married to an Atheist, and she's ok with that- even though if the church found out about that she would be excommunicated.
All she needs is a spark of doubt, and I can open her eyes to reason and she'll see that holding on to her faith is a vice, not a virtue- 50 Reasons, I hope, will be an eye-opening read for her.

This is a good book on raising kids without religion, it might help you with some of your questions:
http://amzn.com/0814474268

I guess you should also find out why your girlfriend is open to letting your daughter go to church. If you both don't practice religion anymore then why would she want her daughter to be involved with religion? Is it just to appease her parents or some other reason?

Also, if you both want the community and support aspect of a church without the dogma you could look into Unitarian Universalism:
http://www.uua.org/index.shtml

Depending on where you live you might be able to find a UU church around you where you can attend some services. They welcome people of all faiths and cater more to living a good life vs. following an ancient doctrine.

No answers yet?

Many of the atheists here agree on Bart Ehrman as a good source. He's a Bible scholar who used to be Christian but whose studies have left him an atheist. He's written a whole series of books about how the Bible was cobbled together and, self-plagiarized, forged and fiddled, and so on. There's a field or method of study called critical analysis that makes the Bible's authenticity problems apparent, and Ehrman writes that stuff into popular books.

Two of his hits have been Misquoting Jesus, Jesus, Interrupted and Forged. The latter is perhaps his most explicit indictment of the intellectual crimes behind the Bible. Lost Christianities and other books talk about the many gospels and other writings that never made it into or were excised from what's known as the Bible today.

Ehrman also has a bunch of talks on YouTube where he engagingly presents those same ideas.

There are alternatives, of course, and it could be argued whether Ehrman is "the best." But he certainly knows what he's talking about (mostly), is a recognized authority on this kind of stuff, and presents it well. Best of all (from our point of view) he doesn't Lie For Jesus.

the new stephen hawking book the grand design is pretty fantastic. it's a very interesting, easily readable explanation of modern physics as well as the history of physics. this book is where hawking finally comes out of the atheist closet in a very non-political way, basically explaining that while people can believe in a god our knowledge of physics doesn't have a need for it.

"The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins. Dawkins doesn't really go into anything new or original, but the strength of the book is that is a great, concise summary of all the beginning arguments for atheism.

http://www.amazon.com/God-Delusion-Richard-Dawkins/dp/0618680004

I'd follow it with Daniel Dennett's "Breaking the Spell", also a good recommendation. Same goes for Carl Sagan's "A Demon Haunted World"

http://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Spell-Religion-Natural-Phenomenon/dp/0143038338

http://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science-Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469/

Christopher Hitchens is a bit vitriolic for some, but "God is not Great" has some nuggets in it.

http://www.amazon.com/God-Not-Great-Religion-Everything/dp/0446579807/

I personally didn't like Sam Harris' "End of Faith" but I did like his "Letter to a Christian Nation".

http://www.amazon.com/Letter-Christian-Nation-Vintage-Harris/dp/0307278778/

For the topic of evolution, Talk Origins is great (and free) http://toarchive.org/
Dawkin's "The Selfish Gene" is also a good read (and short). Not so short but also good are Dawkins' "Blind Watchmaker", "Climbing Mount Improbable" and "Unweaving the Rainbow"

http://www.amazon.com/Selfish-Gene-Anniversary-Introduction/dp/0199291152/

http://www.amazon.com/Blind-Watchmaker-Evidence-Evolution-Universe/dp/0393315703/

http://www.amazon.com/Climbing-Mount-Improbable-Richard-Dawkins/dp/0393316823/

http://www.amazon.com/Unweaving-Rainbow-Science-Delusion-Appetite/dp/0618056734/

I would suggest George A. Smith's Atheism: The case against God which is, while thick, a quick read. Each chapter deals with one aspect and therefore is an easy read. (i read it years ago and found it clear if a bit dry)

For something more emotional, i suggest a "testimony" type book: Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists by Dan Barker. I quite enjoyed it.

As with everyone else here though, i suggest you read them first to see if they suit "where you are coming from," but more importantly because Evangelical Christians cannot be trusted so you need to check if she kept her end of the bargain.

