Hi, read the thread and wanted to comment.
I'll make this point first for anyone who gets offended. I grew up quite serious about my Christianity. As a teenager, it sometimes bothered me when Jesus or Christianity were bashed. Religion is an emotional issue. The only reason any of us are religious in the first place is because we've been emotionally persuaded to be religious. We see these religious beliefs we embrace as a big part of what makes us who we are. It's completely irrational to get offended though, when religion is criticized. I was completely irrational when I got offended when I was younger. Growing up going to church, we are told that any negative talk about God or religion is such a terrible crime, this is nailed into our heads, and this is why we get offended. We are told God will be dissapointed in us if we don't stand up for him and defend him. So we're basically following orders when we get offended about religion being bashed. We think it's our religious duty to be offended. But the reasons for doing so are not logical at all.
I understand what it's like to be a Christian. I can put myself back into the mindset of when I was a very serious believing Christian (up until 15 years old). As a small child I would pray for insignificant things, and some of them of course by coincidence would happen, so that convinced me God was listening. I felt God's presence, experienced God.. all of that good stuff the religious say atheists are too close minded for. It's because we've experienced what we've experienced that we know better. We know what we experienced was nothing more than a hallucination. Masturbation of the mind. I understand why Christians believe what they believe, but there is one thing I can not bring myself to understand. Knowing how faith works, how can a Christian remain a Christian? We are born to our parents by random chance. You could have very well been born in the Middle East rather than in America. If that were the case, by following the principle of "faith" you'd be worshipping a totally different God and you'd have a different holy book that you accepted to be true on the principle of faith. If you were born to Muslim parents, you would not have given Christianity or Jesus a second thought.
That's how faith works, and that is the main reason I gave up my Christian faith. Christians are against faith too, unless it's the right kind of faith (their faith). Afterall, the Christians believe that the faith of a Muslim child will be his ticket to hell. I was forced to give up my faith because I realised that out of the tens of thousands of gods people have believed in and still believe in, my God had no more evidence than any other.
Our beliefs are not that different. Christians, just like atheists, believe that complex things can exist with no need for a designer. Atheists however, do not believe that complex things can just pop into existence. We accept that complexity comes from simplicity and simple beginnings, after great amounts of time, unlike theists who think a complex God just popped into existence by chance. God only makes sense if you completely ignore the question of where God came from. Who made God? Did he spring out of nothing? Always having existed is out of the question, because that's a squared circle. Something with the ability to think had to have had a “first” thought. We and Christians both believe that things can come to be without a designer, so why is our belief of simple, natural beginnings more silly than believing a sky wizard, complete with magical powers and perfect in every way, just naturally (because God wasn't designed, right?) popped into existence by chance?
What it comes down to for the religious is their phobia of death. You don't want to give up all you've been promised and it's understandable. Sometimes I still wish there was a heaven I could go to. But our desires and wishes have no impact on reality. What's true is true, and there's no changing that. You will never find out you were wrong, and I will never find out I was right. None of us will care what happens when we die, because... well, we'll be dead so we won't have the ability to care. I suspect that none of the Christians here have any sort of fear for the Muslim hell. I have no fear of the Christian hell for the same reason you have no fear of the Muslim one. No evidence for it. I don't think about it for a second and I have long accepted that this is my only life. Christianity is great for the comfort it gives though, right? How much comfort do you think it gives to my parents who have to worry about their 3 year old grand daughter being burned in hell some day, because I'm going to raise her to only accept things that can be backed up by evidence?
