that depends. if you lie to spare someones feeling instead of hurting them i do not consider it the same. wife asks. "does this dress make me look fat". whats a man to do?
Nice avoiding the questions, besides trying not to insult your girlfriend or wife, have you ever told a lie, or stolen anything, and while we are on the conversation of females, have you ever looked lustfully on another person and one more - have you taken God's name in Vain.. even though I know you say you don't believe in Him. just answer please without the attempt to side step.
Yep, I wouln't argue that there are tons of contradictions in the Good Book. IF God did grant us free will and intelligence then I can't see those things coexisting with prayer as in prayer for assistance in solving problems we could work out ourselves if we behaved like the social beings we're genetically programmed to be.
They are not trick questions, I'm sure (myself included) have taken something in our lifetimes that didn't belong to us , even though it was small and would not be noticed (or worse). We all have at sometime told a lie to cover a misdeed. You would say you have lusted or taken God's name in vain, it called blasphemy. All of us if we are truthful with ourselves are liars, thief's, blasphemers and fornicators at heart or in deed. Freethinker, If you are truthful with yourself, you are an admitted blasphemer, fornicator at heart, liar and thief. The thought of having to be morally responsible to God is abhorrent to you, so you deny God's existence.
see. you start with the indoctrinated conclusion there is a god up there to answer to. that scares you. i dont. using my mind to examine the evidence allowed me to throw off that superstition. once you free your mind from that superstition fear of imaginary things is not on your mind. "Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones." Marcus Aurelius Atheism is not a conscious act of turning away from all gods. It is simply the final destination for those who think. You will be pleased to discover that the sky does not fall down on your head. If you still want to pray, you can; the success rate of your prayers is unlikely to change. (Guy P. Harrison)
The thought of God doesn't scare me. The though of no God scares me, is this all there is? If so why do anything good, better party hard as tomorrow we are all wormdirt. Marcus was wrong, if God is just then and we are judged by our works in this life. Then we are all doomed. Of course I can say that I'm better than some mass murderer and hardened criminal, or I never did this or that..... but we all have those little "oops... shouldn't have done that one: in our lives. In comparison to a Perfect God, we are all stained to some degree in our eyes, but to Perfection we all fall short. Perfection and Imperfection cannot be put together lest one taints the other. Likewise God cannot allow any sin into his presence, regardless of how "good we think we have been".
by biblical discriptions god himself was a sinner. he was a mass murderer, a racist, a slave supporter and an all around asshole. so much for god not allowing sin in his presense. if somehow something convinced you that it was all a myth would you go out and start killing people for fun? there must be something else that sets our actions since all evidence indicates that nonbelievers live just as believers do in society.