Quote (sodr2)
But in the end... they are both dead... so what's the point of living life to the fullest?
And I thought us atheists were supposed to be the pessimists! Lol!
No bro, that's not how it works. If you look at the world in a positive way, like most of us do, you realize that you only have one life to live and one chance to make your mark on the world and if you don't do it now you will never get another chance. It's sort of the same idea of Eminem's song "Lose Yourself", as corny as that sounds. I actually wrote a poem about this. It's posted on the site somewhere. I'll have to find it and share it here.
Quote (sodr2)
That would not make it more valid, but the authors of the Bible did not know each other. It was written in different languages and again, throughout several centuries (I'm not saying this makes the Bible true, but rather more valid than the Koran for ex). If a book that has been passed down in a family claiming a flying spaghetti monster existed, someone would speak out and claim that it is nonsense.
You apparently still don't get it. Alright, here's a better analogy. Say I'm a linguistic scholar and archaeologists find one of the books of this ancient anthology that turns out to be a holy book for an ancient monotheistic religion that we have never heard of before. Let's say that we find that this book, which is written in a language older than ancient Sumerian and the book itself is carbon dated to 15,000 BC, is found to be the first of many books within this anthology. A few months later archaelogists find another book about 1,000 miles away that is written in a different language and dated back to 10,000 BC, 5,000 years later, and we find that it is the second book in this anthology. Months pass, even years, and we find more and more books and fill in holes within the stories and we find that the creation of this religion spanned over a period of 12,000 years, the last bit of which is written in 3,000 BC, 1,000 years before the first drafts we have found of the OT were written. Let's also say that this religion contains 99 different books written by 299 different authors in 19 different languages. Finally, the collection of these books arrives at my office and I spend years deciphering it and it speaks of a God who created a dot in the beginning and it exploded and created everything and he just let it form on it's own over time, only coming back to make his own adjustments occasionally. However, as we read on further, the book discusses this God's jealousy, not by actually saying he is a jealous God but by identifying people who didn't believe in God and others who believed in different Gods, and saying that his chosen people are to take burning sticks and gouge the blasphemers' and nonbelievers' eyes out and make them live the rest of their lives blind because it was apparent that their inability to see God was caused by their eyes malfunctioning. Later in the anthology, their God, who is perfect in every sense and loves his people, decides that he wants to free his people of his ancient laws, so he erects himself in physical form (oh yeah, I forgot to mention, he is supernatural and his body is nonphysical, invisible and omnipresent) as the Sun, which is born in the morning on the first winter solstice with the three kings of the outer skies and speaks with wisdom to the people of his land. He was born after making the virgin mother earth pregnant with him and being born of her. Many years later, however, people begin getting upset because this new man in the sky who gives them light is claiming to be a physical form of God, but their God, as their scriptures tell them, is nonphysical, so Anseht, the human hero and messiah, calls upon the warriors of the sky to kill this blasphemer. They successfully kill him just before the spring equinox by forcing him unto the crux in the sky and they bury him the next day. He is arisen three days later and born again, but his spirit leaves his body and ascends back to the heavens to rule over earth and the outside universe that revolves around it for the rest of eternity, but his body remains as a reminder that he exists and loves us, for he provides us light (everything was dark before he arrived in our skies) and heat and makes it possible for us to grow crops. Archaeologists continue searching and find that some of the people and things mentioned in the anthology may actually be independently varifiable regardless of the lavish and impossible claims that otherwise make up this book, but still no one has mentioned the book or any of this because this is a private scientific team and they want to find everything before letting people know about it. So I read on in the book and find that it seems to be finished for some reason or another just by the physical make up of the books and the language used, however, the story itself seems unfinished. What I do is, rather than giving my translated version of the book to the scientific community, I write a short add on to the book, lock it away in an indestructable bin that is set to open 1,000 years later on it's own and hide it somewhere where no one will find it for many centuries. What I write is based on what I truly believe but have no evidence to back it up and I have added a lot of fiction that I know is not true as well. I say that after the Sun is killed, he makes a promise to re-inhabit his old body and suck the earth in and burn it and all the nonbelievers and sinners will rest inside of his burning stomach forever and the true followers will ascend to the heavens to be in paradise forever and that this is proven because the earth is drawing closer to the Sun already every single year, even though it is just slightly. So I hide my book and 750 years later they find it and cannot open it. One day, exactly 1,000 years later, it opens on it's own -- a sign from God according to them. They open it and find that it is the missing piece of their holy book that they had been searching for since 500 years prior. Everyone cheers and almost unanimously it converts everyone to instant believers in this God (except of course those of us who are logical and already nonbelievers).
Does this long ass story I mentioned make this book any more valid than the bible? Afterall, it is older, it's writings span over a longer period of time, it has more writers who wrote it in more languages, and it has more historically verifiable records, including that we can still see the body of our God in the sky, and Christians can't, plus, our God is just as loving if not more so than the Christian God. However, I am obviously a blabbering idiot and I was able to get away with becoming the messiah that wrote the final book (of course I put my name on it as that I wrote it, or at least a pseudonym. I want the credit) and passed it off as true, even though all I did was used my slanted ideology of the findings of modern science (the heat death theory) and passed it off as my theology and made my book appear to humanity in a really cool way, so they believed me even though all of us know that, at least my portion, was a crock of shit and that it is quite possible that all of the sections written by others in the past were written just the same as my portion. That still wouldn't be more valid than the bible or the Koran whereas a scientific book written in 5 years by one man done with proper research, correctly cited and peer reviewed would be more valid than any holy book. And ftr, the references to science in the Koran are closer to the truth than those found in the bible (ie: the Koran references what seems to be a big bang and expanding universe, life coming from non-life in the water, etc.).
Oh, and for anyone looking to follow my religion that I mentioned above, the God's name is Jarvis and the religion is Jarvicism 
Quote (sodr2)
Btw, what do you think was the intent of the authors of the Bible? To answer unanswered questions or for brainwashing/evil intentions?
The bible is complex and by what I have seen, there is no solidified intent of it's writers. They all seem to have a different motive as well as those that have (mis)translated it. It seems to me, however, that the overall intent of the OT is far more malicious than the NT and that is why I rank Christianity higher than Judaism on my moral scale. I also think there is an overall intent of almost all religions to indoctrinate because they all seem to have this "follow my religion and be rewarded, or else you will be punished" ideology, on the exception of a few (namely Buddhism and Jainism) and so I think that is an example of religions being created as a brainwashing device, but that is only a small portion of a religion anyways.
Quote (sodr2)
then why would they say do not commit adultery? and what about the 1st commandment of not worshiping other gods? it seems to me that a god was the one who wrote it and was aware of other gods... can you think of another religion that says not to worship other gods?
Yeah, I can actually. Just about every other religion in the history of mankind. That proves only further my theory of religious indoctrination as posted above.
