I hate rabbit holes...they make my brain hurt!

No, opinion doesnt count here. It's logic. If something exists there must be certifiable proof. If there isn't, there's no reason to believe.

You can't prove for certainty, but you can point to inconsistencies and proofs that say one thing or another. Example: A man named Jesus did exist and was executed during the Roman Empire on a cross.

Carbon dating points the age of the Earth to be around 4 billion years old at least, where as the bible points as the earth being less than 40,000 years old. You can kill this argument about the earth's age immediately by pointing out that the second nearest star in the sky takes longer than that for its light to be visible for us, so by its placement (with a whole universe being made in a week) would give us a vacant, empty sky.

You can also point out a date when Christianity was first discovered as a roman religion, where as there are evidences of many others having existed for a far longer time. People will point to religious events, miracles, coincidences, so forth. But when you collect all the evidence, you have things we can't explain on the religious side, and things we can by the scientific community and historical evidences.

But, that's not the deciding factor for people. It never will be, even if you totally disprove the existence of god tomorrow, no matter how absolute the evidence, people are going to believe anyway because their bible tells them they must. And people who don't believe will not be any more content in the end.

Not with the "it's magic" wildcard.

Edit to add an illustrative graphic.

(also, yes, this applies to many things other than religion)

Or the "New testament trumps the old!" card

Pretty black pot there, eh kettle? I don't see many people presuming to lord anything over anyone here, just a lot of lively discussion. Discounting your own post of course, which does presume to be some kind of final pronouncement. Thankfully I've seen this kind of trollish post many times before in these discussions, and can thus discount you quicker than a hand towel on Black Friday.

Hey, why not. I would rather drink the blood of a goat than that of some dead dude. That is just ew.

Yeah the irony of his post, he had the biggest superiority complex of anyone in this thread.

This is now a webcomics thread.

Ahahah win.

Thanks... You just taught me something new. +1!

How much is the Bible saying one must believe, and how much is simply family / peer / societal pressure?

If you weren't taught about religion xyz by those around you, what would you believe on your own? I could never get past that part. All of my family but me have faith in the Christian God, but wouldn't they be following something else if born and raised under some other religious belief?

So then I have to question the whole matter of faith - why do you believe in this particular thing? "Because I was taught that." Okay, but what if you were taught that other thing? "I'd probably believe that, instead." Then why do you have faith in this particular one when it's just as likely you would have instead believed something else if you had been taught differently?

I "get" faith, but then again I don't get it.

< generic "you", not YOU "you". Just using your post as a diving board to jump into something I probably should not swim in. >

First off, of course the burden is on the person making any kind of claim. The default state is to assume nothing - Will these berries kill me if I eat them? I don't know. Does a big man watch us from the sky? I don't know. Once you make a claim - "These berries are safe to eat", "Yes, a big man watches you from the sky" - then it is upon the claimant to back these claims. Allowing any arbitrary claim equal weight with any other is sheer folly and doesn't produce any useful method for apprehending the world.

As for why people who don't believe care what you do believe, it's because laws and customs and important decisions are made from within these beliefs, and some of us don't want to live that way. I certainly don't want the rules of the modern world being predicated on the beliefs of what was proper by a desert tribe living two millennia ago.

Talking about goats - long-long time agomy little brother used to be allergic to cow milk. We had some friend who had farm and goats and they give him goat milk instead.

So once our milk glasses got mixed and i almost suffocated because of the surprise when i almost drank it empty on one go.

Also, blood pancakes rock (or whatever you call them in english).