Debate: Is belief in God for the GREATER GOOD?
Side: No, for the greater good.

Without question God is in favor of men who love him.Well, that's just a crazy bald assertion, and if you want to believe it OK, but it's not a relevant point. Without question Ma'at is in favor of those who follow her laws; without question Juno is in favor of wronged wives; without question Ishtar is in favor of gettin' it on. Those are neat points too, but like yours, not real relevant nor provable as actual fact.Our founding fathers built this nation based on God . . . written into the constitution Well, then, I am REALLY confused as to just what Article VI and the First Amendment are doing in our Constitution. Because the only mentions of "religion" that I remember in the Constitution are the one that starts with "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of . . ." and the one that reads "no religious test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office." And the word "god" doesn't appear in the Constitution AT ALL.I hardly ever see or hear about agnostics giving anything to any charity.I hardly ever see or hear about Christians who aren't pathological. Following your line of "it's what I want to see therefore it must be true," all Christians must be looney-tunes. On the other hand, I know tons of Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Bah'ai, neopagans, agnostics, and atheists who volunteer in their communities. I'm most certainly not a Christian and I volunteer. Do you actually know any non-Christians upon whom to base an opinion about which religious communities are and are not doing charity work?It's a given fact the Christians . . . It's a given fact that the Christians make crap up and claim it's a given fact. For this we actually do have proof: creationism, for example.If tomorrow God came down and took all the the believers away . . .. . . it would do wonders for the economy. The rest of us will divvy up your property and take your old jobs.But that aside, if tommorrow all the Christians disappeared with their wrongheaded notions about how humanity is at the center of creation and is destined to "rule" the earth but is also somehow innately flawed because their god doesn't know how to make people properly, the world would tick along just fine, and I firmly believe that humanity would be far better off without that particular collective delusion. when something bad happens like 9/11So . . . the Christian god and Osama bin Laden sided together on the whole 9-11 thing. Doesn't that sorta suggest that your god has converted to Islam?At any rate, it's pretty ludicrous to assert that if everybody just claps their hands and says "I do believe in fairies" loudly enough that your god will keep anything "bad" from ever happening. Bad things happen to pretty much everybody, Christian or otherwise. I would hope that your quest for faith would lead you to something with a little more depth than "eek don't let anything bad get me."I mean, seriously, did you just put forth the argument that you worship a being who would blow up a building in a fit of pique because not enough people like him? I realize your religious mythos includes Sodom and Gommorah and all that so perhaps it's not inconsistent, but honestly, your god sounds kinda like Timothy McVeigh there, bud. That's not praiseworthy, that's morally reprehensible.Your point there reminds me of a story an anthropology professor of mine used to tell.This professor lived and studied among the Karen people of Tibet, whose traditional religion is more or less a mix of polytheism and animism. One day some Christian missionaries happened along. The Karen don't prothelytize, so at first they listened politely to the missionaries and then told them it was nice that they were so excited about their god. Then the missionaries suggested that the Karen should worship their god too, and the Karen elders weren't so keen on that idea.So after much talk, one of the missionaries told the Karen elders a parable. "There was a great boat on the ocean, and one man on it was a Christian; and the boat was capsized and sank, but God saved the one Christian man."So the Karen elders told the missionaries that they wanted to talk among themselves about this parable for a bit, and they would come back with their answer at the end of the day.At the end of the day, after meeting together and discussing the Christian parable, the Karen elders called for the missionaries and told them: "After discussing your story all day, we have decided that we are not impressed. We have considered the matter very thoroughly, and we are convinced that our gods could have saved all of the people on the boat."