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It's funny how we have gotten this far and not a single user has asked you to provide evidence of your existence, that somehow by the letters appearing on our screen we have assumed that your existence is real, yet many of these user's have insisted on evidence of God other than Him appearing in a written book much like us writing now.

Could you share some of the answers to why we exist that the atheist and agnostic's have come to please?

Yes my second last paragraph might be better served by saying:Our level of consciousness..., consciousness doesn't imply philosophy, but no consciousness would imply no philosophy. Agnostic is probably a better term in my example. Do you have anything else that you would add or highlight?

Yes, no and everything inbetween. Perhaps the easiest way to give value to philosophy is to say that it is the single thing that distinguish's humans from the animal world. One might even call philosophy 'concious mind'. Perhaps you should rephrase the question to 'Is conciousness crap?'. To which I would probably answer yes . I've decided to elaborate on my statements above. As I have seen from answers to many of my previous posts there are few who relate to what I say. The concious mind is something that offers humans as a species many advantages, planning would be an example of this. It does however have disadvantages when it comes to just living from day to day, by this I mean that we are exposed to questions that would have been non-existent to us had we not had conciousness. Philosophy is not an option in this regard, but is a need. We are plagued by certain questions as a by-product of concious thought and philosophy is the attempt to answer them. Its quite obvious to see my point in the religious forum, we have those trying to answer 'why' and we have those that have no need or at least less of a need to answer 'why' (agnostic or atheist). Then we have vast amounts of the population that have no need to answer 'how' (lets call them ascientist) but there are those that need to answer 'how' and we might call them scientists. Our need to answer arises from our conciousness or awareness of the questions themselves and philosophy is an attempt to answer them.

Unless we are getting more intelligent as a species, there will surely come a time when our processing power as humans can no longer move science forward assuming that we will not be intelligent enough to think beyond the boundaries that are presented. The assumption is based on the idea that at some stage someone with an IQ of 170 will not be able to go beyond the current theory even if it is understood to be flawed in some way but would require an IQ of 180 to do this. If you agree with what I am saying, how far away from this do you think we are? If you oppose, perhaps you could explain why? If someone would like to introduce the role of computers in this please feel free to do so. I'm not involved in science and am hoping to acquire some knowledge on the subject.

You've just proven Adam and Eve and this is the thing that bothers you?

I know exactly what the religion is, I merely know very little about it is what I meant, thanks for helping me clarify a badly worded sentence. How exactly does one convert someone to nothing? No, would you like to try again?

I don't think that is something that anybody else besides yourself should be answering. I not sure of the religion that you present but is there not perhaps space for you to keep your relation with your family and friends/love ones without making your main connection religion? If you do succeed in 'converting' (don't think that's the right word but anyway) your dad from his religion will he not have the same problems that you are encountering? I'm not actively looking for answers to the above questions, but if you would like to discuss it further I'll try bring the concepts that you should consider to your attention (I am not a professional psychologist btw, so know that this is more of a hobby than professional trained advice).

Didn't want to reopen such an old thread, but I think Stockholm Syndrome could quite easily be explained as a withdrawal from large amounts of adrenaline and other euphoric chemicals produce while in a life or death experience. These exhilarations get subconsciously attributed to the people holding them captive, much like how a drug addict craves his fix and therefore will do anything to get it even though the long term effects are negative. I don't however think that the religious relation would give off high enough amounts of these chemicals to be considered in the same way. Sorry for leaving the overall topic of the thread but I'm not sure of the normal protocol when such an old thread is referred to.

You present logic and reason as the importance of conversion, the search for 'truth' but this suggests emotion as you true motivation. I'm not trying to judge you by this remark but rather offer you insight. If you find it impossible to convert him as such, perhaps there are other ways of keeping the above quote in your life.

