Who are happier -- Christians or Atheists?

Quote: FrGamble

God does love you, care about you, and wants to be in a relationship with you - not so that you can ace the test, make the cheer leading squad, or get rich. It is so that you can serve God and neighbor, so you can lose yourself and become more like God.
.

Which god? The petty tyrant punishing god
of the OT? The god of the NT who wants to
send you to hell forever if you don't listen
to Jesus? Which of these gods are we supposed
to emulate?

What you mean is the pretend god, the one
you hope exists. The one full of lollypops
and rainbows and whiskers on kittens. The
fairy tale god.

I too deplore the pretend god of lollypops.

There is one God, a just, loving, and merciful God who we come to know throughout the Old Testament and who is fully revealed in the person of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. This is the one God who wants you to be with Him forever in the perfect joys of Heaven but respects your freedom to join the Devil in Hell if you choose to be hateful and overcome by your own ego.

Quote: FrGamble

There is one God, a just, loving, and merciful God who we come to know throughout the Old Testament .

Talk about selective reading..

What's it like living in a moral universe where men don't want to spend a nanosecond with their wives, and parents would rather do anything but feed and care for their children?

Quote: Evenbob

Talk about selective reading..

Ha, you made me laugh; it is only in selective reading that you get the warped view of God you have.

Quote: Nareed

What's it like living in a moral universe where men don't want to spend a nanosecond with their wives, and parents would rather do anything but feed and care for their children?

Can you explain this comment?

Quote: FrGamble

The essence of his love is treating his wife as greater than himself. He is more than willing to miss fundraisers or any event to stay with his wife. He is willing to forgo good food and sleep to be with her. Love is putting your needs behind the needs of your beloved.

This makes absolutely zero sense. I would not spend a minute, much less love, on a person who thought that way.

Quote:

Think again of every single good movie and book you have read. The story involves some type of sacrifice.

Not any books or movies I've read or seen.

One of my favorite movies is "The Shawshank Redemption." The whole movie is about a man pursuing his freedom and values against heavy odds. There is not one ounce of sacrifice in the whole movie.

Really, do you think you're the first altruist I've run into in all my life, that somehow I have slept-walked through life not noticing the pervasive philosophy of the entire world for the past, oh, five thousand years?

Hardly.

Quote: FrGamble

Can you explain this comment?

It seems perfectly simple to me.

Apparently you inhabit a world where a man regards it as an intolerable imposition to spend any time with his wife, and must therefore make himself do it. And a place where parents begrudge every morsel of food an each second of time spent on their children, and again must make themselves feed and care for their children anyway. One wonders why people even marry or produce children at all, if this is the case.

Quote: FrGamble

I have indeed read Nietzsche.

My condolences.

Quote:

It is so that you can serve God and neighbor, so you can lose yourself and become more like God. (All this would make Nietzsche very upset and I think I see steam coming out of Nareed's head right now too)

What would it profit a man to gain God's love if he shall lose his soul?

It's things like this why I'm so happy God is a mere fantasy. If he were real we would be bound by morality to fight him to the ultimate conclusion.

Quote: Nareed

This makes absolutely zero sense. I would not spend a minute, much less love, on a person who thought that way.

What do you want someone who just loves you when it is convenient or when it benefits him? It makes zero sense to me to love someone who really only wants to keep me on the side.

Quote:

One of my favorite movies is "The Shawshank Redemption." The whole movie is about a man pursuing his freedom and values against heavy odds. There is not one ounce of sacrifice in the whole movie.

This happens to be one of my favorite movies as well. The whole movie is about a man who goes through great sacrifices to pursue and obtain his freedom. Crawling through shit to get there is a metaphor for what we often have to do for the greater cause - our freedom. At one point he is willing to be thrown off a building to help his fellow prisoners and get themselves a beer. When the beer comes he doesn't even want one. He does this sacrificial act just to feel normal again.