I’ll take your word regarding your thoughts on “truth.” I’m afraid that I’m not that complicated, consequently I find the truth to be more black and white. It’s painfully obvious that religions lack “truth” because they lack the data to validate any part of it. I see no gray area there.

Regarding “faith” and my desire to see it made illegal: Sorry, I should have been more specific. I was of course referring to religious faith. It seems that our resident troll thinks our comments are too complicated. I would argue that my comments are extremely basic on the topic so as usual, he has no valid response other than to, “vomit.”

The site you posted is a on sided affair. It could be questioned, probed and challenged. Just another cheap stuffs propagated by condemn individuals.

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/412807_2

http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetails/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=EJ564932&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=EJ564932

Here are 3 links to clinical research that proves the connection to mental illness and hyper-religiosity. The 3rd one, the longest one, makes the connection to child sexual abuse and subsequent mental illness /religious fanaticism. Clergy will say they help soothe and calm the flock with their stories, but hundreds of peer-reviewed studies are readily available to prove religion = pathology. This has been known for some time, even Freud knew approximately 100 years ago that religion is sick. And I kid you not, in the mental institutions, religious visions (hallucinations) and prophecy are spouted in almost every room. Perhaps unfortunate people such as these are the “divine messengers” of the gods in times past?

If Jesus came back today, he would probably be committed.

I wish I knew how to make a “live link” into the comment box, but copy and paste into the browser bar will work.

When considering possibility versus probability – strictly speaking I do not believe that it is a valid logical conclusion that a multitude of inconsistent claims regarding truth means that none of them are, objectively, true. Given the premise that something could be true unbeknownst to an observer suggests that one or more of those 2,000,000 deities could be true, we just don’t have the evidence to support believing it to be true.

This is the my understanding for a reason that Richard Dawkins claims to be a 99.99% atheist – as a scientist and rationalist and skeptic, it appears highly unlikely that a god as described by the religions of the world actually exists, but it may be possible (in a literal, theoretical way).

Thank you *all* for a nice ranging conversation today,

YSG

Truth regarding a god will never be known so long as ALL two million or so of them continue to hide in the shadows. Yup, I said two million. There are those who would argue that 2 million gods have been created by the human race over the past 200,000 years. They all share a common trait, no evidence. So logically there is no truth to any of them. The “truth” will likely be answered by science because it uses the tools and tactics required to get to the bottom things.

Faith? As always, it’s the dirtiest 5-letter word in the English language. Solely responsible for immeasurable pain, suffering and death. “Faith,” should be against the law.