So many people have replied, and I keep seeing so many things that I want to comment on, I'm gonna try and do this in my spare time...
# You became an atheist when you were 10 years old, based on ideas of God that you learned in Sunday School. Your ideas about God haven't changed since.
I became agnostic at about fourteen, and it had little to do with what I learned in Sunday School. Before that, I was more or less a de facto Christian, anyway.
My ideas about God continue to evolve, as do many people.
# You think that the primary aim of an omnibenevolent God is for people to have FUN.
I don't know anyone who claims that. But what should the aim of a omnibenevolent God be?
# You believe that extra drippy ice-cream is a logical proof against the existence of God, because an omniscient God would know how to stop the ice-cream from being extra drippy, an omnipotent God would have the ability to stop the ice-cream from being extra drippy, and by golly, an omnibenevolent God wouldn't want your ice-cream to be extra drippy.
I like drippy ice cream. I find it pleasurable on a summer day for some odd reason.
# Although you've memorized a half a dozen proofs that He doesn't exist, you still think you're God's gift to the ignorant masses.
Cute, but rarely true. Though I admit, there are many pretentious douchebags in the Atheist/agnostic camp. But this list demonstrates the same is true in the Christian camp.
# You believe the astronomical size of the universe somehow disproves God, as if God needed a tiny universe in order to exist.
Never seen this one, either. But Fundies often believe the size of the Universe proves God. That's as dishonest, and it's legit.
# You think questions like, "Can God create a rock so big that He cannot lift it?" and, "Can God will Himself out of existence?" are perfect examples of how to disprove God's omnipotence and ultimately how to disprove God. When someone proves to you the false logic behind the questions (i.e. pitting God's omnipotence against itself), you desperately try to defend the questions, but then give up and go to a different Christian site to ask them.
They're to provoke thought, not disprove God.
# Related to the above, you spend a great deal of your spare time writing to Christian websites asking them these very questions.
I don't. Then again, I get a lot of fundie douchebags who come to me, so I don't really need to go harass them.
# You declare on a public forum that you are "furious at God for not existing."
Never seen that one, either.
# You spend hours arguing that a-theism actually means "without a belief in God " and not just " belief that there is no god" as if this is a meaningful distinction in real life.
I don't, but that is the case. You make it sound like a bad thing to actually argue the truth.
# You consistently deny the existence of God because you personally have never seen him but you reject out of hand personal testimony from theists who claim to have experienced God as a reality in their lives.
I reject the Christian God, because I am versed in the Bible and its origins. I do not deny the existence of God, though anyone who gives personal testimony that is compelling would be considered.
The problem with such testimony is that it's often based on experiences that in no way actually indicate God.
# You can make the existence of pink unicorns the center-piece of a philosophical critique.
Again, that's not really a negative trait; it's just inconvenient to the theist argument. I don't use the IPU, but it's every bit as valid as God in an argument on the existence.
# You insist that "the burden of proof is on he that alleges/accuses", and "it's impossible to prove a negative", then state "That's what Christians do. They lie. Their most common lie is that they were once atheists." When reminded about the burden of proof bit, you reply with, "Well, prove Christians don't lie!"
Never seen it happen. Some Christians do lie. The burden of proof is on the accuser. I can prove that some Christians do lie, but then, I'm not making the argument that "that's what Christians do."
# You adamantly believe that the "God of the gaps" idea is an essential tenet of orthodox Christian faith espoused by all the great Christian thinkers throughout history.
Do we?
# When you were a child, someone came down with a deadly disease and prayed and prayed for God to take it away. God did not remove the disease and your friend died. You ask other Christians why they had to die when they were such a nice person and never harmed anyone. Dissatisfied with their answers, you suddenly decide that there is no God and that all Christians are nothing but lying, conniving con artists and hypocrites....all that is except for your friend who died.
I think most people in this case would be more angry at "God" than at Christians, and probably aren't calling all Christians liars and con artists.
It sounds nice, though.
# You call a view held by less than ten percent of the American public "common sense".
Screw common sense. Common sense tells us that bumblebees shouldn't be able to fly. Common sense tells us global warming doesn't exist because it still snows. Common sense tells us a lot of very stupid and incorrect things. You can keep common sense and tout a majority opinion. Most Christian denominations are actually based on rejecting a majority opinion (within the Christian community) at some point in the last few hundred years.
# You're a spoiled fifteen year old boy who lives in the suburbs and you go into a chat room to declare that, "I know there is no God because no loving God would allow anyone to suffer as much as I...hold on. My cell phone's ringing."
