Now that's a good answer too

Taken straight out of the ND Tyson playbook. And damn good of you to do so.

@Aquaman - It's an original thought of mine from my church days, where I always said that an overheard truth will sink in quicker than being challenged face-to-face. So, I guess Tyson and I draw from the same well.

My atheist wife was teaching Sunday school when I met her.

My friend AronRa, he met his wife arguing against her online. She was a creationist then. She went from online arguing YEC to wife of "notorious" atheist youtuber.

are you really friends with the notorious one? i was listening to a talk he gave a while back and he said a line that is so simple, so obvious, yet so elegant, deep and truly life transforming. not a day has gone by where i don't go through the task of ensuring i remember this line (or something very similar) 'if you want your life to have meaning, try making someone elses life meaningful." id honestly say that he is by far the most underrated intellectual in society. his ability to pull a perfectly crafted argument seemingly out of thin air, and then use that argument to forge the foundation of arguments that, each and every word, every syllable, my mind is working harder to comprehend than i can describe, is like being attacked by Bruce Lee. you know its coming, but before the pain has time to set in hes already on to the next opponent.

I really am. We've hung out quite a bit. I've even taken him sailing a couple times. We've been out riding motorcycles. It wasn't anything super frequently, but I know him, his wife, and rest of family.

At one point, I was pretty involved with the JREF and knew a lot of people in the skeptical world. Explaining how all that came about is apparently what pushed Aron to take it to the next level a few years back (or so he tells me). Now he's a real jet-setter.

the problem with spirituality is that it has been, in large part, hijacked by the religious. its virtually impossible to attempt to live a spiritually fulfilled life without the tug of the religious attempting to claim your experiences.

by honoring each other and providing meaning and value to the lives of those we touch. we are a social species, not a god forged species.

@Aquaman Yes, I agree with that. There is still an issue in thought, in epistemology or what constitutes knowledge. God provided the guarantee of a true connection between what is perceived and what is in reality for many thinkers up until Nietzsche. Since G's demise things have been kind of up in the air.

Well its only been up in the air for philosophers. Unfortunately, while there is a massive amount of brain power and time spent thinking about the universe and our place in it, science hasn't just begun to sever it's ties with philosophy, the severing has long been done. The truth may be a concept that is ultimately unattainable, but as has been said, this does not mean the search should be abandoned. What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer. Or if you prefer Thomas Jefferson to Francis bacon, Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.

Again, faith and religion are nothing more than substitutes for wisdom, where consolation plays such a normative role in numbing the pain in the tragedy of life that our evolved brains simply refuse to grasp the totality of our situation, so deeply, that billions, yes billllionssss of people base their lives around Fairy Tales.

@Aquaman I don't think truth is a concept, it is a 'troth' , something that demands.

@Aquaman "Religion is a system of symbols which. establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by. formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and. clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.." Clifford Geertz

when you say atheists make points that can't be proven what do you mean by this? that is an illogical claim that contradicts the basis of atheism. atheists do not claim there is no god. atheists claim that all attempts to demonstrate a god, are less than convincing. theists bring faith to the table, atheists bring science and skepticism. every truth claim religions have ever made about the nature of reality have been relentlessly proven false by science. science has never once been proven wrong by religion. there are obvious reasons for this, such as, religion is not well defined.
so i ask again, what is it about atheism that would lead you to make such a fatuous claim?

i used to think the god debate was inherintly a time waster. until a group of dellusional thugs flew planes full of living people, into buildings full of living people, shouting god is great, certain of paradise, ultimately killing 3000 american men women and children, that prompted me to reconsider the debate. since then, i have seen absolutely nothing produced by religion to make me think any differently. as a matter of fact, considering where you say your from and the absolutely horrendous conditions that exist, caused by the same faith that wreaked havoc on america, im frankly shocked by your comment. how many 12 and under girls need to be raped this month for not wearing the veil in england before this is something worth taking the time to discuss?

@Aquaman Since people won't change unless they decided to do so...is stupid to debate about god with them.....or about anything else.

BTW, what does it have to do my other country -one where only 20% practice their religion) with the blowing of the TT and the rest you mentioned?

It's not about the natives to your land. It's about the mass immigration turning large tracks of places like Sweden, into a dismaying trap door under the feet of all the native Swedes never knowing if their wives, sisters, daughters or mothers will make it home on a nightly basis. Some scandals are so massive that they're simply hard to believe. As many as one million white English children may have been the victims of Muslim rape gangs, better known as grooming gangs, in towns up and down Great Britain. In the Qur'an, taking enemy sex slaves is encouraged and until all of GB is Muslim, until all of the world Muslim, we are all the enemy. here are the facts: calculations based on convictions show that a British Muslim male is 170 times more likely to be a part of sex grooming gang than a non-Muslim. And there are no recorded instances of non-Muslims doing this to Muslim girls as part of a criminal enterprise. it was estimated that six out of seven Muslim males either knew about, or were part of, a grooming gang

Proof pls. Without bible quotes.

Perhaps you didn't understand the "agnostic" part in Agnostic.com. I think you are in the wrong place my friend.

Wait! How did I miss the irony. We are asked why we argue/debate God when spirituality is a private matter. I present the above comment as "exhibit A" for my defense of why we must debate it.

No wonder our match is at 27%! You don't even belong here.