Personally, I prefer to use mentally ill and delusional. You know, since that is
exactly what they are. I'm not about to start sugar-coating it just to make anyone
else feel better.

There are also other words that are quite accurately descriptive, and I use them whenever I see fit.

...Wait.

A dude in a bath robe and funny hat told me that a zombie Jewish carpenter said eat his body and drink his blood or my ghost will get tortured.

Man, that is the very DEFINITION of "whacky" and "bizarre".

You are out of your tree.

It's pretty pathetic. I've become convinced that you can't look too closely at any religion without losing the ability to accept it.

That's one of my biggest beefs with theism -- the double standard. Science constantly examines its own conclusions in ever more excruciating detail and enforces correctness. If a conclusion is wrong, it must be fixed or thrown out.

Theism(apologetics) works hard to keep its old stuff no matter how ridiculous it is.

the idea that you expect me to believe you, and you have the power to do as you wish, and you choose to introduce and propagate yourself by the methods that you have chosen... you are an unadulterated idiot. worship you? fuck off.

so what happened? whatever happened was not what you typed. even if there are some factual representations of events in both "testaments" as a whole they are laughably illogical, contain outright fallacies and are internally inconsistent. also see above. quite inefficient to limit yourself to spread by oral tradition and then book. sure the book invention was obviously the most advanced way of spreading yourself at the time... if you're merely a mortal dude. and since it's man made, it utilized what man had at its disposal. god's disposal? she don't need a fucking book.

god needed to palliate himself? needed? god needs? the notion that your god needs is ridiculous in and of itself.

lastly - wacky, bizarre, and screwy? your examples are not extreme enough. try bat shit... lead pot cooking... mad hatter... untreated syphilis crazy.

If I were to describe a duck to you, I'd use words like "feathers" and "quack" as a reference. If I were to describe something whacky and bizarre, the claims and promises of religion would serve equally as nicely.

How about insane, primitive, ignorant?

I don't use those terms screwy, wacky or bizarre, what I use is more appropriate: bullshit, the bible is full of crap and jesus did not even exist..

It's even more screwy, wacky, bizarre (I like them all) when you realize that Eve was not the first choice for a helpmate.

In one of the narratives, of the melded-together creation stories of Genesis, this god first created animals and paraded them before the Adam; but none were found suitable to him for a companion. It was then that he got the idea to create woman. She was an afterthought.

So, procreation was not the original intent of this god; and they got kicked out of the garden once they ate from the tree and realized that they were naked; and, apparently, that their parts fit together. This god could not allow them to have the knowledge of procreation as well as eat from the tree of life--that would make them like the gods. They would have eternal life and the ability to create life.

The last thing this god wanted was a bunch of other gods running around mucking up his garden. So, they had to be kicked out. And, it was not good enough to punish just them, he had to curse all of humanity--such a fair and loving god.

Forget about the Jesus story. That was just one of the many Jewish cults around at the time and it got lucky.
The Genesis story is one of many creation myths in the world and can be interpreted in several ways.
When mankind had to give up the hunter gatherer lifestyle and became agriculturalists life was hard and distant memories of the old easier lifestyle lingered on ( the garden of Eden). There had to be a reason for leaving this lifestyle.
I don't believe these stories were meant to be taken literally.

Wacky and Bizarre seem a little too kinder term for my liking, it is like when a family refer to a stark raving mad relative as "a little eccentric"

Why would an all knowing god not know it would get lonely in the first place?

If the shoe fits......

I think 'whacky' or 'bizarre' to describe holding beliefs that are self-contradictory, illogical and based on nothing of value is perfectly appropriate.

These are, after all, people who believe god created the entire universe in 7 days, 6000 years ago, and then spent 6000 years trying (and spectacularly failing) to sort out the problems caused by a single talking snake.

Despite:

ATTEMPT ONE - killing every human being on Earth, with the exception of 8, in the biggest imaginable act of mass genocide possible... and while he's at it killing every land animal (with the exception of 2 of each) and every land or freshwater plant (no IDEA how those regenerated).

ATTEMPT TWO - have spirit, non-consensual sex with a teenage girl and impregnate her, so that he can be born as his own son. Then arrange for his own son, who is also him, to be killed (but only for three days) in sacrifice to himself, in order to pursuade himself to forgive humanity for the original sin, not committed by them but committed many generations earlier by Adam and Eve, when a snake that all-seeing and all-powerful god somehow didn't know was there, pursuaded Eve to scrump an apple.

Yes 'whacky' and 'bizarre' do it for me.

I get the feeling you're kind of a double agent. Nice try, though.

As funny as that was, it pretty much sums it up.

I prefer the Sumerian texts, carved on the Babylon city walls 2000 years before the Bible was written. Same stories, but more scientific..and they actually make sense.

