Who are happier -- Christians or Atheists?

Quote: Evenbob

But god is concerned about what you
do, you don't go to hell for thinking
about killing somebody. The commandments
say do not kill or steal, they don't say
'don't think about killing and stealing'.

Jesus says exactly this in the Gospels. Matthew chapter 5.

Quote: FrGamble

Jesus says exactly this in the Gospels. Matthew chapter 5.

I forgot about that. Even thinking murder
is a sin to Christians. Makes me thankful
every day that I had religiously unmotivated
parents, saved me a ton in deprogramming
therapy..

You were doing so well until this train wreck:

Quote: Nareed

9) A bit less than 2,000 years ago, God, this perfect, omnipotent and omniscient being, realizes the law he laid down is impossible for humans to follow.

After the fall it was always clear to God that the law was impossible for humans to follow. It was us who needed the convincing, some still do today. Like any good teacher he leads us to discover the truths of our predicitment on our own. Specifically, the Old Testament is a series of God establishing covenants with His people, only to have them broken, followed by a punishment, healing, and a reestablishment of a new covenant.

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He then splits himself in three.

Funniest thing I've read in a long time. In His essence God is community or family. If God is love than surely God in His essence cannot be one. Not only the NT, but the OT reveals this truth. I think you mentioned this notion was even found pre-figured in ancient Egypt.

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One part he sends down to Earth, implanting it on the womb on a woman presumably without her consent,

Not one part but fully God, fully man. Also nothing God does is forced. Mary must respond with the most beautiful words ever uttered, "Be it done unto me according to your Word."

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to eventually let people at a small Roman province know the law his perfect father/himself laid down cannot be followed and is now lifted.

Such humility and such freedom!

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He/his son allows himself to be killed by gruesome means, because somehow that redeems the actions of other people (how???????)

You can't just lift the requirement of the law. Justice requires that the price be paid and the punishment of sin is death. Jesus dies for us, both fulfilling the law in our place and the requirements of justice for its transgression.

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He/his father then resurrects and tells his/their disciples to spread the word to half the world

Go and teach all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

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Apparently then Jesus goes up into heaven (still alive!!!) presumably for a family reunion with his dad and the mysterious third part of himself/themselves, which is heard about but never seen nor heard from.

Still alive then and now and the third person of the Holy Trinity the Holy Spirit is both seen and heard from throughout the rest of human history.

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10) We're told too, that faith trumps actions, but that faith without actions is "bad." What need for faith, then?

You need both. It's like love and a kiss.

Quote: FrGamble

Jesus dies for us, both fulfilling the law in our place and the requirements of justice for its transgression.
.

He dies in a totally non unique way, the
same way hundreds of thousands of
people died in the hands of the Romans
over a 3 hundred year period. If you
count all the other cultures that used
the cross for the death penalty, it's
probably over a million.

This very common way of capital punishment
2000 years ago is not unique in any way,
quit trying to make like it is.

Quote: FrGamble

After the fall it was always clear to God that the law was impossible for humans to follow. It was us who needed the convincing, some still do today.

What's so hard to figure out that a set of arbitrary rules impose on a whim are impossible to follow? God, being perfect, omniscient and omnipotent, would know this before he laid down the law. Why lay it down? Sadism or stupidity?

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Funniest thing I've read in a long time. In His essence God is community or family. If God is love than surely God in His essence cannot be one. Not only the NT, but the OT reveals this truth.

I know a little Hebrew, but my transliteration skills for English fail me. Please try to keep up:

Shema Israel. Adonai Eloheinu. Adonai Ehad.

This translates as "Listen, people of Israel. The Lord is our god. The Lord is one" (emphasis added).

Then there's this:

Va yom ahu, ihiye Adonai ehad. U shemo Ehad.

Translation: "And on that day there will be the one Lord. And his name will be one" (emphasis added)

I can go on. Jewish liturgy quotes extensively from the Old Testament, and references to the one god are as common as bad VP pay tables in Vegas.

So there was one God, until he decided to split into three parts.

Also, if the trinity had always existed, the Jesus also always existed. Yet curiously he's not mentioned until millennia afterwards.

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I think you mentioned this notion was even found pre-figured in ancient Egypt.

No. I mentioned Jesus or whoever invented the Christian trinity borrowed the notion from Egypt.

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You can't just lift the requirement of the law. Justice requires that the price be paid and the punishment of sin is death.

