Not_Now.Soon,

If we all need your god, then that is a universal human trait, not a trait of your god. You effectively acknowledge this when you go on to say, “With the aspect of needing someone…”.

<<There are a few other attributes to consider though too, before you say you've disproven God AJ Philips. For instance, one aspect is that God knows that we need Him.>>

But even if it WERE a trait of your god, that doesn’t mean that omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence suddenly become possible. No, they are still three logically impossible traits to possess all at the same time (especially in light of the evil and suffering we have witnessed throughout history). We may need your god (although that’s highly debatable), but that doesn’t mean that your god is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, too. You could just be mistaken about one of those last three traits.

<<Often we don't know this though, and try to do our own thing without Him with mixed results.>>

The results are also very mixed WITH your god, so He doesn't seem to be the determining factor here.

<<… when Israel forgot about God they were described as a murderous and greedy people.>>

Well, the Bible would say that, wouldn’t it? But we have no reason to believe that any of those stories are actually true.

More to the point, though, this is not what we observe in reality. At least not in the modern world. Religiosity shares an inverse correlation with every measure of societal health:

http://moses.creighton.edu/jrs/2005/2005-11.pdf
http://i.imgur.com/WkCW6ok.png
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdtwTeBPYQA

Furthermore, by most measures, the world is overall more peaceful now than it has ever been before. So, your god, or humanity, don’t seem to be in much of a rush to prove that they need Him.

Continued…

…Continued

<<God let them fall. Is that evil?>>

Evil of God to them fall? No, if this god is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent, then I’d say the evil (or less-than-omnibenevolent behaviour, at least) lies in the fact that He created this reality knowing in advance that he would have to let them fall, when He could have just created a different reality.

<<In today's world it is still the same.>>

No, it’s not. And even if it were, clearly accepting your god doesn’t help (see the above links).

<<We have abudent crime among the poor who hold great struggles …>>

And who also tend to live in the most religious parts of the planet, too (with a few exceptions that have perfectly rational explanations for their bucking of the trend). This can also be observed even when one looks at the states and neighbourhoods of predominantly-Christian America. So, clearly, finding your god isn’t doing much to help. It may provide comfort to the more desperate, but it appears to be doing nothing to elevate them from their situations.

<<As indivuals too, we need God. Often we forget this until we go through hardship, sorrow, or experience something to suffer through. Then many people call out to God.>>

People will naturally grasp at anything when they’re desperate. But that doesn’t mean your god exists, or that He is waiting for us to realise we need Him, or that we actually need Him. It only proves that, when desperate enough, people will turn to anything that will bring them comfort.

I’ve always thought it was rather co-incidental that God only ever revealed Himself when people were at their most desperate. It’s rather unethical when you think about it. As is Churches praying on the needy when looking for converts.

Dear Not_Now.Soon,

Jesus according to the New Testament said in Matthew 7:16 King James Version (KJV), "Ye shall know them by their fruits."

I follow that and judge Christianity by what Christians have done in the name of Christ - not by what Jesus taught but by the results of the teachings. If we really look at the history we will find both good and evil in the teachings of Jesus and in the history of Christianity. Since Constantine issued the Edict of Toleration giving Christianity a status equal to the other religions in the Roman Empire and Theodosius made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire Christianity has primarily been on the side of the rulers and the rich and powerful - not the poor who Jesus spoke of.

One of my Critisms of Jesus is to this words attributed to him in John 14:6, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

It doesn't matter to the arrogant Jesus who good a life you have lived or what a decent person you are. You are only OK if you follow him. What is the result of that intolerant thinking? What happened after Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodosius_I

"The Christian persecution of Roman religion under Theodosius I began in 381, after the first couple of years of his reign in the Eastern Roman Empire. In the 380s, Theodosius I reiterated Constantine's ban on former customs of Roman religion, prohibited haruspicy on pain of death, pioneered the criminalization of magistrates who did not enforce laws against polytheism, broke up some pagan associations and tolerated attacks on Roman temples.

Between 389–392 he promulgated the "Theodosian decrees" (instituting a major change in his religious policies), which removed non-Nicene Christians from church office and abolished the last remaining expressions of Roman religion by making its holidays into workdays, banned blood sacrifices, closed Roman temples, confiscated temple endowments and disbanded the Vestal Virgins.

continued

The practices of taking auspices and witchcraft were punished. Theodosius refused to restore the Altar of Victory in the Senate House, as asked by non-Christian senators.

