Due to constant misunderstanding with my name I feel the need to change my intro. I am hateful, hateful of religion. I hate what religion does to people and that people use it as an excuse to not think. I have spent many years of my life as an Atheist and have learned to handle my emotions, but no other word quite describes how I feel towards religion short of hate. I am outspoken, open minded, and will share my opinion. If you're looking for someone who will always agree with you, that won't be me.
The Out Campaign: Scarlet Letter of Atheism
(Ricky Gervais is my icon photo, I seem to be asked a lot.) Follow HatefulAtheist on Twitter

25th June 2012

Question with 37 notes

dishonoronyou-dishonoronyourcow asked: I know from experience that my God is loving, merciful, all-powerful, and everything you say He isn't. People, ultimately, chose evil over good and bad things happen for this reason. There are many reasons God doesn't stop some of these things; to teach lessons, to make people stronger in life and faith. As humans, we're not expected to understand all of God's motives. We're expected to have faith. I know this is a common argument from Christians but the reason we use it is because it's truth.

(This is the same person who sent the anon message about god not being impotent, she sent a follow up message to indicate she didn’t intend to send it anon originally.)

Please don’t mistake my bluntness for hostility but your personal experiences mean nothing to me. Your own personal experience mean nothing more than the personal experience of billions of other people. Their personal experience is quite vast and includes people who believe they are being sent secret messages by aliens, believe they are the reincarnation of a great historic figure, believe they are watched by angels, or believe they are chosen by god. Their experiences do not make reality, neither do yours. Your personal experiences are your own and can not be used to prove any objective truth about the world. Why would you believe you are given special knowledge that is denied to others? What is more likely, that you alone were given special proof to confirm one of the greatest mysteries of the universe, or that you mistakenly credit it as such?

People chose to do what we would consider relatively good or bad things because that is simply how we have evolved. People that do dishonest things to get ahead aren’t always caught, they do often get away with it and get ahead in life because of it. If doing good things brought about only good results people would not do bad things, essentially if karma was true it would be ridiculous for anyone to do anything bad or evil because it would be returned upon them. People do “evil” for many reasons but none of it has to do with any rejection or acceptance of imaginary figures.

When people attempt to justify atrocities and disasters in religious terms it always drives me nuts. Thousands of people die so god can “teach us a lesson”? What is that lesson exactly, because that part always remains very unclear? Couldn’t he perhaps do it in some way that doesn’t result in the slaughtering of thousands upon thousands of innocent people? Aren’t these innocent people then doomed to not learn whatever this important lesson supposedly is? Perhaps people wouldn’t have to be “stronger” if it wasn’t for god attempting to “teach us a lesson”. If, as humans as you point out, we are not supposed to understand the motives how are we going to learn any lesson? How is this definition any different from a tyrant who demands you will do as he says because he knows better than you? I am not a slave, you shouldn’t want to be one.

If Christianity was the true religion there would be some indication of this. Christians suffer the same as Muslims, Hindus, non-believers and all of the rest do. Prayers are not answered and all faith and non-faith groups enjoy roughly the same life expectancy and life quality. If one of these groups was truly talking to god, truly “blessed”, truly living the life that they are ordered to by some ethereal slave driver wouldn’t they expect to see some results for all of this? If not, what is the point? Oh yes, the next life, that carrot always dangled just out of reach of the believer. Something that drives people to discount this life in favor of false promises, another evil doctrine, but a completely different subject.

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  1. liamnicholson said: God is clearly teaching all those starving kids in Africa, who also have aids and whatever else, a lesson. They’ve clearly done something wrong, heathens… or, ya know, he doesn’t exist.
  2. bambisgoodman said: I want to say how impressed I am by your consistent patience, and well-informed, fair answers. Shame most Christians will ignore any information that doesn’t comply with their faith.
  3. hatefulatheist posted this