A religion is simply a way of life, the 1st Ammendment is supposed to PROTECT religion so anyone can follow whichever religion they choose, including a religion which believes in nothing. The way in which you live your life is a religion, Evolution (falsely so called, really macroevolution which is unproveable) is also a religion.

There are plenty of mass-murderers out there who don't believe in God. Likewise there have been those (Crusades, Inquisition, Conquistadors) who falsely claim to be Christian but don't follow the teachings of the Bible.

Like the Pharisees, we can judge/sentence/punish according to the Law only if we ourselves are sinless. As Christ said, there is none good but one, God. (Mk. 10:18) Vengeance is God's alone. (Ro. 12:19) The world is worthy of death and guilty before God. (Ro. 3:19, 6:23) It is no longer "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." (Mt. 5:38-39) Being in authority can subject us to even greater condemnation, we are still accountable to God. (Jas. 3:1) Love is the fulfilling of the Law because it does no harm to others. (Ro. 13:10)

True Christianity is not about a set of beliefs or doctrines or claiming some institution as your own. As James 3:19-20 says, simple knowledge/faith in one God is not enough to save, and without works is dead. (Note that this isn't the faith spoken of by Paul in Ro. 10:8-10 and Eph. 2:8-10)

There is no me-you problem or problem between me-others or you-others. All eternity focuses on our relationships with only one person-Jesus Christ. Christianity is about getting in a right relationship with God through Christ and His finished work on the cross.

In short, Christianity is simply about a person and our relationship with Him-Jesus Christ. He is the way to eternal life and escape from the eternal punishment we deserve. It's knowledge of the love for us which brought Him to die such a horrible death that can break through to the most hardened hearts, so that they confess their sins to Him and trust only in Him for all eternity.

Christianity is not about becoming a good moral person, or getting some set of blessings in your life, it is simply about escaping the wrath to come for our rebellion against God through His finished payment on the cross. God is both perfectly loving and perfectly just, He cannot overlook sin.

The true story is often presented as an example of this, in California several years ago a judge found a girl guilty of speeding and fined her 100 dollars, but then, ironically being her loving father, came down and paid the fine in her behalf. God being perfectly just must exact a sentence, but being perfectly loving has done all He can to pay the penalty for our sins if we'll only accept it.

T100 seems to place a high value on science or knowledge, but not all knowledge = truth. You can be ever learning yet never coming to the knowledge of the truth. The ancient peoples he speaks of surely include the Greeks, who Paul spent so much time debating with, "opening and alleging" (Acts 17:3) with as a lawyer would present a case.

Some people seem to have this idea that blind faith is involved, but as Ravi Zecharias likes to say, God doesn't ask to commit intellectual suicide. Some intellectuals who were the most fervent in setting out to disprove the Bible have become of its greatest supporters, like C.S. Lewis and Josh McDowell.

Furthermore, the Bible plainly calls here those who genuinely question the Scriptures "noble" so long as they do so "with all readiness of mind."

Acts 17:11 These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.

well, i think the next president of the U.S.A will be a woman, hehe, but your arguement is a fair one. i dont think that anything that was settled upon 2000 years ago should be changed now, if so, start a different religion, get the point?

This is an interesting way to phrase it. My view on religion is so complicated that I'm not even sure where to start. So... let me start with the question of a deity (God). I was once a Christian, when I was young and didn't think for my self. But once I felt independent enough to question my religion, I realized that I didn't need to fear questioning it. Perhaps this is why religions "disallow" questioning, because it led me to believe that if God is as good as he is supposed to be, then he wouldn't have reason to punish me to questioning his existence and the reality of the Christian religion. And if He was not good enough to understand, then it wouldn't be worth worshiping Him. Inevitably, my conclusion was that there I would not believe in God until I had reason. That was about 12 years ago, and I'm still atheist.

Since then I have studied history, evolution, and philosophy, which have been a useful tool in understanding the development of religion. As it turns out, religion is a tool for societies to keep people cooperating by allying them through a common belief as well as a common threat that they have to strive to evade. A little thought is all that one needs to realize this. Abraham, for example, used the Bible (Old Testament) to keep his people in harmony. The thing is, that once there are too many people in a group, they lose social solidarity and begin to war. But a productive society requires more people. So to keep a large society intact, rule and guidelines are required. Hence the birth of the various religions across the societies of the world.

Conclusively, I say that religion does need a change. However, by that I mean that religion needs to no longer be religion, but instead needs to be a system of morals and values that more objectively achieves the goal of religion. Human kind needs to not depend on fear or dependency of a supernatural being. Rather, I believe that instead of religion, people need to understand the reality of the human soul, such as Plato describes it in The Republic. Then, societies will be able to live in harmony with themselves as well as with others, because their understanding of the reality of human life would not be dependent of the supernatural explanations of current religions that are dependent of improvable truths.