I am only recommending books to read because you mentioned that she actually kept her mouth shut and was respectful at your wedding. This is not typical evangelical christian behaviour and indicates that you may not be wasting your time in even having these discussions.

Speaking of behaviour, has she tried crying like a petulant child in a passive-agressive attempt to change your mind yet?

jmsr

PS yes, i'm cynical. what gave it away? >:P

PPS speaking of which, remember to check if she kept her end of the bargain. Personally, i bet she doesn't even get past the jacket blurb.

> Did Jesus exist?

I recently read three books on this topic by Ehrman, Doherty, and Carrier.

I found Carrier's case for a Mythical Jesus to be compelling. I found Carrier to be annoying as a writer, but his book is scholarly and well documented.

Ehrman argues for a historical Jesus. His book was almost the opposite of Carrier's. His tone was friendly and approachable. He seemed calm and reassuring. I kind of wanted him to prove his case. But his arguments sucked.

Doherty dissected Ehrman's case paragraph by paragraph. (I read Carrier first, then Ehrman, then Doherty.) Doherty raised many of the concerns I noticed myself. Ehrman's arguments just didn't make sense. Never mind the history or the evidence — I'm no scholar — his arguments didn't make logical sense.

I wouldn't say it's proven either way. Given the scarcity of evidence, it may never be. That said, Carrier made a surprisingly strong case against a historical Jesus. If Ehrman's defense of Jesus is the best that academia can do, I'd say Jesus is pretty much dead.

But I would love to see a serious and scholarly attempt to refute Carrier's work. Ehrman's work didn't cut it.

Just by posting this, you've already surpassed my parents in open-mindedness and understanding. Your kids are lucky to have you as a parent.

For me, the best thing my parents could have done is just said something to the effect of "This is one belief among many. Some people believe in x, others believe in y, and others don't believe in religion at all, and those are all alright." Just the acknowledgement that different beliefs are right for different people could have prevented years of bitterness and confusion. Whatever their decision, they'll come to it on their own no matter what you actively expose them to. In my opinion, there's absolutely nothing wrong with bringing them up in your faith and encouraging to participate in something that has brought you joy as long as you inform them that other faiths are an option at all. I wouldn't worry about their disinterest in the services. Most kids would rather play their gameboys than sit through a religious service.

As for a good book I can suggest, I really like The Portable Atheist because it has a good variety of texts and perspectives. It's a good starting point, and it was compiled by Christopher Hitchens, who is awesome. Dawkins is amazing, but he can come off a bit strong sometimes, which can turn non-atheist readers off sometimes and give the easily offended the wrong impression. Even though I'm an assertive atheist, I find myself avoiding books that serve as a sort of atheist pulpit. Just as I don't like theists telling me how to be religious, I don't like atheists telling me how to be nonreligious.

If you get the chance, I really want to recommend the book Godless by Dan Barker. It's an in-depth look back at his journey from being a fundamentalist pastor to one of the co-chairs of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. He's gone about as far as it's possible to go from one end to the other.

Another similar story is the YouTube series "Why I Am No Longer A Christian" by Evi3nce. He uses a lot of professional-level graphics to present a detailed philosophical analysis of exactly why and how his born-again faith fell apart. It's both intellectual and moving.

I'm looking forward to hearing a more polished version of your story too. Congrats on being where you are.

Do you still believe in God? I'm honestly not sure from what you've wrote. If you just have doubts / differences in opinion with those in your congregation, you can always find one that better suits you. If you now truly don't believe there is a God (or you're agnostic, or an agnostic atheist), then start working now towards a new life. And begin mentally preparing yourself for the hardship of having your parents and many of your friends judge you, try to talk you out of it or "come back to God," ask why you hate God now or want to pray for you / with you. It will not be easy. Whatever you do, don't let yourself be pressured into a life (ministry, etc.) that you don't want. You only get to live this life once - and the clock is ticking. Life is too short to live it under the heavy blanket that now envelops you; live it on your own terms and not someone else's. I wish you all the best.

