I have known ‘Christians’ who think this nicely boils down God’s essence, or is paraphrastic of the Ten Commandments. Benjamin Franklin probably didn’t coin it but famously printed it in Poor Richard’s Almanack. It’s a devilishly clever exact opposite of any Christian doctrine I’m aware of. I never see why a God like that would interest anyone.
Backsliding to Internet Tough Guy mode ?
And as said, you have no idea what I am or am not doing off the Dope. And religion is a massively negative force in the world; doing nothing is better. Almost anything is better than religion.
Garbage. Pain is pain, despair is despair, sadness is sadness. Dying slowly of cancer hurts, whether you call it “grace” or not. You are simply trying to blame the victim.
Answered yes. Answered well ? Nope. Theologicians are just people paid to make nonsense look sensible and make up defenses for the indefensible. And all their arguments are based on lies and delusions to begin with.
Or maybe he’d just be another Christian monster, spreading suffering and death wherever he goes. Preaching love while spreading hate, preaching life while spreading death. You might as well tell him to take up racism as a hobby, because telling himself that he’s better than those people will make him happier.
Let’s see, first you insult the knowledge and intelligence of atheists, then you fraudulently imply that the many problems with religion (by which you mean Christianity) have been adequately answered ‘centuries ago’, and then you throw out some carrots, closing with a false dichotomy where you (falsely of course) imply that his only recourse to “atheist misery” is to convert to your little religion.
This paragraph of yours tells me you are willing to try to deceive people into your religion. I can think of no better proof that it is not a worthwhile cause than the fact you feel the need to use such tactics to promote it.
Despite your endorsement, it is indeed possible that xkcd might be able to find solace in Christianity. If nothing else, it offers an abundance of hope, and even false hope is better-feeling than no hope. Before he takes the leap, though, he should keep one thing in mind:
God isn’t going to make the world better if you become religious. All of your acronyms will keep occurring; there are too many religious people around already to think that one more is going to make God suddenly come to his senses and clean up this world of death and injustice. All that religion can possibly do for you is help you ignore the problems, or pretend they have some higher cause or justification…but the justifications are flimsy and there are less life-altering ways of ignoring your problems. Alcoholism, for example.
Personally I recommend things that aren’t bad for you, for example actually going out and working to solve the problems that trouble you, or even just finding a hobby or two to fill your time and give you purpose. Myself, I hang out with friends, watch movies, read books, and collect stuff. Some people become rabidly interested in sports, or can dedicate themselves to work or family. YMMV. (But don’t become alcoholic.)
Thanks for the advice. And don’t worry- I was never in danger of falling for ITR’s bullshit. What he doesn’t realize is that you can’t choose to believe in something. Some of us are just too smart to believe nonsense, and the only way we could believe it is with a lobotomy.
Why even allow religious people on these boards? For a message board that supposed to fight ignorance, you sure do have a lot of ignorant idiot believers. I think you should be less tolerant; these boards seem to be pretty liberal pussy tolerant of religion.
I’m not sure about that, actually. A great amount of the time, people end up believing what they want to believe. That may not be the same as choosing, but the idea that we only believe instinctively and don’t choose is false, in my view.
I’ve known some very smart people who believe some very weird things. Myself, for one. 
I agree with what Miller said earlier; you very obviously do want to believe in some higher power to make the world the way you want it. But you don’t believe in that, because you think disbelieving makes you smarter than believers.
Being intelligent doesn’t stop people from being happy. You’re making a very unwise choice, in my opinion, by using your intelligence to make yourself unhappy. So reconcile these conflicting beliefs you have. Either believe there is some god or other, so you can stop being disappointed that there isn’t one, or stop wanting one in the first place. Get to know the world as it is and don’t make so many demands of it. Life doesn’t listen to our demands, which is probably all for the best.
Probably 99 percent of topics on this board have nothing to do with religion, so religious affiliation wouldn’t matter even if it was grounds for that kind of discrimination. And their money is green. Plus…
In order to learn - to fight your own ignorance, which has to come first - you have to admit you don’t know everything. Keep that in mind. You’re also being really abrasive here, and you’re brand new on the board. I think you’d be well served to dial it back a little. Your topic is a good one and I’m sure you could have some productive and interesting conversations here.
Rational, not smart. Smart people can be religious; they just don’t use what brains they have, at least where it touches on their religion.
Because anyone is allowed to post here if they obey the rules. Because religious people can be quite knowledgable in areas of knowledge uncontaminated by their religion. Because it’s taboo to admit just how silly religion is. And because how would we argue with them otherwise ? You can’t fight ignorance if the ignorant aren’t allowed on; that’s why there’s a General Questions forum. So people who are ignorant on something can ask.
I’m sure there are atheist only boards elsewhere; if you don’t like arguing, go there.
I missed the edit window, but I don’t like the way this came out. The “even if it was” hypothetical should have had more emphasis: the idea that we should exclude people for having the wrong opinion (although we make rare exceptions) is basically antithetical to the idea of the Straight Dope, and of fighting ignorance.
Absolute certainty in the correctness of one’s metaphysics is not a virtue.
Perhaps you would be happier on a more conservative message board.
You’re disturbed that good people suffer and bad people prosper. The godless universe doesn’t care one whit if a person is good or bad; thus random joys and pains are visited upon us without regard for our morals. If the good are to be rewarded and the bad are to be punished it must be through human agency alone.
That’s the challenge of atheism. We alone are responsible for the amount of suffering we allow our fellow men to endure. Are you shouldering your fair share of humanity’s burden?