I ask those that are posting 'attacks in the name of religion', what is your motivation for posting these kinds of things? Let's assume your argument is correct and that someone of that religion is reading this forum. They interpret these postings as the truth and thereby decide to act upon what is declared as a religious must. Is non-religion defined as the prompting and provoking of others to prove a point? Posting without integrity proves little for the point of either the religious or non-religious but just calls humanity as a whole into disrepute.

I assume this is directed at me. If so, it was meant to be a compliment, with some explanation to iNow as to why others might get a little heated when discussing topics with him. The last sentence was not meant to be taken seriously hence the smiley emoticon!

First off, I haven't read everyone's post, but would like to give a noobs perspective. iNow is a rather difficult person to deal with for those of us who are not used to living in the 'scientific world'. From what I have deduced he/she has extremely high attention to detail and is what a typical scientist should be in this regard. He/she holds others to a high standard and is therefore needed to the extent of post quality and information being exchanged in the forum. He/she should probably come with some sort of warning though .

I don't want to hijack the thread. If you want to discuss it, open a new thread and I'll post.

My point is that no where in the article do either of the two people involved in the murder (and yes I recognise that there were two) claim that the murder was done in the name of a.) religion or b.) a specific religion. I also think that wetting your pants is not what the Bible was referring to as a sign of a witch and perhaps this would put doubt to any claim they would've made had they said it was in religion.

Link to Wicca The practice of witchcraft as a religion is not something the Christian or Jewish Bible invented.

How would his life be better without his religion, is perhaps the question you should be asking and to what extent is the religion that he prescribes to doing harm to him? Does it not offer him anything of value, even if you think it is not real as such? One might even go further to say that if it was of no value to him he would not prescribe to it. I think the assumption that religion only offers eternal life after death is a little limited and quite often it's a community and support system that is hard to find in other areas of life.

The mentally unstable person killed someone who they thought was religious (witchcraft). Has the persecution of religion become it's own religion? Or does believing someone is religious mean you belong to a religion? That would mean we are all religious then unless religion doesn't exist at all in which case what are we talking about and there is still no evidence. I don't understand how rejecting religious belief systems (atheism) can condone or not condone murder. Are there conditions other than the one I've mentioned? I agree on your last point. In response to John: I think its fair to try and show the religion in the context in which in portrays itself. If the requirements of the religion in question were that you had to do as the verse said then you have done it justice. But I my knowledge of the Psalms is that they are songs/poems and were not originally written in English. Verse 1-8 laid grounds (my interpretation) to interpret it as saying that the only way justice could be done for what the enemy has done to us is.... I'm not confessing to be a representitive just making a point.

Thank you for providing the source. The only conclusion that I can draw from this is that you are under the impression that atheism has offered an opinion on murder and that you claim to represent all religion and are capable of providing what they do or don't condone. Furthermore the video provides no context of the material to which it quotes. Are you suggesting that we should go around looking for dirt and then proclaim it as other's truths?

What religion is this from? (in referral to the animated video) I'm sorry, thanks for clearing that up. I can now blame all murder on theism as well. High five. 'Learning to think for yourself' is a real gem.

If someone was to commit murder and claimed that it was in the name of atheism and I emphasise claim, that does not mean that when atheist's commit murder it is because they are atheist's. What is your motivation for this comment? I agree that religion persecuting science or at least the persecution of science or scientists by religious people is harmful. But religion, or anything for that matter, that questions the validity of science should be considered a positive contribution towards science.

Ok Moontanman said: To which I responded: I apologise for picking up on such an old post but I will take you challenge. He made this post quite a while ago so I thought I should mention that to those who did not know. You have rightly applied scientific knowledge to human life in our surroundings as it claims In the conditions set out above he used a gun to kill me in. I will now make use of eternity after earthly death as religion claims I then used anything as long as it's religion and claimed eternal life. That would make the score - science 1, religion infinity minus 1 aka infinity . This is a score followed by a smiling emoticon. Is that belittling enough for you?

Please provide evidence for this claim. Evading what? Evading what?

Please provide evidence of religion flying people into buildings.

Could you explain in more detail?