Edit: "Godless" by Dan Barker might be helpful for you. He was a former (quite well known preacher) who became an atheist and is now the co-head of the FFRF. http://www.amazon.com/Godless-Evangelical-Preacher-Americas-Atheists/dp/1569756775

Congratulations! I know what a big step that is, as I've been in the same boat. Books are the best way to become informed. Check out books by:

• Christopher Hitchens - God Is Not Great & The Portable Atheist
  
  
• Stephen Hawking - The Grand Design & A Briefer History of Time
  
  
• Richard Dawkins - The Greatest Show on Earth
  
  
• Carl Sagan - The Demon Haunted World
  
  
• Sam Harris - The Moral Landscape & The End of Faith
  
  
• Richard Panek - The 4 Percent Universe
  
  
• Robert Ingersoll - Some Mistakes of Moses
  
  
• Viktor Frankl - Man's Search for Meaning
  
  
• Sean Caroll - The Making of the Fittest
  
  
• Spencer Wells - Deep Ancestry
  
  
• Ayaan Hirsi Ali - Infidel
  
  
• Alan Watts - The Way of Zen
  
  Also check out the video series Why I am no longer a creationist.
  
  The more you know, the more confident you will be.

Of the four, I'd probably recommend Harris. Given the freedom, I wouldn't recommend any of them if you're trying to expand a theist's mind.

Suggestion 1 from me is Guy Harrison's "50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God". He goes through the 50 most common reasons people gave him when he asked, and explained why an average skeptic/atheist doesn't find those reasons compelling.

Suggestion 2 is probably a volume on naturalism (for example "Encountering Naturalism" or Carrier's "Sense and Goodness Without God"). Firmly establishing a coherent, complete worldview that doesn't require gods can be a valuable step.

Ok, I'll give it a go...


The first thing that got me questioning religion was seeing massive amounts of hypocrisy in church leadership. I was extremely involved as my father was a deacon and my mother worked at the church we attended. It was a common practice for us kids to go to one friends' house or another between morning and evening services, so I saw how the adults acted differently at home then they did at church. I realize not all religious people are like this, but it was the first step for my questioning. Once I was old enough I became a leader in the youth group and started seeing the same hypocrisy in myself.


Despite realizing my hypocrisy I continued to believe, even to the point in participating in multiple missions trips held by the organization Speed the Light. While on these trips we were told to write down our personal testimony so that we could present it during presentations and services. When I tired to put into words why I believed in God and, more importantly, why the audience should believe, I couldn't come up with a good reason. I sat in a bed in the country of Belize thinking, "If I can't come up with a good reason why these people should believe what I do, then why do I believe it?". Despite this thought I continued my charade for two more missions trips and a few more years.


Eventually I stepped down from youth leadership and entered a state of apathy towards religion. I didn't go to church, but I didn't really think about it much. Every now and then something really bad would happen and I'd wonder if God was punishing me, but they were more of fleeting thoughts than anything.



The next big hit for me was when I went to Iraq for a year. When you see good people with families who love them (some of which who were religious) die, the answer "God allows us to suffer so we learn/build character/build faith etc" just doesn't cut it anymore. About a year after I came home from the deployment I actually started looking for information that refuted religion. I'd say that was when my state started the path from apathetic to agnostic to atheist.



The book Letter to a Christian Nation was a big eye-opener for me. Along with other works of Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christoper Hitchens, and other authors I'm sure you'll become aware of if you continue to question things. The more I investigated, the more absurd religion seemed; and the more science explained all of the things that I attributed to the supernatural. When I was a child I believed, truly believed, that when I was lying in bed one night I saw an angel appear in my room. It wasn't until I read The God Delusion that I realized there was a scientific explanation for things like that.



The more I found that science could prove things, really prove things, the more I realized that "it's true because the Bible says so" didn't work for me anymore. In the last few years I've learned things that have blown my mind. Things that I thought would take away the wonder of the world have actually enhanced it. I'm a good person because I want to be, not because I'll burn in hell if I'm not; I don't steal because I realize that it's unproductive in the long run, not because some ancient stone tablet and a preacher told me not to, etc.



I'm not saying I don't have personal issues like anger, sadness or depression. You can only fight evolution to a point, we are still human. I guess I'm just saying that the answers I found leading me to atheism were far more satisfying and comforting than anything religion ever offered me. Hope that helps.


tl;dr: it's basically a de-conversion story, read if you'd like I suppose.

