"Our founder was wrong!" isn't much support for a supernatural claim.

plenty of non-Cathars were offed too -- mercs hired with pope's blessing weren't the finicky sort of thug.

Note the 'or' clause!

"Mostly". An interesting sentence.

"Thus it was that the wretched people were deluded at that time by charlatans and pretended messengers of the deity.."

Did you ever think that you and the charlatans you listen to and believe are the deluded ones?

There are hundreds of "creator gods and goddesses" to be found among the many thousands of gods, goddesses and God-men/"messiahs" "revealed" in most ancient and ignorant cultures.

Here's reminder of one that was "known to exist" by the whole population of Egypt and beyond even more comprehensively that the gods of today:

"HAIL to thee, Amun-Ra, Lord of the thrones of the earth, the oldest existence, ancient of heaven, support of all things;
Chief of the gods, lord of truth; father of the gods, maker of men and beasts and herbs; maker of all things above and below;
Deliverer of the sufferer and oppressed, judging the poor;
Lord of wisdom, lord of mercy; most loving, opener of every eye, source of joy, in whose goodness the gods rejoice, thou whose name is hidden.
Thou art the one, maker of all that is, the one; the only one; maker of gods and men; giving food to all.
Hail to thee, thou one with many heads; sleepless when all others sleep, adoration to thee.
Hail to thee from all creatures from every land, from the height of heaven, from the depth of the sea.
The spirits thou hast made extol thee, saying, welcome to thee, father of the fathers of the gods; we worship thy spirit which is in us."

Do you "admit" that this Amun-Ra, Lord of the thrones of the earth "creator god" exists?
If not - why not? That god has as much credibility as the originally Canaanite god "Yahweh" or the Roman's god-man "Jesus"..

Of course - there is no need for (or evidence of) magical "creation" and the concept of a magical invisible and undetectable supernatural man merely wishing the infinite universe into existence FROM NOTHING is beyond impossible and ridiculous.

Surely you don't actually believe such impossible fictional garbage?

It is, of course, easy to "foretell" events if you write about them centuries after they occured and merely "back date" and set you fiction in an earlier time - as is the case wit all the diverse and different, confused and contradictory NT bibles that can be traced back to originating in the 4th century (reference Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus) but no earlier.

The oldest NT bibles appeared after the Roman religion they called "christianity" was cobbled together from mostly pagan components and exclusively pagan feast days and festivals in the 4th century CE.
There are many thousands of gods, goddesses and god-men / "messiahs" and no evidence of (or reason for) the existence of any of them.

The burden of proof and the onus of convincing the rest of us of the validity of the proof is all upon the religionists and the rest of the rapidly declining membership of fraudulent religions.

There is no evidence of Jesus or any of the centuries later written legends of Jesus that originates from within the 1st century.

No text.
No artifact.
No inscription.
No cross used as a symbol of a messianic cult.
No archaeological inscription.
Not even a trace of a 1st century "City of Nazareth" in any map or text or beneath the modern Jesus theme park town of "Nazareth" that was founded in the 4th century.

The world's oldest (4th century founded) politico-corporate institution of the Roman religion they called "christianity" agree.
"Our documentary sources of knowledge about the origins of Christianity and its earliest development are chiefly the New Testament Scriptures, the authenticity of which we must, to a great extent, take for granted."
(Catholic Encyclopedia, Farley ed., vol. iii, p. 712)
The Church makes extraordinary admissions about its New Testament. For example, when discussing the origin of those writings, ".. the most distinguished body of academic opinion ever assembled" (Catholic Encyclopedias, Preface) admits that the Gospels "..do not go back to the first century of the Christian era"
(Catholic Encyclopedia, Farley ed., vol. vi, p. 137, pp. 655-6).
This statement conflicts with priesthood and religionist assertions that the earliest Gospels were progressively written during the decades following the death of the Gospel Jesus Christ.
In a remarkable aside, "the church" further admits that, "the earliest of the extant manuscripts [of the New Testament], it is true, do not date back beyond the middle of the fourth century AD"
(Catholic Encyclopedia, op. cit., pp. 656-7).
There is not one single shred of original, authentic, 1st century originated evidence supporting the centuries later written legends of "Jesus" in any library, museum, christian institution or university. Or at least - my decades long search has revealed none.

