Revenant Jesus wrote:

With freedom of religion comes all the other freedoms Americans have. The fact is, we are a melting pot of all sorts of cultures, races and religions. If you can't handle someone observing your religion or culture in a possibly negative way, you need to get out.

It isn't like this guy is going out into a public place and yelling at people and burning bibles and stuff. He is in a purely academic environment, debating a religion. He isn't attacking anyone.

No, not the author that I'm saying attacked religions but

Falcon said this -
"I'm not a supporter of religion and don't condone me as one. I think religion is stupid and their are other ways of doing what I claimed religion to do. Religion, however, seems to be just the easiest way to do them and there is a reason religion exists. Look at how people behaved without religion!"

OneWingedDemon wrote:

What is the difference between the religious child that fears the darkness and the atheist child that fears the darkness?

I'm going to quote Richard Dawkins here in saying that a Christian child or a Jewish child as saying an Marxist child or a Dictatorial child.

Perhaps, the atheist child fears what may be luring in the darkness. The religious child may fear that to, but is there more depth? Does the religious child fear something deeper, perhaps the spiritual presence of demons in the darkness?

Both children would probably fear the unknown, and nothing more. Children synthesize ideas of monsters and boogie men, regardless of their religion, because they can't really make any coherent decision on that fact.

So, the atheist child turns the light to see what's there. He will feel comforted seeing that nothing is there, as he returns to sleep. The religious child does the same, but he does not feel safe.

Then the "religious" child would just be subject to more stories about monsters and boogie men than the "atheist" child.

So, the atheist child lives his life fearing no spiritual beings or anything of the sort, while the religious child lives his life praying every night, attempting to keep the "demons" out of his house.

But, let's say the atheist child has a nightmare. He speaks to his mother or father about it, and they tell him it happens to everyone and he goes back to bed without a worry. The same thing happens to the religious child, but when he speaks to his parents about it, they tell him a demon entered your dreams in order to make you fear it. He prays with his parents, and returns to bed.

It probably depends on the child. Some may be content with a simply reply of, "It is because it is.", while some may question more, and not really feel comfortable until they know why.

There are pros and cons to the atheist's and the religious.

The atheist's live their life care-free of spiritual things and such, not caring what happens to them when they die, and not living their entire life trying to please something that may not even exist.

The religious live their life trying to become "good" people, in order to follow their religion. Their only evidence of their god's existance is a book, or some other form of writing. They live their life beleiving they will enter a spiritual realm, a place where there is pure joy and peace, and where they spent their lifes for eternity.

These are just stereotypes, and nothing more.

No one really knows what the hell is true or not. Science states the big bang caused existance, while religion states God created existence. No one will live to tell.

It makes more sense to believe in science because, you know, science has evidence, which is something religion can't say.

You need to expect that, not everyone is going to share your opinion. Abstract ideas like religion need to expect the occasional attack.

Well, history and science both agree that he once existed while there are differing viewpoints of whether he was a prophet, G-d, wise man, etc.

If you take his teachings themselves absent of religion then you get great works.
It is when you add religion that things get quaky, not because the religion is bogus, but rather than people misinterpret key aspects of it, or use it for their own personal gain ((see, Pharisees, Catholocism before the Protestant split (and a while after), etc)

Also, in that sentence you wrote that "are" should have been an "is" due to the phrasing of the sentence. "As well as his religion" is a prepositional phrase, so Jesus is the subject and Jesus is singular and thus gets a singular verb

Knifo wrote:

I didnt really mean for this to turn into a religous debate...

If that's true, you are very ignorant about these interwebs.

Jamesburrow wrote:

Except science does not disprove religion, either.

Though there are some things that are in direct contradiction, in which case it's better to believe science because science has evidence.

That's a very interesting read, although in the second part I got the impression that if there was single good, credible source they would have played it down. Not on purpose, but because all the other information puts that bias in them. If someone credible did write about Jesus Christ from a first hand experience that wouldn't make him real in my mind, so I'd be looking at other ways those writings could have came to be.

Oh, no, damn- I was replying to Revenant Jesus's post below yours, but it seems I accidentally clicked your post instead. Sorry!

And besides that, at the time both the Roman and Jewish governments had outlawed Christianity. It seems to me that if you are going to outlaw a religion, you should also outlaw anything that could make it seem as if it was in the least bit true. If you want to oppress a religion, what better way of doing so than pretending as if none of the events that came with him actually happened?

In this case we're not just talking about official documents. According to that there isn't anyone who wrote about first hand experience (or even second or third, 'my grandpa was healed by Jesus' or 'Dad followed Jesus from here to there during his travels'). What you're suggesting is that the Roman and Jewish governments spent at an entire generation (realistically three or four) actively seeking and destroying anything that even hinted at the existence of Jesus Christ.
If it's true that no historians made any mention of a Jesus Christ then I would say there's an extremely high chance that the Jesus Christ we all know didn't exist. That's not to say he couldn't exist period, just not the guy who had a huge following that went around healing the sick and preforming other various miracles.