1) you can. If a law is unjust, then punishing people for breaking that law is even more unjust. 2) Even assuming you won't, you don't punish the innocent to redeem the guilty. That's morally twisted.

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Go and teach all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

But they didn't know of the existence of the speck on the map we now call the Western Hemisphere, home at the time to civilizations great and small. And God/Jesus did not see fit to tell them.

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Still alive then and now and the third person of the Holy Trinity the Holy Spirit is both seen and heard from throughout the rest of human history.

Care to share a quote from the Holy Spirit?

Quote: Nareed

Care to share a quote from the Holy Spirit?

"The Holy Spirit does not speak with audible words. Rather, He guides us through an inner voice."

That's why there are 3000+ versions of the
religion, everybody thinks this spirit is
speaking to them and it's just them talking
to themselves. A real holy spirit would be
ashamed of itself for such an awful job it's
doing and find a better way to communicate.

Quote: Nareed

What's so hard to figure out that a set of arbitrary rules impose on a whim are impossible to follow? God, being perfect, omniscient and omnipotent, would know this before he laid down the law. Why lay it down? Sadism or stupidity?

Neither, to teach us that we are loved. True love is not based on what you do, but who you are. By giving up on the idea that you can somehow earn or demand from God His love or salvation you are left with just accepting God's love and recognizing your dignity and worth far surpasses what you can or cannot do.

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I know a little Hebrew, but my transliteration skills for English fail me. Please try to keep up:

Shema Israel. Adonai Eloheinu. Adonai Ehad.

This translates as "Listen, people of Israel. The Lord is our god. The Lord is one" (emphasis added).

This word Ehad or Echad means one, but it doesn't mean absolute unity. It can refer to one thing or one team. For example the same word is used in Genesis 2:24 in talking about marriage, "the two become one (Ehad) flesh." Here the one is talking about a plurality.

Speaking of Plurals, the most common terms used in the OT for God are Elohim or Adonai and both are plural nouns.

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So there was one God, until he decided to split into three parts.

Actually God has always been Trinity. From Genesis chapter 1 verse 26 we read, "Then God said: Let us make human beings in our image, after our likeness."

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Also, if the trinity had always existed, the Jesus also always existed. Yet curiously he's not mentioned until millennia afterwards.

True Jesus has always existed and is found in the Old Testament as well as the Word and as the Angel of YHWH.

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No. I mentioned Jesus or whoever invented the Christian trinity borrowed the notion from Egypt.

Well this is obviously not the case if you re-read the Great Shema again and its context.

I'll try to write more later.

Quote: FrGamble

Neither, to teach us that we are loved. True love is not based on what you do, but who you are. By giving up on the idea that you can somehow earn or demand from God His love or salvation you are left with just accepting God's love and recognizing your dignity and worth far surpasses what you can or cannot do.

To paraphrase Lisa Simpson: " I know those words, but that paragraph makes no sense."

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This word Ehad or Echad means one, but it doesn't mean absolute unity.

It's cute when adults go Trekkie about Start Trek.

If I had the time and the inclination, I'd ask a rabbi why that passage in Exodus doesn't say "Adonai shlosha." But I don't play Trekkie about the Bible, there being better topics on which to use up one's time.

At the time Moses, or whoever it was, came up with all these ideas, polytheism was the norm. Polytheists had no qualms about accepting the gods of other people, and even to worship them in foreign lands. The Jews, for whatever reason, were not like that. Their god was either supreme over all others, or unique. Either way they would make it clear it was one, only deity.

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Speaking of Plurals, the most common terms used in the OT for God are Elohim or Adonai and both are plural nouns.

If it were, I'd have heard about it in years of Hebrew and Torah classes.

Quote: Nareed

At the time Moses, or whoever it was, came up with all these ideas, polytheism was the norm. Polytheists had no qualms about accepting the gods of other people, and even to worship them in foreign lands. The Jews, for whatever reason, were not like that. Their god was either supreme over all others, or unique. Either way they would make it clear it was one, only deity.

Completely agree.

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If it were, I'd have heard about it in years of Hebrew and Torah classes.

Don't take my word for it, I passed Hebrew by the skin of my teeth. It was taught in Italian so I had to double translate everything, it was crazy.

Quote: FrGamble

you are left with just accepting God's love .

The guy who was the evangelical minister and
gave it up for atheism says, it took him years
to realize the 'god' he thought was loving
him and caring about him was a completely
made up type of 'secret friend'. Children will
believe Santa is real for a very long time if
somebody doesn't set them straight.