You said: “So why believe? There are lots of reasons, many of them psychological. But I think the best evidence is this: if life teaches anything at all, it teaches that there are so many happy endings that the man or woman who truly does not sense a Hand at work might have cause to question his or her rationality circuits.”

Lets break that one down.

“life teaches that there are many happy endings”

what?

“that someone who doesn’t sense a hand at work might not be rationale.”

I cannot think of a more unlettered and pointless response. You may want to take another swing at explaining what life teaches and how logic ties in with faith.

because that was a damn brushfire of inanity.

not sure if you caught this…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19592372

So, for instance, when a woman comes to the police and she says my husband or my fiance raped me almost every day during the last year, the police have to record each of these events, which might be more than 300 events. In many other countries it would just be one record – one victim, one type of crime, one record.”

The thing is, the number of reported rapes has been going up in Sweden – it’s almost trebled in just the last seven years. In 2003, about 2,200 offences were reported by the police, compared to nearly 6,000 in 2010.

So something’s going on.

But Klara Selin says the statistics don’t represent a major crime epidemic, rather a shift in attitudes. The public debate about this sort of crime in Sweden over the past two decades has had the effect of raising awareness, she says, and encouraging women to go to the police if they have been attacked.

The police have also made efforts to improve their handling of cases, she suggests, though she doesn’t deny that there has been some real increase in the number of attacks taking place – a concern also outlined in an Amnesty International report in 2010.

If you look into the actual situation, its turns out that Sweden has been reforming their laws and making them more strict. Things that would not register as a rape elsewhere very well could in Sweden.

These things tend to happen when humanism…not myth…run the country. Sweden is one of the safest countries on the planet earth. and one of the most generous.

bullshit alert! here we go. first you trot out the bullshit wager. read the fucking posts you moron. what if god only sends you to hell if you worship the wrong god? isn’t it better not to believe? chew on that, you asshole, before you start spewing your predictable pontificating.

you wander by and probably never to be seen again. like numerous drive-by shit-heads, you stop, spew your ingrained, unoriginal, regurgitated bile and run off, smug in your belief.

who cares if priests are prone? we know some priests do, but most of you motherfuckers stand silently by, complicit in your inaction. please, don’t even try to bring up bad shit that atheists do. the bad shit is never done in the name of atheism. when was the last time you’ve heard an atheist lure a little boy to an atheist reading? inasmuch as i’d like to kill them bible distributors, but i don’t. arise atheist soldiers and kill the xtian infidels? don’t even try that old tired hitler shit, either.

in closing, go fuck yourself. btw. messenger is full of shit, but you choose to defend him?

I’m a Catholic who just wandered by this site and was intrigued by the posts. A couple of things caught my attention.

Anonymous: you said in response to Messenger, “why does your god’s plan include his representives on earth (priests) raping so many young boys.” I assume you have heard of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a highly reputable organization that keeps excellent data on child abuse. A director of the organization, E. Allen, dismissed the idea that Catholic priests were prone to child abuse
(Newsweek 4/7/10). Furthermore, any criminologist knows the most accurate data for crimes comes from something called the Victim’s Crime Report. A large sample of people fill out data about their criminal experiences (if any) regardless of whether or not they ever reported the crime. The Victim Crime Report for 2011 revealed that 0.4% of clergymen were possible abusers. Less than one half of one percent. Granted, that is still too many, but compare that number to any other profession on the planet and see what turns up. The Report is available online.

Severin: you wrote, “With some 80% of declared atheists, it [Sweden] is one of the most civilized country [sic] on earth.” Perhaps, but according to Amnesty International, Sweden has possibly the highest rate of rape of any country on the planet. By the way Severin, I don’t know if you are interested in philosophy, but I think you would enjoy something called “Pascal’s Wager.” Look it up, if you’re of a mind. It will amuse you.

Also, back to Anonymous. Naturally you are absolutely correct in suggesting that one cannot prove the existence of God. But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Humans cannot know infinity from a finite perspective, and the existence of God is not falsifiable.

So why believe? There are lots of reasons, many of them psychological. But I think the best evidence is this: if life teaches anything at all, it teaches that there are so many happy endings that the man or woman who truly does not sense a Hand at work might have cause to question his or her rationality circuits.

2 Kings 2:23-25 – young laddie, do not fuck with a righteous man. he will mess you up. bears no less.

Ezekiel 25:17 – i will execute great motherfucking vengence….. nice!

no wonder these fuckers blow up shit and beat up gays. then they pseudo feel bad and dream up redemption crap.

like somebody said. i don’t give a fuck if half of the world is a bunch of murdering atheists, it’s still not gonna make me believe in some bullshit. fuck this, “either you’re with us or against us” bullcorn.

mine is the book of nahum. the first verse says it all.

I know…