I'm a spoiled 28 year old transsexual who questions what benevolent God would make me in such a fashion and then tell me I'm wrong and that I should be killed. Also, I live in a crappy bachelor pad and have trouble holding jobs because of severe migraines...So basically what you just said.
# You attack your fellow atheists, who hold the "belief that there is no god", calling them "liars," and state that, "I do not deny the existence of any god. I just don't believe in any." Then you tell someone that their God is "made up." When someone calls you on this, you state, "I never made such a claim."
Never heard those from the same people. Say, are you trying to cross assertions?
# Going with the definition of "without a belief in God", you insist that all people are born atheists, and that dogs, cats, rocks, and trees are as well. You make statements like, "My dog is an atheist. Ask him about his lack of belief."
Well, I've never argued that, but do you really think you'd believe in God if you werent' taught to?
# You believe that if something cannot be touched, seen, heard, or measured in some way, then it must not exist, yet you fail to see the irony of your calling Christians "narrow-minded".
Nope. I believe that you cannot prove the existence of something which cannot be demonstrated, and think Christians who believe that you must be able to are narrow minded.
# You say that there is no God and that those who believe in God do so in blind faith, yet your claim that there is no God also rests on blind faith.
That's bull, simply. Either that, or a gross misinterpretation of "blind faith."
# While you don't believe in God, you feel justified on bashing God or attacking those who believe in something that you KNOW doesn't exist, fighting against or even discussing about a non-existent being are the symptoms of mental illness!
I've never seriously done this, though one of the signs of mental illness is an inability to comprehend humour. Perhaps I'm on to something if you took me seriously....
# You complain when Christians appeal to their emotions when justifying their belief in God yet you feel justified on appealing to your emotions for lack of belief in God.
Examples?
# You blame God for the starvation, sickness, pain and suffering in the world...when, indeed, it is MAN's greed, politics, selfishness and apathy that not only causes, but also ignores the sick and the starving masses. We aren't our brothers' keepers....but we should be.
That's a great argument for the Deist, distant God, not the loving, Christian God.
# You believe that planes, computers, calculators, compasses, etc, were "all obviously designed," yet the human body, being intricately more complex was "obviously a product of biological evolution." It seems the more complex the apparatus, the more obvious the "fact" that it was not designed.
Know how I figured out that planes are obviously designed? We made them. Complexity is irrelevant.
# You claim that evolution and the big bang are two entirely separate theories that explain different aspects of the universe, yet, in what school of learning can you find any real separation or distinction between the two?
Any school beyond the third grade?
# As a member of the Skeptic's Society you pride yourself on being skeptical of extraordinary claims. You also pride yourself on silencing everyone who is skeptical of the extraordinary claims of evolution.
There's nothing extraordinary about evolution. And skepticism is underrated.
# Isaac Newton does not count as an example of a great scientist who believed in the Bible since he died before the Origin of Species was published.
Really?
# When you watch a punt returner run a 93 yard touchdown, you marvel at what evolution has done for the human race. But when someone gets cancer, you blame God for it.
LOL no.
# When you're discussing the origin of the world, the phrase "uncaused cause(God)" is a stupid, meaningless thing to say. You will, however, settle for "uncaused effect(the world without God)".
Strawman.
# You descended from apes.(Think about it.)
You came from dirt or some dirt-man's rib. Think about it.
# You think that humans are products of chance but when it comes to human reason we can believe in logic! (Think about it !)
Artificial contradiction.
# You think you arrived at your position because you are a free-thinker who rationally weighed the evidence, and then freely chose atheism over theism. YET, you also believe that your thinking and actions are nothing more than the FIXED reactions of the atoms in your brain that are governed by the Laws of Chemistry and Physics.
See above. But ignoring that, wouldn't the fact that we are the result of "fixed" chemical reactions indicate that if there was a God, he programmed us in this way?
# You love to castigate Christians for being "anti-science" if they deny evolution from goo to you via the zoo, and to preach that they should adapt their thinking to the "science" of our day. But you also castigate the Church of 400 years ago for being anti-science, when it DID adapt its thinking to the science of ITS day, i.e. Ptolemaic cosmology, then joined with the Aristotelian scientists of the universities in rejecting Galileo!
Oh Dear. You think rejecting offhand ideas that were demonstrable is adapting to science.
# You think that some guy named "Dr Dino" with no scientific credentials represents mainstream Evangelical thinking and scholarship about evolution and creation, and thus by spending inordinate amounts of time attacking him you are somehow dismantling the arguments of scholarly dissenters from evolution, creationists with earned Ph. D.s in science, and of advocates of intelligent design.
