SA and several other countries don't need the terrorist designation to execute or imprison atheists:

http://bit.ly/1hou7pU

Thanks Sandra

It certainly does raise ethcial issues when one tries to add rule of law and equality to established religious institutions and priviledge.

Terry

The trouble with the Bible is that it makes pretty much any interpretation possible if you look for long enough and pick the right bits to fit your biases. Way too many contradictions and inconsistencies which, by rules of inference, means any conclusion can be drawn. Killing is always wrong except sometimes it isn't, you should love everyone except for some people that it is OK to kill or enslave, God loves everyone but hates some large groups of people, etc, etc etc. It is therefore very hard to know what actually *is* inherent in Christianity. 

As someone who has read the bible cover to cover a few times I could not agree more re: the inherent contradictions. At times the god described seems like a mass murderer at others a folksy hero (New Testament). The blatant and frequent misogyny is also disturbing. I just cannot engage in the kind of magical thinking that it takes to accommodate a belief in miracles. The Christian bible causes cognitive dissonance given the push me, pull me nature of the content (you should love ... no hate ... no love the sinner). And for me, moral outrage (e.g. the sins of the fathers will be visited on the children (by whom, actually other people in practice), children as chattel and innately 'sinful'). Sure there is some 'good stuff', the problem is that you have to overlook so much that is awful. And don't get me started on the Book of Revelations - only interpretable if you are on some kind of mind-altering drug or in a fugue state. But for some sad individuals it is a roadmap to the future.

Hi Terry,

Thanx for the posting. 

If I may comment that authors of christianism will infiltrate atheist efforts and tilt them off course. Through currency creation (out of nothing) they have endless funding to promote pseudo new atheists with all the means they need to travel, present and publish their corruption.

Thank you

- Harry

Harry: Do you have some examples to share?

- Wayne Brehaut

Personally, I'm an old atheist, the sort that doesn't believe in the reality of something that all the available evidence shows to be fictitious. I'm also an afatherchristmasist, as it happens. I enjoy the the rituals and the social bonds that go along with Santa, but I'd be a bit embarrassed to insist that he is real in adult company. Of course, if he were real, I totally agree with Justin Trudeau that he would be Canadian.

Jon