Question for the believers (of any denomination/faith):
Does anything shake your belief? Either on a personal level or wider scale?

I dont want or need answers about the below specifics but just how you reconcile.

Genocide tends to have that effect

With the Vikings it helps that they were already polytheistic, so accepting the Christian god wasn't too much of a stretch. After they settled across the British Isles they quickly adopted Christianity (maybe getting in bed with the locals was more important) and the missionaries were in Scandinavia not long after to convert those left behind.

if they've NEVER heard of Jesus, they might be OK

if they've EVER heard of him, and not become Christians, they are doomed to eternal torment from their loving God

Let's assume they're complete fabrications and, in fact, no virgins were impregnated by any god, willingly or unwillingly. Or maybe the 'god' was actually a mortal king who held himself up as sone sort of divine being.

Or, to take you back to one of your earlier points about there being no cross-over between the natural and supernatural, hence there was no way to test for the supernatural in a scientific manner, given that we're on pretty sturdy ground as far as what biology tells us about reproduction, perhaps it *is* possible for a god to manifest himself in some physical way in order to plant his seed in an unsuspecting virgin ? So maybe that would open up a line of scientific enquiry, should it ever happen again of course...



Or maybe, given that stories were often conveyed by word of mouth, they had heard stories about previous immaculate conceptions and thought that, in order to put Jesus forward as a saviour and son of god they would have to come up with an exciting story about his conception being courtesy of god, rather than simply being the son of a carpenter.

So you admit that as the Bible (the Word of God no less) doesn't bother to tell you exactly the birth/death dates (fairly important for the sun of god you'd think) are, therefore those who allegedly knew and worshipped him decided 'ah fk it, let's just dump them on these dates just to tie it in with these other beliefs'.
Oh come on, Christianity ties into a whole load of birth/death/resurrection cults based around sun worship (especially those from Egypt). Tell you what, use your brain, do some research into other religions/cults of the time and then come back.

For what it's worth, I went to a deeply catholic primary and secondary school and so have a fair idea of what's involved.

That's easy, a cure for something that can't be cured. Eg. people get cancer, and get better, even when they aren't expected to.. People go blind, and regain their sight. People a paralysed, but the nerves regrow and they walk again.

But.....someone who has had their eyes removed, either in an accident or for some medical reason such as eye cancer, never regains their sight. They don't grown new eyes. Someone who has lost their legs will not grow new ones. We're not newts. If some one who has lost their legs prays for new legs to grow and they do, then I'll be impressed.

Ps. Why did god, when creating man in his own image, not give us the power to regrow limbs, like a newt can? We're meant to be something special, if you're religious, so why does the newt get such a useful adaptation and we're denied it?

Refute what? What does that statement have to do with atheism? It is a philosophical standpoint, NOT an atheistic standpoint. I'm not sure what he means by 'no clump of neurons can be about anything'.

Alex Rosenberg, The Atheist's Guide to Reality, reviewed by Anthony Kenny in the TLS. Kenny says of one of Rosenberg's "more extravagant claims":

"His argument goes like this: the mind is identical with the brain, so a thought must be an event in the brain. But no clump of neurons can be about anything. Therefore, no thought is about anything".

Can any atheist refute that? Does it matter that a leading atheist spokesman is saying it?
Can any atheist refute Daniel Dennett's claim, repeated approvingly by Dawkins, that there is no such thing as consciousness?

As G.K. Chesterton said, and I paraphrase, it's not that believers ask you to believe in anything difficult, it's that the unbelievers ask you to not to believe in what everyone knows is the case.