This was a pretty good read.

As was this.

Still reading this one.

A fun, quick read.

Haven't read it, but if his other book is anything by which to judge, worth a look.

Good luck.

Well, I think a good place to start is r/exmuslim or r/exislam.

Also, there is a book that recently came out written by an atheist named Dale McGowan called [Parenting Beyond Belief.] ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0814474268?pc_redir=1411128277&robot_redir=1)

Here's Dales [site.] (http://parentingbeyondbelief.com/resources/)

There is also [raisingfreethinkers.com.] ( http://raisingfreethinkers.com/)
This site is good for the mothers perspective especially.

Also, my advice. Have her read Greek mythology first. I found when I was a kid that it was not only more entertaining than the bible but, it helped me.

And when she is old enough to read and comprehend better, have her read the books of current religions themselves.

Hope this helps and be careful out there with it, yeah?

Edit.

If the Bible is the word of God, it'd have certain properties. I'd expect it to be right about the history and nature of the world. All evidence suggests that it isn't. Biblical understanding of history and nature is right in line with what you'd expect from ancient people.

I would expect God to be able to keep his facts straight. The Bible does not. From what I've read, scholars seem to have a pretty good handle on who wrote the various parts of the Bible based on the agendas revealed by these contradictions.

Finally, if the Bible was the word of God, all his prophecies would come to pass. They have not.

Finally, I'd like to note that there are Biblical scholars that hold this view. They include Robert M. Price, Bart D. Ehrman, Richard Elliot Friedman, and Burton L. Mack. I guess they're all misinformed too. If only they had studied the Bible.

I would highly recommend Sam Harris. He can be quite verbose at times, but his logic is impeccable. You might want to try Letter to a Christian Nation to start. It's directed to a Christian audience and was a real eye opener for me. Plus, it's pretty short (144 pages).

Edit: His YouTube videos are excellent as well.

This is referring back to:
Genesis 1:26
Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."

I do not believe I was created; therefore, I find the evolutionary progress of all life astounding. Instead of thinking that god put animals here for my amusement or consumption, I take the time to appreciate life’s ability to survive the ages.

You should read this book: Your Inner Fish!

Strongly agreed on reading Richard Carrier, though his works are of a significant size and you might not have the time to finish them prior to the due date of your paper (though I definitely encourage you to read through them at some point).

A shorter debate between Richard Carrier and Zeba Crook is available on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgmHqjblsPw


And you might also want to check into some of the works of David Fitzgerald:

• David Fitzgerald: Ten Beautiful Lies About Jesus [This is a fairly short PDF that's easy to get into and immediately downloadable.]
  
• David Fitzgerald: Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed at All

No one seems to have mentioned it yet, but Neil Silberman and Israel Finkelstein devote quite a few pages to this topic in their book The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts. The entire book is excellent and well worth reading.

It all depends on the goal. If OP wants to send a message, then choosing The God Delusion or God Is Not Great would certainly send that message. If OP wants a book that's a good read, both are still good choices, but now there're other books that are equally good choices.

The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality, The Portable Atheist, On Bullshit, On Truth, The Good Book: A Humanist Bible, The Moral Landscape, The Demon Haunted World, Religion and Science, and many others are excellent reads, but don't send that little (possibly unnecessary) jab.

Here's my story: http://personman.com/religious-autobiography

And my favorite book on the subject so far: http://www.amazon.com/Reasons-People-Give-Believing-God/dp/1591025672

Good luck and please feel free to contact me.

You're SO gonna love this book.

My conclusion after reading it so far: The whole Torah is a myth. At least the Deuteronomy was written by King Josiah and the priests of Yahweh. This is evidenced by the contradictions between the biblical account and archaeological data regarding the exodus, the conquest of Jericho, the non-existance of any traces of a powerful empire in Judah during Solomon's reign, the mismatch between assyrian written records and biblical records, the findings of egyptian outposts in Canaan when the Exodus supposedly took place, etc.

The evidences of fabrication are too great to be dismissed.


EDIT: As for my stance on the goodness of the hebrew God....

