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[NeonSamurai]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

This reminds me of Thomas Jefferson's Bible. Jefferson disallowed the existence of miracles, and cut up the New Testament to reflect that. I can never read his version without asking the question "But how do we know what we can safely remove, add, or change? There is no outside evidence that Jesus said any of the things attributed to him in the texts, so removing just the miracles is just cherry-picking what you don't like."

People are forever engaging in cherry picking what they like. Heck the entire Bible (including all of the versions and variations) is nothing but cherry picking.

It's a huge problem in science too with researchers cherry picking their data or methodology, and how they construct their reports with all the generally meaningless references and citations, in addition to how they choose to interpret their 'results'.

We only like to pay attention to what we like, and can go to great lengths to convince ourselves of the truth of our actions as we quietly sometimes subconsiously discard that which disagrees with our position.

Originally Posted by August

See my previous post. To a believer in God, and it's not just Christians we're talking about here, invoking their Deity when making a false statement carries with it the extra repercussion of eternal damnation or at least invites some other negative divine reaction. That ought to have at least some effect on a believer. I do agree however that Atheists and liars probably don't need to be saying anything about God at all when taking an oath.

I doubt that a truly devout person would be making false statements even without making an oath. However, the number of truly devout people in the world is very very small indeed! For the rest of us, we are all very good at relativisting our actions and excusing ourselves as we fall into the delusion that we did the wrong thing for the right reason.

Of course then you have all those self professing true believers, who are utter frauds. The are the ones that thump their books at others; ceaselessly they criticize, condemn, and castigate everyone else while loudly proclaiming their own moral and religious righteousness, piety, and humility. I'm quite certain they would have no fear of ever suffering eternal damnation while lying through their teeth, because they are such moral and righteous individuals and god would understand their righteous intents. It's all lip-service after all.

Originally Posted by Platapus

Here is an interesting historical tidbit

As late as 1939, five states and the District of Columbia excluded the testimony of those professing a disbelief in God, and, in a dozen or so additional states, the testimony of nonbelievers was subject to attack on the ground that one's credibility was impaired by irreligion or a lack of belief in a deity.

That still goes on a lot, though not so much in the US any more. It still bewilders me when people espouse the belief that morality can only come from religion (usually only their brand of it of course). It is entirely possible to be a very moral person, and divest yourself entirely of religion or even spirituality, just as one can be very spiritual with out being religious.