1.
We're not punished for questioning God's existence, we're punished for our sins and breaking of God's Law, just like a judge punishes a lawbreaker. We're all guilty before God as Romans 3:19 says, the whole world is guilty before Him. God cannot tolerate sin which is rebellion against Him, all that is good in the universe, and a very serious offense. Only one law needs to be broken once for you to be a lawbreaker. How many beers can you name? Now how many of the 10 commandments can you name? If you have ever told a lie, you are a liar. If you have ever stolen anything you are a thief. If you've ever lusted after a woman you're an adulterer. That makes you a lying, thieving, adulterous heart, which we're all guilty of. That's just 3 commandments, and I haven't even gotten into hating others which makes you a murderer. To top it all off it says that whoever breaks one commandment breaks them all (James 2:10), again, if you break the Law once you are a lawbreaker by definition. Long story short, we're all guilty of death, God doesn't send us to Hell for not believing in Him but for any sin since God cannot waffle on sin. You don't get kept out of Heaven for not listening but for your evil deeds, and need to be reconciled to God, justified the only way you can be, through Christ's finished work on the cross, trusting solely in Him. There is no other way.

2. As mentioned above, the Bible commends as noble those who genuinely question with an open mind the Scriptures in Acts 17:11.

3. As for Abraham, he left his country because God told him to not knowing where he'd be going. Left his comforts, his security, did all God commanded him to, and would've offered up his own son if necessary. He based battle strategies on what God told him to do, even if he didn't understand the logic behind such things. And before you question the scenario of Isaac, let me explain that it was God's way of showing how all mankind deserves death which can be exacted at any time by God. God's love however is symbolized in Him sending that lamb to die in Isaac's place, and God knowing He would save Isaac, Abraham's son there, knew it would mean Him giving up His own only begotten Son thousands of years later to die on a cross in not only Isaac's place, but all of mankind who will trust in Him.

4. Plato and the Greek society produced this saying which Paul quoted:

1 Corinthians 15:32 If after the manner of men I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what advantageth it me, if the dead rise not? let us eat and drink; for to morrow we die.

My point is, the Greeks you think so highly of recognized that if there is no God and higher authority then there is no point to life but to "eat, drink, and be merry; for tomorrow we die." In other words, live life to the fullest, enjoy yourself as much as possible, and try to avoid thoughts of a meaningless existence. No need to worry about doing good or right, kill who you can kill if you can get away with it, steal from those you can steal from if you can get away with it, abuse those you can abuse if you can get away with it. Life means nothing and all would die and become nothing anyway, and there is no point to your life but to find what pleasures you can, correct? Isn't this how our world is living more and more? But the world is the province of Satan.

Two questions for you:

A) What is the purpose to your life?

If God asks you in the final day why He should let you into His Heaven, what will you say?

religion can suck an egg its all myth and stories no hard evidence that these people exsisted so when im dead i will become one with the dirt

Might as well say that about history in general as well, how do you know George Washington or William Shakespeare ever existed? Scientific observation doesn't do particularly well for historically related stuff. What do you use to prove historical information accurate?

Before answering your questions, let me point out that you cannot generalize "the Greeks" and rightly state that they were a certain way. There was diversity in the Greeks, them having various attitudes towards the philosophies that developed in their time. What I was speaking of is Socrates & Plato's philosophies. Obviously, since they (the Greeks) decided to sentence Socrates to death, we can tell that "the Greeks" isn't a single train of thought. Socrates lost his life because he was able to raise the same point that I'm trying to state - that we can't take things (religion, in this case) as truth only because someone says certain things about the reality of things or because we think we know the reality of things. Also, the Greeks included a lot of different peoples. I think that you have the Spartans in mind when you quote them. In fact, the Greeks in Athens were very pious people - or so they thought.

A ) What is the purpose of my life?
- - Survival and reproduction. Too simple? Sorry, but that's what all living things are built to do - and that's all we do, essentially. Why live? Because my nature drives me to. What are my objectives? Naturally, what I need to continue surviving and pass on my genes to another generation, as all of my ancestors had to do to make it able to me to live, is to adapt to my environment and be happy. If I'm not able to be happy, I won't be successful and I won't pass those genes on to another generation. I think that's a good paragraph to explain why I (and us all) live).

B ) What will I say to God when I see him in Heaven?
- - I'll say, "So, where the heck have you been?" Kidding. But I would have to say something along those lines. But if I do end up in Heaven, I guess that would mean that I was right all along - if God is so good, why should he condemn me for the nature that He built into me - the nature to question? I wouldn't need to explain to him for why I should be let into heaven. He's supposed to be all-knowing, no? But to answer your question, I would tell him that because I know the Form of the Good - Justice.