In America, atheists are still in the closet

Aerobatty wrote:

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Of course he doesn't.
He only knows how to make statements.

Statements of fact.

WAHHHHHHH!

To review: WN stated that the Potter books have outsold the bible.

That is a lie.

The bible has sold more than ten times the Potter books.

polymath257 wrote:

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What *theoretical* way would you propose to detect souls?

Where did I say souls existed?

Darwins Stepchild wrote:

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barefoot's arguments for the existence of souls would work just as well for the existence of fairies.

Why don't you show us all where Barefoot2626 said souls existed?

Because he is going to remind you that you are **AGAIN** making up things he did not say and attributed them to him.

Do not pass Go, do not collect $200: show us these "arguments" for the existence of souls.

Otherwise, he is going to remind you again you are a liar.

ChristineM wrote:

What many people don’t seem to understand is that Ireland is not a catholic country but a majority catholic country.

Ireland- unlike the UK- isn't saddled with a state religion.

What you don't know would fill boxcars.

Happy Lesbo wrote:

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.. can you ever forgive me for flirting with Kitten and having an affair with Non-Theist ??..

Ol' One-Eye, the one-eyed trouser trout, bringing new meaning to the sentence "Focus harder" I think he's into ben-wa spelunking.

True Truth wrote:

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The Hundred years war was a war between the Monarchs of England and France. The fact that some Christian woman got thrown into a few battles and happened to win, did not make the war a religious war.
"attacked them wherever they could". If that really were true, the Jews would've been extinct by now, along with the animists in Scandinavia and other parts of Europe.
The only war that was truly in the name of Christianity was the Crusades. You can perhaps throw in the 30 Years war if you want, although the Christian element to it was minor in the face of constant nationalistic looting.
In a crap economy people fight, and the dark ages had a crap economy. If if there was no religion in the world and secular humanism reigned supreme, you can be rest assured that if the population is starving, they will get angry, they will steal, and if necessary, kill. No god, no brotherly love, and no humanism is going to come between a man a piece of bread he wants to secure for himself and his family.
At most, I shall say that the medieval times are a clear example of Christianity's failure to keep the peace. And even then, I won't hold it as a unique failure. When it comes to financial inequality, political inequality, and eventually food, even Ghandi would whack you to take his share.

If you don't know that the church played a large roll in who was put on the French throne, you are woefully uneducated. Religion played a part in the Hundred Years War(s) just as it did in any wars during that time and still does today though not quite so obviously.

You may know the very basics of the HYW, but you certainly have skipped anything that disagrees with your predetermined view.

polymath257 wrote:

But not being able, even theoretically to detect it *does* mean it doesn't exist.

HAHAHAAHAHAHAH!

Putting aside for a minute you "misspoke" when you said I said souls existed, now I understand that you are saying if you can't detect something (or don't have a theory on how to detect them/it)- it can't exist?

Do I have to back you up to quarks again?

barefoot2626 wrote:

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Utter claptrap.
There are over one billion Christians. How many people did they burn last year?

None that we know of in the US. In some third world countries, like Kenya, Christians are on witch hunts and burnings happen quite often. Several documentaries have been done on it.

If it isn't against the law, people, including Christians, will do most anything that is horrendous.

It aint necessarily so wrote:

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Ol' One-Eye, the one-eyed trouser trout, bringing new meaning to the sentence "Focus harder" I think he's into ben-wa spelunking.

The Story of Pocaholeness

Catcher1 wrote:

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By now you should have a good handle on the language.
That, or we'll have to go back to Topix Spanish class.

Megaphone Spanish is tougher. I didn't get much of it.

barefoot2626 wrote:

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Utter claptrap.
There are over one billion Christians. How many people did they burn last year?

At least these that we know of.
http://www.youtube.com/watch...

Isn't that enough?

Aerobatty wrote:

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I was watching a show about OBE's and one of the doctors who was being interviewed about a patient who claimed to have an OBE while in surgery said that the patient described some things that were difficult, but not impossible to explain without actually being an OBE.
He proposed that, during surgeries, printed symbols or shapes be placed around the OR such that they could not be seen from any ordinary position in the OR.
If the patient could describe any of them after an NDE, that would be evidence of a non-corporeal body.
I don't know if it's been tried, but I haven't seen anything further on it, so I'm assuming either it hasn't been tried or hasn't produced any positive results. I would think a positive result would be pretty big news.

It turns out that a fairly high percentage of people who experience cardiac arrest experience a 'NDE'. There are a number of common elements to such cases and the types of exepriences they have.

The interesting thing is that the same types of experiences can be had by administration of ketamine.