I upvoted because you're asking a(n at least sort-of) respectful question. I'm sure others could answer you better or more completely, but I'll take a stab.

I firmly believe that no one here wants to "destroy any reference" to Yahweh. Many of us enjoy the Greek pantheon, and a few of us like the Norse better.

The problem with Christianity is that it encourages faith, which is not only pretty much useless as a decision making paradigm, but also cripples us in regards to making sane, rational decisions. I'm sure I don't need to harp on the extensive list of atrocities committed that would have been impossible without faith.

You might be interested in reading Sam Harris's Letter to a Christian Nation.

The Bible Unearthed should get you started. The book by the same name mentions the gods of the Canaanites but I'm not sure it made it into this video.

And maybe Richard Carrier's Christianity without Jesus. In this talk he covers some of the earlier gods with similar attributes to Jesus, mentions how Judaism changed a bit after the Persian conquest, and again after their fall to Babylon showing how elements from foreign religions were adopted and incorporated into Judaism.

Another video that mentions the origins of Yahweh is from a really awesome video series by YouTuber Evid3nc3 A History of God for part one and here for part two. It is a synopsis of Karen Armstrong's book A History of God.

Hope these are at least in the direction you were wanting to go.

>something had to come from something

well, we know this to be true, but we do not know if something can come from nothing. Look up Lawrence Krauss' "A universe from nothing"

>For example, if you believe in the big bang wouldn't have something had to start the big bang (God).

for the sake of argument, i'm going to assume that your god did start the big bang. What caused god?

>So what do you believe was that first push in the creation of whatever the first think in the creation of the universe?

the correct answer is we do not know. Science doesn't make up answers like religion and assert them to be true. Currently, we have no evidence about anything before the big bang or what caused it. Therefore we cannot assume anything at this point.

I recommend The God Delusion if you like science. Dawkins does not pull punches. The book is full of good arguments and interesting information.

For friends and other people who could use a gentle introduction to the idea that atheists aren’t evil, I strongly recommend Letter to a Christian Nation. It’s the sort of book you might give your mom.

Old dead classical dudes are always good. I ransack Epicurus and Marcus Aurelius for good ideas and advice fairly regularly. There are some excellent secular philosophers and thinkers out there. I enjoy Sam Harris' work the most. One of my favorite reference books is The Portable Atheist, which is a collection of secular philosophers, edited by Hitchens.

To get a sense of your place in the universe, try to find an old full-color hardback copy of Cosmos.^1 For your place in the Human story, Guns, Germs, and Steel, and your place in the American story with A People's History.


[1] As a minor biographical note, I credit this version of Cosmos for getting me through horrible angsty teenager time.

Edit: Also, good question.

I don't know if you care enough, but Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne is the single greatest book thus far for introducing evolution to the layman. If you have any doubts, questions, or ideas on evolution, but are fairly new to the topic, you will love this book.

Also Evolution by Donald Prothero was a good one along the same line. He has a couple of talks on youtube based on the book. Your Inner Fish is decent but less substantial. It has a 3 part educational PBS series that I believe is on Netflix. Dawkins is easy to read but he doesn't lay out the evidence as much as he talks about the processes, but those are still good books. The Selfish Gene is excellent.

>I believe that my people were enslaved in Egypt, and that a miraculous series of events occurred that resulted in them escaping to freedom.

The biblical account stands in direct conflict with the historical evidence on this matter. The pyramids were built by wealthy workers who were also honoured by being buried near the pyramids they built. There's no evidence at all pointing to a Jewish presence in Egypt at the time.

>It is a shared history of my people, and I believe that a lot of it did happen.

It's a shared pseudo-history. If you really want to learn about the history of your religion and your people, I suggest you read up on it. Some suggestions:

A History of God by Karen Armstrong.

Who Wrote The Bible by Richard Elliot Friedman.

There's also a video summary of part of A History of God created by a person on youtube called Evid3nc3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlnnWbkMlbg&feature=channel_video_title

>and has continued interact with the earth

How, and what's your evidence of this?

>What is G-d? A thing I believe in. Beyond that, I don't know.

