God is imaginary

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Alot of religious people seem to be inspired by visions. I think this stems from your mind projecting things that you want to belief and makes it look real. Like when your in the desert and your drying up, your mind invisions this oasis far away. These things wil look perfectly real, and religious people wil see them as signs from gods. Kind of like the indians in America often deciding what to do through theyr dreams. It creates the perfect realistic ilusion of following the path of the spirits or gods high above.
If you get signs like these it must be convincing that it's convincing that it's real right ? I mean who knows if it's really not a gateway to the heavens. Another intriguing thing is people having dreams of something that wil happen like a death, and than someone close to them dying a while after.

Below is a copy of a letter William Blake wrote to Rev. Dr Trusler.. who harshly critisied Blake's artistic illustrations of stories in the bible.. as being too erotic.

Blake.. who saw God as being the human imagination.. wrote in response...


"I am really sorry that you have fallen out with the spiritual world. I have therefore proved your reasoning ill proportioned, which you can never prove my figures to be; they are those of Michael Angelo, Rafael & the antique, and of the best living models. I perceive that your eye is perverted by caricature prints, which ought not to abound as much as they do.

I feel that a man may be happy in this world. And I know that this world is a world of imagination and vision. I see everything I paint in this world, but everybody does not see alike. To the eyes of a miser a gold coin is far more beautiful than the sun. and a bag worn with the use of money has more beautiful proportions than a vine filled with grapes. The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way.

Some see nature all ridicule and deformity, and by these I shall not regulate my proportions; and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself. As man is, so he sees. As the eye is formed, such are its powers. You certainly are mistaken when you say the visions of fancy are not to be found in this world. To me, this world is all one continued vision of fantacy or imagination and I feel flattered when I am told so."

William Blake

This is one of Blake's illustrations that caused all the fuss.. many more can be seen by searching google - images..

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... ao_eva.jpg
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I rather like that image. Seems very classical, but not sexually explicit.

I'm nonreligious, but this website is a bit intellectually dishonest and no better than the many proofs proselytizing Christians use in their attempts to convert people. This atheist counter-zeal is unproductive and the expression of the same psychological insecurities as what drives fundamentalists to proselytize. Atheism is not a creed (it's the lack of one!), and you don't get brownie points with a deity in the sky for converting people. Really, people should just leave each other's religious beliefs and nonbeliefs alone, and it's only really necessary to give a person a swift kick in the faithful rear when they use their faith to justify bad policy (the teaching of creationism in public school classrooms, ignoring the welfare of others because their reward is in the afterlife, the attempted imposition of peculiar religious mores through the government, etc.).

Why provoke conflict with someone who is not intellectually curious to consider alternative belief systems and who is comforted by their faith (as irrational as it may be)?

Basically what you're advocating is that nobody knows the truth and we should leave each other to their own stupidities. Unfortunately, religious people can get quite militant because their religion has convinced them that they know the truth and everybody else should conform to their version. Atheists make the fundamental mistake that logic and reason underlies everybody's understanding of the world and they object to obvious nonsense. You cannot stop people from pestering each other to conform to their beliefs.

Most of those "proofs" aren't really anything to do with the existence or non-existence of God and are more to do with morality in the Bible.

And presenting them as a simple "how-to" guide to converting to atheism is pretty pointless.

god is the ultimate convenience.


what's more convenient than never being able to be proven wrong?


need a reason to steal land from a bunch of people? god's got that covered

need a reason to hate those gay guys who make you feel uncomfortable for whatever reason? god hates those fags too!

ever wanted to mutilate a baby in a sexual kind of way? god's right on top of that and you can lop off that pesky bit of flesh. (girls exempt in some locations)

need an interventionist god? god's striking down all those sinners on the west coast with fires and in the south with hurricanes.

need a distant god? god doesn't do miracles if atheists are around


the ultimate in convenience.

also: it's not a strawman to point out the uses of gods that people use in their daily and not-so-daily lives. it's just pointing out the different uses.