We should take this as a teaching opportunity. Take all the Republicans, Democrats and Tea baggers who think torture produces good intelligence, accuse them of being secret.y Muslim terrorists and then water board them and see which of them confesses.

Sickness and misfortune are just God's way of testing the faithful... didn't you know that? It's all in God's unfathomable, indecipherable plan. :-)

To be a free thinker you have to be willing and able to confront one's own positions and abandon them if they are found wanting as well as being able to adopt the position of those you normally disagree with if their reasoning proves to be sound.

Well, I'd say you'd be just as content as someone medicating themselves with heroin or some other well-being inducing drug. What you feel is what you feel no matter the cause. So is it truly happiness? Sure. What is happiness anyway? There's some truth to the saying that you can choose to be happy (or at least content with one's life situation).

Actually people in AA use religion, or more correctly, faith, as a crutch to help them get through the tough parts of recovery. As an atheist who went into recovery 24 years ago I know first hand. At the time I was "willing to do anything" to get sober as they say and went through a brief period of about 3 years where I was a moderate believer (like a Catholic, you know?) but still believed in evolution and the true age of the universe.

Eventually I came back around to reality, but the crutch had done its job and allowed me to get my footing without the need to use alcohol or drugs. So I understand that people are at different places in their lives and some need the crutch of faith or religion to get by.

It took us a long time to evolve to our present state and giving credence to a causal agency was the best/safest evolutionary track for our survival. E.g. the weeds are moving because there's a tiger, so run, if true you save yourself, if false no harm and you forget, vs. the weeds are moving and it IS a tiger, you attribute it to the wind and so get eaten!

I was stuck in a car this morning with someone listening to a faith based radio station that had a snippet of an interview with some singer who's faith was reaffirmed when she went through surgery for a brain tumor. She said she considered it a test, and that she wanted to "pass" the test.

If you really want to test your faith don't have surgery and try to pray away the tumor.

Unfortunately, as Jack Nicholson told Tom Cruise in a movie, "You can't handle the truth"

I know many people who use religion as comfort and the common denominator is their fear and fragile emotional condition. Being an atheist leaves one metaphorically out in the cold, cruel universe with the realization that we are only here for the briefest of moments and then will be gone forever. Our loved ones once dead, are gone forever. We will not be seeing them again in the afterlife (BTW, one of the BEST episodes of Dinosaurs ever! see here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_awql5z_Xg ), we will not be reunited with friends, family and our long lost pets.

Of course on the plus side, we also won't be thrown into a fiery pit full of all kinds of nasty demons torturing our burning bodies for eternity either.

Forcing some people to face these realities can leave them seriously depressed and in some cases suicidal. So I don't recommend forcing people to reject their faith or trying to talk them out of their beliefs. It's better, IMO, to be open about your own beliefs and if brought into a discussion or debate then to make one's case against a faith based system. For example, pointing out that EVERYONE in the cancer ward is praying to be saved (or almost everyone) from their cancer, yet very few will be. Or asking if that one person who survives and airplane crash that kills hundreds, including children and infants, is so much more worthy of being saved.

Studies show that people of faith are happier than atheists, while atheists have a more realistic understanding of the world. *They* don't say Ignorance is bliss for nothing!

Yeah, OK, I signed it, I don't have much hope, but I signed it and shared it on Facebook, not that many of my friends are going to go there. I'd like to see it off of the money too. A friend sent me one of those chain emails the other day. This one was with "No God but Allah" stamped on a dollar bill. The email asked that we refuse any currency so marked. I replied and pointed out that "Allah" is just Arabic for "God" I have offered to take all of his tainted money off his hands and safely dispose of it (you can't give it to anyone but an atheist without taking a chance on infecting their souls, after all).

The nice thing about science is that even if you don't believe in it, it still works.

Hey fellow Long Islander, greetings from Hauppauge.

Once we give up something it's almost impossible to get it back. I am not optimistic about our future.

Kevin