Well, 'god' is only a label. Labels refer to some kind of concept. If the label doesn't point to some concept, then the label is meaningless. 'God' doesn't exist because 'god' isn't anything.

Also, if you don't know what god is, how can you ever hope to identify him?

Here is a good book for Christians on evolution. It was recommended by Dawkins once for people that didn't like him and would never read his own books.

http://www.amazon.com/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0060930497

The author (Miller) is Roman Catholic, and also has several other good books on the topic if you look at the author's page on amazon.

This one by a different author is also very good.

http://www.amazon.com/Why-Evolution-True-Jerry-Coyne/dp/0670020532/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b

If you'd like the basics online, here:

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/search/topicbrowse2.php?topic_id=46

EDIT: Sorry man, someone already recommended this below.

Lawrence Krauss has a new book about this subject. I know, a book is a little much but it's a pretty important question.

Here's the link:

http://www.amazon.com/Universe-Nothing-There-Something-Rather/dp/145162445X

Peace.

I'd recommend you to read this book, it provides some answers to great questions like these. Also, this video :)

Thanks, I am really proud of him! before my grandma left she left a bible under his pillow haha he gave her this book as a gift.

I used to side with Hitchens on this - it seemed likely to me that some core figure existed - otherwise, why manufacture events like the census in order to justify how the character matched up with old testament prophecy? Why not simply manufacture the story from the start so that jesus was from bethlehem instead of nazareth?

However, i recently read Nailed by David Fitzgerald. What a great book! It is very well researched, and points out a lot of undebatable facts that show how unlikely it is that any person is at the core of the story.

I highly recommend it.

If you're going to hand these books over to others, you might want to go with something a little less technical as a first introduction. I highly recommend these books:

By Neil Shubin: Neil is a paleo-ichthyologist (he studies ancient fish) who discovered Tiktaalik. The link between modern humans and ancient fish are very well-known.

Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body


And for the link between organic and inorganic materials:

The Universe Within: The Deep History of the Human Body: Discovering the Common History of Rocks, Planets and People

And by Jerry Coyne

Why Evolution is True

And for a more detailed technical book, on a level for graduate school, this one by Jerry Coyne and H. Allen Orr:

Speciation

I hope these serve you well.

http://www.amazon.com/Wrote-Bible-Richard-Elliott-Friedman/dp/0060630353/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1309524934&sr=1-1

If you are interested in an academic, albeit theologian's (IIRC), point of view on reasons for differences in the bible, such as the several different versions of the creation story in genesis, the several different versions of the flood and ark story, etc., the above book, "Who Wrote The Bible" by Richard Elliot Friedman, is an excellent layman's read. It is a bit dated, but is well researched and an interesting. It is not a Christian or apologist book per se, from my memory, but a book based on Mr. Friedman's doctoral dissertation at Harvard. It only covers the contradictions from the first 5 books of the bible (the Pentateuch), but still a worthwhile read in my opinion, and can be purchased for cheap on Amazon.

The selected work by Ibn Warraq in The Portable Atheist is a pretty good start. I've not done much research about the subject myself, but there are bound to be a few leads either by this particular author or in his footnotes. :)

Edit: Wow, down-voted for sharing a link? Classy.

It's from a book. I haven't read it but I mean to. It came highly recommended by a friend who first introduced me to Barker's wager. He was a fundamentalist Christian who was on his way to atheism. I was a comparatively very liberal Christian who took longer to loosen the elastic ties of Faith.

The tale of Noah was created by sewing together two separate documents, written by the Priestly and the Jahwist sources, around 450 BCE. Note the improved internal consistency of each story, particularly with respect to:

• the name of the deity
  
• the character of the deity
  
• the length of the flood
  
• the number of animals
  
• the linguistic idiosyncrasies
  
  This distinction has been known to scholars for more than a century, and in my opinion deserves a larger audience. More resources here. To learn more, I highly recommend this book.

Jesus may not have talked about torturing anyone, but he did say that no one gets to heaven except through him. Christian dogma filled in the gaps of what he supposedly meant by that. And since there's good reason to be skeptical of Jesus' existence in the first place, I'd say that I agree with the OP: even if it were all true as the Christian religion claims, I'd never want to be a part of it.