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We're all sentenced to death. If that's all there is, he got away with it.

So your belief is triggered by your sense that some crimes are so bad that only punishment of the criminal in the afterlife can make things right? Well, that's not a good reason to believe because it makes as much sense for death in this life to be the end of the road for criminals like that as it does for criminals to be able to commit the crimes in this life in the first place. If there was a true cosmic structure regarding right and wrong, justice and injustice, good and evil, then little girls like Jessica would be kept from spending the last few days of her life as she did. Since we have no rhyme or reason to bad people getting their just desserts in this life and none to good people having over-the-top bad things happen to them, there can be no expectation that things are different when we die.

Belief in God is all about hope, which is a selfish motivation-- although it's natural. Having hope makes us more comfortable. It's not grounded in reality, though. It's a sort of crutch to get through the day. Jessica's family knows now what Jessica discovered inside a trash bag-- there is no hope. It's not real.

I'm reminded of the miner story last January. Here's the thread. Everyone declared how that this was a result of answered prayers and the power of God that the miners had survived. Of course, they didn't survive, except for one. Did this make those posters believe this was evidence that God doesn't answer prayers, that God isn't powerful? I doubt it. It's because they like the hope despite the evidence to the contrary.

So your belief is triggered by your sense that some crimes are so bad that only punishment of the criminal in the afterlife can make things right?

I never really thought of it as such, but good and evil exist and we have an innate understanding of them. And since good and evil exist there will be a meting of justice to make things right.

Since we have no rhyme or reason to bad people getting their just desserts in this life and none to good people having over-the-top bad things happen to them, there can be no expectation that things are different when we die.

It is silly to think there can be any kind of expectation of what things are like after we die basing our assumptions on this life.

You cannot prove that there is not a Creator. Assuming the Big Bang theory (or any other universe-starting theory) is true, who created the matter that became the universe? Can anything create itself? Anything that exists was created. And anything created needs a being (or beings) that gives it motion. Simply saying, "well bad things/good people blah blah blah" doesn't cut it. If you agree that there is an order to the universe, to our solar system, to our planet, to our very DNA, then you have to agree that there is One who directed these things to their right order. And if there is a right order to things, then using things to their right order is the height of morality, which has been conveyed by God to man first by the Ten Commandments, and secondly by the Gospel of Jesus Christ. If there is no right order, there is no God, and thus, by definition, no moral guidelines by which man should bother conducting himself. So, by merely obeying the law, you are expressing belief in God. Furthermor, man could not "order" his own biology. He could not "order" his own consciousness before his conception. This order is passed on and on and on through the birth parents, of which there are - logically - a first man and a first woman who began the human race. Now from whom did they receive their ordered being? It had to be from God. No one else could possibly provide it.

Really, without God, we really are just zombies. If that's the one thing you choose to believe in, your conflict is your own doing.

Since we have no rhyme or reason to bad people getting their just desserts in this life and none to good people having over-the-top bad things happen to them, there can be no expectation that things are different when we die.

What could be a more just dessert for bad people than ETERNAL punishment? You seem to want less than that.

Belief in God is all about hope, which is a selfish motivation-- although it's natural. Having hope makes us more comfortable. It's not grounded in reality, though. It's a sort of crutch to get through the day. Jessica's family knows now what Jessica discovered inside a trash bag-- there is no hope. It's not real.

That's strange. Hope is a selfish motivation? Greed and lust and jealousy and envy and pride are all selfish motivation, but how did you come up with hope as a selfish motivation? It IS possible to love your enemies, and it IS possible to have hopes for them when you know you will receive nothing in return.

If Jessica is in heaven, what greater hope can there be? Projecting your atheistic views on Jessica Lunsford is mighty selfish on your own part, don'tcha think? It gives you greater validation of your own views to use her terrible death as a crutch for your despair.