According to the illustrated wall carvings, the alien race of Sumerians, a very tall, pure white reptilian race damaged their planet so came to earth to mine gold needed to restore their atmosphere.

The Sumerians refused to work, so two of their geneticists led a team that mingled Sumerian and human ape DNA to make an all male work crew, willing to work endlessly, unaware of their slavery.

But eventually the Sumerian females became attracted to the little "brown" humans and began mating with them. When the Sumerian leader, "Anu" found out, he was so furious, he decided to kill them all.

He knew that when their planet swung close to the earth again, the gravity would break off a huge underwater ice shelf that would flood half the planet so he ordered his people to get in their spaceships and stand out from earth, letting the slaves all drown underground in the mines.

But the two main geneticists, the main one was named The Serpent because of his wisdom, were horrified. They genetically engineered a female human version, to wake up the males to their slavery, but with the first version, they used royal white reptilian DNA and the resulting woman, Lilith, was too fierce to mate with men...she only wanted to attack them.

So they tried again, using different female DNA and made a second version, "Eve."

Then the two Sumerian scientists showed their favorite human and his family how to build a submarine to outlast the flood, and stocked it with animal and bird DNA so they could renew the world after the flood.
Etc.

This is the reason that Hell is in the bible. Without the lynchpin of fear and dread of burning and being tortured for all of eternity no one would ever believe some the the stuff in it.

You are conditioned that whatever your preacher says is coming from god. If its off the wall and crazy well then god works in mysterious ways and only reinforces that thinking.

Its been 3 years since i've not believed but i can tell you that the programming is so strong that even though i know its not real a part of me still thinks i'm going to hell for not believing. Its less and less everyday and something i'm working on but it's burned inside of you and you really have to work hard on yourself to pull yourself out of thinking like that.

Okay, that is a "screwy" story.

As Bertrand said, it depends on your audience.

If we are talking amongst ourselves, freethinkers, philosophers, atheist and agnostic
Then such terms have a value, a shorthand to express how we feel.

If we are talking to believers than such language is most often counter productive to actual discourse. A believer is not basing their belief on logic or evidence, but on emotions, traditions, and indoctrinated beliefs, all of which compose a faith based world view.
That worldview is a lens through which they see the world, including ourselves using such terms. In that worldview people using such terms are ignorant. Depending on the demonination it will be met with either a condemnation of us, or a sympathy for "poor us, so deluded".

In both situations discourse is limited or prevented.

"Proof of God"

“Here there comes a practical question which has often troubled me. Whenever I go into a foreign country or a prison or any similar place they always ask me what is my religion.

I never know whether I should say "Agnostic" or whether I should say "Atheist". It is a very difficult question and I daresay that some of you have been troubled by it. As a philosopher, if I were speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one prove that there is not a God.

On the other hand, if I am to convey the right impression to the ordinary man in the street I think I ought to say that I am an Atheist, because when I say that I cannot prove that there is not a God, I ought to add equally that I cannot prove that there are not the Homeric gods.

None of us would seriously consider the possibility that all the gods of homer really exist, and yet if you were to set to work to give a logical demonstration that Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, and the rest of them did not exist you would find it an awful job. You could not get such proof.

Therefore, in regard to the Olympic gods, speaking to a purely philosophical audience, I would say that I am an Agnostic. But speaking popularly, I think that all of us would say in regard to those gods that we were Atheists. In regard to the Christian God, I should, I think, take exactly the same line. ”

Bertrand Russell

Whacky or Bizarre seem just fine to me. No better or worse than screwy.

Have you read that book? I have, twice from cover to cover as you should read a book, it is fuck nutz crazy. Religious types have to content themselves with shunning people who do not believe in their imaginary friend, now that torturing atheists and then burning them has gone out of fashion. I don't see why atheists need to be polite to these hateful crazies, that said I try not to go too far out of my way to poke the crazies with a stick either; its boring and serves no purpose.

A perfect being would not create imperfection, would not make a being that could be tempted, let alone create the being that, being omniscient, he would KNOW would tempt his other creations. It's a ridiculous story, one that anyone who can think critically would reject out of hand.

It's a preposterous story that smacks of mythology because that's what it is.

When I was in Primary School our class were learning some of the creation myths of the Australian aboriginals. My friend who was Catholic started raving on about how on earth could anyone believe this far fetched nonsense. He knew I was Atheist and obviously expected me to agree but I just quietly pointed to his religion's own creation story and how it is equally far fetched and hard to believe. He ignored me and changed the subject

You got it. That's it in a nutshell.
I personally was baptized as an infant, so I figure I'm covered just in case, even though I don't believe in heaven and hell, on the 0,0001% chance it's true.

I guess that's so having my cake and eating it too, but hey, I didn't make this stuff up, never asked to be born here, so I'll just play along.