Without directly coming out with the whole ‘you need some Namu’ angle, I’m going to attempt to analyze this situation from the perspective of Buddhist psychology.
What the OP needs to do is realize that he doesn’t ‘owe’ anybody any certain feeling. Inasmuch as we accept an absolute ‘goodness’ and ‘badness’ of a person, I choose to believe (and that choice is one that I can make, as a hypothesis) that we are therefore morally defined by our actions rather than our thoughts.
Does your existence harm other people? Do you kill, steal, tell lies, or commit adultery? Do you use force or fraud on other people? Do you affect others without their permission? Under any bare-bones ethical model of your choice, does your existence actually cause unwanted interference in the lives of others?
No? Well, I guess you’re alright then.
Now it’s time to realize that since your moral nature is entirely defined by your tangible actions and occassional inactions towards others, we realize that our moral nature is therefore not defined by our thoughts. Ponder the sweet, buttery implications of that. It means that you don’t owe anyone good thoughts, not at all. Not thoughts, or well-wishes, or sympathy, or anything. In the privacy of your own mind, you are absolutely free to do what you want, and there is absolutely no moral imperative to do otherwise. As long as you do the right thing in your interactions with others, then you don’t owe them any kind of thoughts.
Ponder the marvelousness of that. Yes, there are hungry people out there in the world, and sick people, and poor people. But once you’ve decided how much of your time and energy is necessary to help them - even if it’s none at all, and you simply decide not to make their lives any worse - your mental obligations cease. You are not a bad person if you don’t lie awake at night feeling sad for them. You are on the same moral level as a person who helps or doesn’t hurt them at the same level you do, but despises them with every fiber of his or her being.
Is that spite bad for him? Of course it is. It’s emotionally and spiritually corrosive, and will probably affect his social life. But once again, it’s his emotional and spiritual nature, and his social life, and he doesn’t have an obligation towards you or anybody to keep it a certain way. It is, in fact, his problem, and it’s of his own making. Because his thoughts and feelings don’t affect others, then he has no obligation to make or keep them a certain way.
So there we are. As long as you act morally with others, there is no obligation to think or feel morally. Those things are your own problem.
That brings us back to our initial problem, though. The OP feels unhappy because of the suffering in the world. Now that we’ve established that this isn’t a moral concern - that we have the moral authority to change it - we have to figure out how.
Well, there are a bunch of old monks in whom I put great personal faith who recommend meditation training. Perhaps you should check out a course by Ven. Goenka or someone else, or read some books by Bikkhu Buddhadasa. (However you may feel about the Buddhist faith, let it be granted that their monks do spend all day thinking about this and the ones who can’t hack it leave.) If your mind is grounded firmly in the secular, though, I recommend psychiatric therapy. Your thoughts are there to please you - if they don’t, then why shouldn’t you get external help to make them?
Because it’s a description of God functioning like a good parent- helping His kids grow up & take care of themselves to the best of their abilities, while He helps when their abilities fall short.
Thanks! On the plus side, we can spell Christian. 
Do you perhaps mean “answered clearly with no doubt”? Or do you mean “there’s answers for all those things, no doubt is left, the question is now moot”?
Wow, and to think I have been corrected by Mods on statements about science only a tenth as offensive.
Why let atheists on this board? This is an equally good question. I really do wish someone would explain to me how and/or where many of the posters on this board got the attitude toward religion they post here. It is totally false from any way of measuring. Most of the world’s charity comes from religious organizations. It is true that religious doctrine is not always right, but neither is science doctrine always right. I don’t mind being around atheists or religionists, it is good to exchange ideas and debate, that is why we are posting here. No one has to accept anything, but it is appropriate to respect one another. Toleration is what this world needs most, after love, of course.
a.) what is namu?
b.) I don’t choose to care about people. Believe me i’ve tried to be more of an island, but my ancient nonsensical reciprocal altruism instinct gets the better of me. I can’t help but empathize. But that will probably change over time, as I become desensitized to the pain of the world.
Or not…
I am an atheist. I swear to god I am.
Yes. We are tolerant of all sorts of odd positions, such as absolutists declarations that no god exists.
On the other hand, we are far less tolerant of deliberate rudeness. This does not quite step over the line because you have not exactly resorted to insults aimed at posters, by name, and your “bullshit” calim could be seen as an attack on the argument, not the poster, (if I squint just right), but if you are going to continue to post, here, I would urge you to ratchet down the hostility and insults.
[ /Moderating ]
The only way SOTG/POTB will ever stop is when our species goes extinct. I only wish I could make that happen, but since I can’t, I’ll just cross my fingers and hope it happens asap.
Two points:
Did you bother to report the post that offended you? Or are you simply going to whine about some imagined unfairness without taking the responsibility to address it?
Your claim regarding your “correction” is dishonest. You have been corrected for repeatedly interupting threads to assert the same false claims about what “science” does after having your claim refuted on multiple occasions while you have failed to support your assertion. (In contrast, a couple of our resident fundy atheists make similar absolutist and unsupported claims about religion, but they do not pretend that there has been “proof” regarding their beliefs and then refuse to provide their “evidence.”)
Gee, ya think?
Do you think I’m threating you? Please. I’m sorry if you feel that way. You need a hug, dude, way more than a beating. When I say I walk the walk it means I do for others in the name of Christ. When I ask you to step up, I’m asking you to join me. You can keep all the glory of your deeds for yourself. My glory won’t be had here. But it will be peace.
I do it the only way I know how. One person at a time.(individually)
Throw money at it and let someone else do the work.(collectively)
I’m open to any suggestions.