[Serious]Why are you not a believer of the existence of God

[FunkyDexter]

[quote]taking an hour to write such a modest missive.[quote]It's... 'cause... I... type... real... slooooooooow. Actually I spent most of the time scrolling back and forwards between the previous posts while I was putting my argument together.

Actually if you read the Satanic bible it in no way encourages any form of unpleasantness.

I've heard of "Satan's Bible" which is basically a Christian bible with some extra sections refering to mysticism etc. and a rather snazzy picture of a daemon in it. Is that what you're referring to? If so it's not really the bible that a Satanist would view as their sacred book is it? In truth I don't know much about either it (beyond what I've seen on the discovery channel - it was quite interesting) or the modern day Church of Satan so I won't argue with you. All I was really doing was trying to pre-empt the inevitable "Aha, but what about Satanism" response someone would have come up with had I just said "All religions teach compassion".

Fair enough but is broader always better ?

No. That's why I made the distinction.

it is not closing your mind to say the x = x and no x does not = y

Yes it is... but it's a scenario in which closing your mind is a good thing. There's a provable truth: x does equal x.

On the gravity thing, a broader perspective would be to say "it might be caused by people farting", that's probably not a better perspective though.

At which point a a broader perspective becomes a better perspective depends on the provability of the argument and that is, of course, entirely subjective.

The crusades are another example of a conflict justified by religion rather than caused by it. The Turks had taken Jerusalem and were threatening Byzantium so the Byzantine Emperor called for help. This clearly comes under the banner of desparation. He wasn't worried because they were Muslims, he was worried because they were threatening his city. He'd have been just as worried is they were Christian. And the fact that he then closed his gates to teh Crusaders when they turned up and that they proceeded to sack his city demonstrates quite amply that both he and the crusaders were motivated by greed.

i did not compare God to Father Christmas, i compared the belief in God to the belief in Father Christmas which is slightly different

That's entirely true and I was just clumsy in the way I quoted you, sorry for that. I think my point still stands, though, it's the atheistic side of the debate that generally introdcuces that type of language into the debate. Just to be clear, I really don't think you're particularly guilty of it and I had to try quite hard to find examples. The types of atheists I was referring to as shrill are ALOT worse than I imagine you've ever been - but they do most certainly exist.

War on Terrorism

Bit of greed, bit of desparation. If you believe that America's gone to war for oil then the greed is definitely in there (I will make no judgement on that point for fear of derailing the thread) and the self protection that is encompassed by the motivation to prevent terrorism is, IMO a form of desparation. Perhaps Self preservation might have been a better term for me to use than desparation but I'd happily conflate the two and, either way, it's certainly nothing to do with religion.

we have already established that i am a pedant

Wear the badge with pride, brother. I'm with you all the way.