“They just copied ours!!”
- “um, okay, what about the ones that pre-date yours!?”
“Time Machines? I don’t know, asshole!”
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I’ve often wondered why “barometer” was chosen as opposed to any other. My morals might be affected by how much pressure I’m under I suppose… but wouldn’t that excuse me from immoral behaviours at either end of this barometer the OMighty is employing? Couldn’t the OMighty just quit fucking with the atmospheres and then we’d all get along?
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If you run into this again, you can bring up the parable of the barren soil that is used by Biblical scholars to justify miscarriages and stillborn finding a place in heaven:
http://biblehub.com/mark/4-8.htm
(Raised by Presbyterians myself, which to my eye seems like Church for the sake of Church; most of them don’t know the specifics of their own creed)
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OK, so, mostly on the same page as you, but I lean agnostic myself.
There is no evidence of the Christian Personal, Loving God.
A callous, cruel god like Crom ala Conan could totally exist.
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If evidence for a God presented itself, it would become part of science. It has not to this date.
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As an atheist, I’m just not sure I’ve screwed up by failing to stone enough adulterers. I guess my “moral barometer” is broken. Or maybe I just have a moral hydrometer thermometer speedometer, instead. (45mph is the Devil’s speed, you know.)
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It’s a lot easier to do the right thing when you think Santa I mean God is watching over you. Maybe what he means is “I don’t understand why an atheist would behave himself without the fear of god forcing him to behave.”
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I feel like that’s overly generous - or perhaps not fair, I’m not sure which. Because these guys are grappling entirely with a weird, straw-man version of evolution, they’re not actually able to puzzle that out. I saw someone claiming that evolution meant that all animals were turning into human beings. This was supposedly the scientific knowledge he had gleaned before becoming a creationist. One isn’t going to use that “knowledge” to figure anything out.
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Yeah, when I hear that argument, it makes me really nervous about the person who made it. Because it amounts to, “As a sociopath, I just don’t get why anyone would do the right thing without fear of punishment!”
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I prefer to use a moral endoscope.
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that would be the demi-urge 
Several systems of Gnostic thought present the Demiurge as antagonistic to the will of the Supreme Being… as fundamentally flawed, or with malevolent intention. In some the Demiurge is the “jealous God” of the Old Testament.
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I present the god Sithrak, the Blind Gibberer, courtesy of Oglaf(NSFW)
I like Sithrak. He’s a straight shooter, and says what he thinks, and means what he says. That is: “I will torture all of you, regardless of the life you lived, unconditionally, there’s nothing more to it.”
Whereas Yahweh seems to be interminably interested in mind-games, double-talk, and cruel tests of loyalty.
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He’s not simply ignorant. He’s also a bigot. He’s someone who values his ignorance.
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Steve Harvey Proves He's a Fucking Dumbass Who Wouldn't Have Graduated From High School in 2015
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That bizarre, self-incriminating argument is so prevalent, though, and rolls so quickly and matter-of-factly off so many people’s lips, it makes we wonder sometimes if maybe we non-sociopaths are the exception.
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He reminds me of a self-obsessed, manipulative, possessive and violent husband, and actually presents himself in more or less those terms on many occasions. I love many Christians and a fair bit of Jesus’ teaching, but God himself can go to hell. Being a basically moral person requires you to ignore large parts of the Bible - and not just individual passages, but fairly clear implications about God’s character and the nature of morality that run throughout the Bible. There are plenty of good Christians out there, but a theology that you can’t take too seriously isn’t a good theology.
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Yeah, he’s kind of an embarrassment as a human being, isn’t he?
Yeah, but where’s your moral barometer?
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Corollary by induction: evolution implies only one species should exist. Possibly one family, or one individual.
@nungesser @SheiffFatman: Have you tried “How do the faithful know which of the bible’s laws to obey and which to ignore?” Or as @some_guy noted, “How come so many non-Abrahamic religions have similar rules?”
Actually, some_guy, the “valid connection to god” reminded me of an old joke. A missionary visits a previously uncontacted tribe and begins to preach. Many convert. One man asks him if it is all true, if people who don’t follow all those new rules will burn in Hell, and the missionary says yes. The man, frightened, asks if everyone who died before the missionary arrived is in Hell and he says no, not if they didn’t know. And the man said, “So why did you tell me?!”
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