In 392 he became sole emperor (the last one to claim sole and effective rule over an empire including the western provinces). From this moment till the end of his reign in 395, while non-Christians continued to request toleration, he ordered, authorized, or at least failed to punish, the closure or destruction of many temples, holy sites, images and objects of piety throughout the empire.
In 393 he issued a comprehensive law that prohibited any public non-Christian religious customs, and was particularly oppressive to Manicheans. He is likely to have disbanded the ancient Olympic Games, whose last record of celebration was in 393, though archeological evidence indicates that some games were still held after this date."
Theodosius not only persecuted non-Christians, but he persecuted Christians who didn't follow his branch of Christianity. In that he was following intolerant Jesus.

I much prefer the words of Thomas Jefferson to those of Jesus. Thomas Jefferson said:

But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
-Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782

You were following in the intolerant footsteps of Jesus. You didn't care how good or bad we were - you cared that we saw God and Jesus the way you see God and Jesus.

Whether I am a good or bad person is up to the results of my actions and for others to decide. However, I know I felt an immense sense of relief when I gave up the superstition of believing in supernatural entities. You are secure in your beliefs. I feel at peace with my lack of religious belief. I appreciate the words of Jimmy Durante: "Why doesn't everybody leave everybody else the hell alone?"

NNS ,
AS background... in my late teens I was heavily invested in Christianity via the lower Anglican Church. Heavily. But I began to realise that my 'faith' was of a much lower order than the truly faithful that I knew through my church. I began to realise that I didn't truly accept things like John 3:16 which I saw as the core of Christianity. I spent many, many hours with a number of extremely good people working through my doubts but in the end, despite their efforts I walked away from the church.

For a time, I called myself atheist, but was never a church hater like some in these pages. Eventually I came to realise that the honest position for those who don't accept the deity is to acknowledge that they just don't know, so I now call myself agnostic.

I don't know if there is a creator. If I was forced to jump one way or t'other I lean to the view that there is a higher intelligence. I try to avoid the term God since that has the notion of anthropomorphising this being and I feel that's not correct. For a time I sought the higher intelligence through meditation (Sam Harris has an interesting take on that....http://www.amazon.com/Waking-Up-Spirituality-Without-Religion/dp/1451636024/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8) but to no avail. Nonetheless I remain of the view that prayer, chanting, ritual and meditation are similar processes.

So my summary view would be that I feel there is more likely than not a creator but I don't know with any degree of confidence. Without writing a large essay I'd struggle to reveal all my beliefs on this. But a quick summary would be that I think (again with little confidence) that after death we all move to a higher, or at least different, plain where the creator is made known to us, irrespective of how we've lived this life. Why all the mucking around to get to that plain? Not the foggiest idea. But OTOH we might all just be worm food and the soul merely something we need to tell ourselves to get through the night

/cont

As to my defence of Christianity...
Although my career became finance and statistics, my passion and early university education was history. Over many, many years I read on and consider myself rather knowledgeable on the legacies we owe to the Greco-Roman world. For example I could (and have) written extensively on why 490BC was the most consequential year in the formation of our society.
In those studies I've formed the view that Western Civilisation was/is the pinnacle of human development to date and that those civilisations likely to immediately follow it will be deficient by comparison. When asking why such a society came to be, I look to the Greeks and the Romans who bequeathed a great legacy that was different to all other societies. But I also look to religion which was also unique to those societies that became the modern West. Earlier in this thread I gave some explanation as to why Christianity (especially post-Reformation Christianity) was integral to the process of forming this exemplary society.

I also see this society beginning to unravel just as other civilisation have in the past and I feel that one of the causes of that is the loss of our Christian foundations. That's why I support a religion that I don't really accept. Not for its spiritualism but for its very concrete value to this society. If we can save it as a foundation stone (and there is some hope of that) then we might extend the life of this civilisation. Indeed, maybe it can be saved indefinitely. No civilisation has yet managed that, but then no civilisation has yet managed to do what the West has done so far. So I hold out some hope there for my decedents and for mankind.
If we fail then I see a dark veil falling on much that we value. ‘1984’ wasn’t a prediction but the society that follows this one will be closer to Orwell’s dystopian vision than I’d like