The only information I was able to find about the hidden information being used to detect 'real' OBE was this:
http://www.skepdic.com/nde.html

Towards the bottom, we read:
"One way to avoid contamination of stories has been developed by University of North Texas professor Dr. Jan Holden.* She designed an experiment in which a laptop computer that opens flat hangs from the ceiling with the screen facing away from the floor. Her husband developed a software program that produces a series of animations. If a patient claims to have been floating above her body on the operating table, then she ought to have seen the computer screen and be able to report on what she saw. Dr. Bruce Greyson has apparently been using this protocol for a few years but so far has not reported anything of interest."

From a completely different perspective, it is interesting to ask why we would expect 'souls' to *see* anything at all. Light is a physical thing; waves of electromagnetism. How does the light interact with the soul allowing it to see? Why do we not detect the change of light from this interaction? Why is the 'soul' sensitive to the same part of the spectrum that the receptors in our eyes are?

True Truth wrote:

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Alright then, that is a good possibility. So tell me, what is Obama playing at with this support of gay marriage?
I don't expect people to vote based solely on the gay marriage issue, but isn't Obama's stance on gay marriage just part of a wider effort to secure liberalist votes?

.. not really. He already has the liberal vote ..

.. Obama made commitments to gay organizations before he was elected in 2008. His first action was to kill the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" military stance ..

.. it took courage to take a position on SSM. For that, I applaud him ..

.. the American media has now focused on SSM, diverting attention from the real issues - the economy, war, jobs, etc...

.. Evangelical Christians will probably vote for Romney even if he is Mormon. Blacks, liberals and gays will overwhelmingly vote Obama back into office. It's just another standard political religious/race war ..

barefoot2626 wrote:

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Ireland- unlike the UK- isn't saddled with a state religion.
What you don't know would fill boxcars.

Once again, the UK consists of 4 countries. Only two of those have a state religion, so saying the UK has a state religion is incorrect. You know that you misspoke, but you are too prideful to admit it.
Everyone makes mistakes.

I misspoke when I didn't make clear that the HP books outsold the Bible on several occasions and not altogether.

It aint necessarily so wrote:

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Ol' One-Eye, the one-eyed trouser trout, bringing new meaning to the sentence "Focus harder" I think he's into ben-wa spelunking.

That may seem a novel sport to some, and others not so much.

barefoot2626 wrote:

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HAHAHAAHAHAHAH!
Putting aside for a minute you "misspoke" when you said I said souls existed, now I understand that you are saying if you can't detect something (or don't have a theory on how to detect them/it)- it can't exist?
Do I have to back you up to quarks again?

If it isn't possible to detect something *even theoretically*, then the thing doesn't exist. Do you have a theoretical way to detect souls? Any ideas at all?

Once again, we knew the procedures for detecting quarks LONG before we actually detected them.

Now, what should someone of 300 years ago have said when the claim of quarks was made? Well, the *first* question would be 'how would you know?'. In other words, what would be the procedure to detect them?

So, what procedure, even if we can't do it now, would be sufficient to demonstrate that souls exist? I notice that someone *did* give such a procedure that would at least show that consciousness is not always connected to brain activity: set up pictures at the top of a room where nobody at the ground can see them and see if a person who experiences a NDE can report accurately what the picture is. Of course, this MUST be done as a double-blind study. Anyone around the patient talking about the picture could invalidate the result.

barefoot2626 wrote:

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It has several. For five out of six, that would be the Church of England.
No matter how hard you stomp your feet.
And the head of the Church of England is the head of UK no matter where you live.
No matter how hard you stomp your feet.

Wrong -England and Wales have state religions, Scotland and Northern Ireland don’t and therefore the UK doesn’t but England does, you said, wrongly that the UK does, live with the fact you are wrong and your pedantic ranting and wet dreams are not going to change that FACT

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_religion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_stat...

Having 2 jobs does not make one into the other, like when you flip burgers by day and sell your body by night is not the same job.

No religion is the fastest growing religion is america.
Does this mean anything?

barefoot2626 wrote:

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Ireland- unlike the UK- isn't saddled with a state religion.
What you don't know would fill boxcars.

Are you completely thick? Ireland and Northern Ireland have NO state religion. Northern Ireland makes up part of the UK, Northern Ireland is not England, nor is it Wales, It is Northern Ireland yet it has NO state religion.

What you know wouldn’t fill a matchbox, it would be really embarrassing for someone to be as deliberately stupid as you?

barefoot2626 wrote:

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Utter claptrap.
There are over one billion Christians. How many people did they burn last year?

How many did people did that good christian anders behring breivik shoot and bomb last year?