Such as? Most of the PHDs are legit in the same way I'm a legit minister.
# You claim poker-faced that "social Darwinism" and its spawn of eugenics have absolutely no connection to the biological theories propounded by Charles Darwin in "On The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life"
Does it matter?
# You have recently stuck a Darwin fish on your car in the hopes the people with the Jesus fish on theirs will be offended.
Nope. I don't believe in professing my faith everywhere I go. I find it petty and annoying. I wish the people with the Jesus fish would agree.
# You also claim that not only is there no connection between Darwin's theories and the doctrines of social Darwinism and eugenics (despite the fact that the term eugenics was coined and advocated by Darwin's cousin Francis Galton, who acknowledged his debt to Origin), but that none of these philosophical positions have any connection to the modern fields of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology.
Does it matter?
# You can claim with as straight face on sites like Talk Origins that "Evolution does not have moral consequences" despite the fact that prominent evolutionary advocates like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett vehemently assert that evolution does transcend biology in a way that has a profound effects upon ethics.
Also new to me.
# When the Pope says that God may have used evolution, he is an enlightened religious leader whom Christians should listen to. When the Pope preaches on the sanctity of human life from conception, and thus denounces abortion, he's just a senile religious bigot who should keep his opinions to himself.
I'm anti-Pope, period. I think he's a dangerous mother...Well, you get the drift.
# Concerning the origins of life, you feel that though the chances of life forming without an intelligent creator are small it DID indeed happen that way. And yet you don't believe me when a rock, coming from my direction, hits you in the back of the head and I tell you, "I didn't throw it. There was a sudden shift in the earth's gravitational pull and the rock levitated into your head...Sure the chances are small but it DID happen that way."
Another nice artificial comparison.
# When you're shown that your view of origins is silly, you can only respond, "Well...at least it's better than believing in some invisible SKY DADDY!"
Nobody's ever successfully shown me that.
# When a Christian points out the impossibility of a biological system (or feature) forming by pure chance you accuse them of invoking a "God of the gaps". YET, when you are asked how a particular feature could come about solely by chance you invoke "Evolution of the gaps" (i.e., we don't know HOW but we do know that Evolution MUST have done it!)
I just find it funny when someone who believes in miracles tries to assert impossibility.
# You claim antibiotic-resistant bacteria is proof protozoa evolved into a person.
It's proof of evolution in action, not proof of the above.
# You insist that science is completely partial to all ideas, is not dogmatic and researches all possibilities -- except creationism and/or intelligent design.
That's not true. Science is also not partial to flat earth theories, either. That's because neither are actually science.
# You claim Creationists don't research on evolution websites before debating against it. Luckily you caught this useful weapon against Christians at the evolution site you learned all about creation doctrine from.
Again, cute, but hardly true.
# You think that every scientist who believes in Creationism and doesn't mindlessly accept evolution as a fact is a "kook," but you believe that Francis Crick (Nobel Prize winning co-discoverer of DNA), who reached into his nether regions and pulled out the "theory" of Directed Panspermia (which states with absolutely no support that aliens seeded the earth with life - see the movie "Mission to Mars"), is a great evolutionist scientist.
No and no.
# When a creationist points out problems with the evolutionist model you claim that the whole point of science is to answer problems like these. But if you can point out even one problem in the creationist model it should instantly be abandoned as absurd.
To be fair, the problem with the creationist model is a glaring one: It's not scientific.
Evolution came from a series of observations and tests based on the scientific method. Creationism came from a point of trying to prove a certain point of view. One is science, the other is dogma. And while I wouldn't abandon an entire model over one hole, the fact that scientists are actively seeking to fill in the gaps, while creationists are not should tell you something.
# You are a person who absolutely believes that life came from nonlife, yet absolutely deny the possibility of anyone rising from the dead.
Life to a single cell is far different than life to a complex organism. Though I don't absolutely deny the possibility of anyone rising from the dead.
# You won't bet $10 on the football game because a 50/50 chance isn't good enough, but you have no problem gambling with your life on the nearly impossible odds of a cell randomly generating from nothing.
Don't you mean gambling my soul? This seems like an argument that believing in God is a safe way to cover your bases, a poor reason to convert. Of course, I would bet ten bucks on a football game, except I don't follow football and have better ways to waste ten bucks. Similarly, I don't believe in Christ because I have better ways to spend time on my knees.
Okay, that's as far as I could make it in one sitting.