Pascal's wager is based upon the possible existence (or probable non-existence) of only one hypothetical "god". If compared to the many thousands of gods that have been believed to exist by whole populations in the past - the chances of picking the right one renders the odds of that so vastly against the wager. Always assuming that blind faith is an option or "choice" for any moderately sentient human. (Try "choosing" to believe in Amun-Ra or Zeus by an act of will and you will know how ridiculous Pascal's wager is and how the rest of us feel about your hypothetical Canaanite god "Yahweh" and historically unsupported legends of a Roman god-man named "Jesus".)

There appears to be nothing unique or original within the Urban Myths at the root Judaeo/christian religion - but be assured that the rapidly growing and third largest "religious" cohort (the non-religious) treat all the thousands of apparently imaginary gods, goddesses and god-men/"messiahs" with exactly fair and equal skepticism.

It would be even more persuasive if christers could provide irrefutable evidence for the real existence of their supposed 'god'.

So-called 'miracles', it seems, are mostly coincidences, due to the placebo effect, or scams by snake-oil sales persons, of which there are plenty (usually male, for some reason!).

Partly true. You're still proudly incorrigible.

Good luck.

Right. Like I said.

Most "debates" and conversations between people that disagree fail because of lack of consensus on terms and fundamental assumptions.

You have done some software programming, at least according to your bio. Imagine if team of "programmers" met to debate the best approach for building an app and each one just assumed that his own development environment and parameters was "the reality." It would be confusing. Obviously.

So when this happens in ordinary human discourses, leaders sometimes recognize that and seek to come to terms on which assumptions are valid before moving on to developing more specific agreements or debating the controversies in a clearer discourse.

That's the difference between working on projects for profit, where everyone already knows more or less what the overall objective is, and informal (and very often formal) debates. When you have these worldview clashes and culture wars that occur beyond what most people perceive consciously, they end up Gaslighting themselves by clinging to their cultural bubbles as defenders of "reality" and refuse to engage in any level of self-examination. (IOW, maybe I'm a hack that's just spewing silly talking points sometimes?) Even when more self-examination would be best for everyone.

Which is not to say that I get to set the agenda. The point is that I only nudged people to open their minds. All they did was spew neo-Manichean agitprop, snark, and Photoshop memes building on themes positing that they are the Brights and the Supers just can't understand them because that's the order of the world.

And I didn't even come to your site with this agenda. I followed an abusive troll that has exhibited these same behaviors while disrupting conversations pertaining to the US Constitution and the implications of Progressive power consolidation on separations of power and States' rights. Because it's getting so severe I decided to follow one of the worse chronic abusers and found your blog. What I found is that your little cult is quite a bit worse. I now fully understand why those trolls behave that way and why they remain so incorrigible and arrogant even after someone patiently explains how absurd their assertions really are.

It's your blog and your life. And if you're as successful as you want to be, that's your business. But your spew is, at best, pedestrian. Probably because you are as closed minded as your cult. The only difference is that you're abusive when you think it won't bite you back but also have a "polished" front to conceal your anger. Those poor trolls are not even careful enough to muster a polished image when someone smart comes along to challenge them.

And that is why the debates are so stale. Wow.

No, I don't ordinarily spend my time on theistic "apologetics" because it's so discouraging to see how arrogant these ignorant people can be. It's willful blindness. People that care about productive discourse know that they can ask me questions and I take it from there. I didn't come to your site (or any other atheist sites) to engage with atheists per se. I wanted to know more about the incubators for some of these deranged atheist trolls. I now understand a lot better than before. I was starting to suspect that they were being paid by the same people that fund these student uprising movements. I now know these really are just cultural schisms and bubbles created willingly. And defended impulsively. Willful blindness. Intuitive blindness. A worldview defined largely by fallacies. And that is what you accuse theists of.

Which is not to say that theists don't do those same things. But you're not the answer. Building atheistic cults to replace everyone else will not work. You're not that Bright.