Actually that does not follow. Beliefs do not have to be true to 'cause' behaviors. You are being illogical here.

Oh, boy...  I'm gonna open this can of worms because your response answered my question perfectly, and I'm not worried about your objections anymore.  My claim that religion causes X doesn't fit your use of cause (which is somewhat schizophrenic) but it fits mine perfectly.

Ok... now...

If religion is false?

What could that possibly mean?  What truth values are you using here?  Religion is a system of belief and practice.  It is neither true nor false.  It is a phenomenon.  Do you mean, "If the truth claims made in a particular religion's teachings are false"?

If that's what you mean, then what does the rest of the sentence mean?  If I believe I've won the lottery but the truth is that I have not, is my trip to the lottery office to get my winnings not caused by my belief, despite the lack of objective truth value?

So... if a person A holds X as true, and X is false, by what reasoning do you conclude that A's action Y (as prescribed by X) must come from something other than X?  That's... odd.

Here's the schizophrenia I was talking about.  My instinctive knowledge that eating is necessary when I'm hungry is the cause for me eating the apple.  Fine.  Totally true.  Also, my desire for an apple caused me to eat an apple.  Also, my brain caused me to eat an apple.  Also... etc, etc.  You've just decided not to allow one particular paradigm because... um... I don't know why.

Talk about impossible burdens.  You've essentially implied that any statement "X causes Y" must follow a chain of causation back to some "original cause" which set everything else in motion.  That's absurdly reductionist, since I could eventually go back to whatever event spawned abiogenesis.  For that matter, I could go back to the freaking Big Bang.  The Big Bang caused religious atrocity.

Do you see what I mean?  You don't like that I am looking at a very short chain of causality.  I mean, for Christ's sake, half of what I write about is the evolutionary origin of human desires and behaviors.  Do you think I don't understand that there's a longer causal chain than "Religious Teaching >>>> X Behavior"?!  Do you really think I'm so dense as to suppose that religion is some magical cause-less thing that infects an otherwise pristine human nature?

No... I'm picking parameters and working with them.  I have no desire to reduce suicide bombing to neurology.  That's for neurologists to do.  I can, however, reduce suicide bombing to the obvious cause-effect chain at the top of your endless regress of cause.  "The belief that suicide bombing is good and effective causes people to commit suicide bombings."  Once I say that, you can point out that there is a longer chain of causation, and I'll happily agree.  But why in the world would you think that you have to demand peer review for clear relationships between beliefs and actions?

Yes.  Prayer is an expression of something else.  Prayer is a method of trying to get what one wants.  I would never say that religion causes Timmy to want a PS3.  I would say that religion caused Timmy to pray for a PS3.  Get it?  Without the belief that prayer is effective, Timmy would not pray.  Timmy prays because he believes prayer is effective.  Without religion, perhaps Timmy would believe that the most effective way to get a PS3 is to get money.  He might notice other boys getting jobs mowing lawns, and might emulate them.

Seriously, I can't believe I'm having to explain this to you.  I think I'm insulted.  Do you really believe that I don't know that religion is an expression of lots of aspects of human nature?  Sheesh.  After everything I've written explaining evolutionary origins for our behaviors and beliefs?

Oh, for fuck's sake.  You have no possible way to prove this.  You're demanding a peer reviewed study from me to prove that Bob prays because he believes prayer works, but you're free to just baldly assert that if we could rewind time and raise Suzy in a thousand different environments, that in all environments where she had a son, she'd find some false belief to justify involuntarily killing him when he got sick?

You honestly believe that if Suzy had been raised by excellent critical thinkers who taught her the scientific method from the moment she could learn it, that she'd still have found some woo-woo and believed it?  I'm walking away from this discussion.  You've descended into the absurd, and I'm not interested in arguing against the absurd.

Okay, a Christians says that "God told me to eat the apple"

To me that, says that she had a desire to eat the apple, and because she is Christian, attributed that feeling to God telling her to do so.

 or God literally told her to eat the apple.

Okay, at least address this before you go into the dust:

A Christians says that "God told me to eat the apple"

To me that, says either:

1] she had a desire to eat the apple, and because she is Christian, attributed that feeling to God telling her to do so.

or

2] God literally told her to eat the apple.

So, what caused her to eat the apple?

So if she wasn't Christian, she would have not eaten the apple? Or she had a desire to eat the apple, and would have done it regardless of her Christianity?

from my blog:

 Pineapple, butter answered your question.  I'm honestly dumbfounded that you still don't understand what I have been saying about religion.  I don't have the energy to write it all out again, and frankly, I don't know anything other than plain English, so I'm at a loss for how to explain it any other way than I already have.

There's a point at which I have to just say you don't get what I'm saying, and leave it at that.  You're the only one here who doesn't seem to get it.

And what's missing here, is what prayer works as?

Does prayer work, as means of conveying a sense of gratitude? And the answer is that yes it does. Does prayer work as a means of coping and dealing with miserable conditions out of ones control, and the answer is that for many people yes it does.

And in this working of prayer, is prayer a good? A say it is. I've always felt that my mothers nightly prayers, even when I was a disbeliever, was something that was "good" for her. 

As an atheist, I would have said prayer works, and it is a good thing. 

Cpt, the point is that in [1] the desire to eat the apple causes her God-related belief, while in [3] the desire to eat the apple is caused by her God-related belief.  You claim that if [1] is the case then removing religion wouldn't change her apple-eating desire, but this is less likely in [3].  Much more problematic in this regard is:

[4] She hates apples and prefers bananas, but she ate the apple anyway because a priest told her that God wants her to eat the apple and she's been taught never to question a priest when he says what God wants.  However the priest never actually heard God claiming this particular desire.

In which case removing religion would probably have a huge impact on her apple-eating habits.

I believe that there are a lot of valuable things to discuss in this topic, so I'll add my two cents, and my own personal perspective on the matter.

First, let us examine the claim that is under dispute:

On the whole, not particularly novel, one would think. Nothing spectacular is unearthed in the statement, and I think that most would agree, at least on a basic level, that the statement holds true. Christian teaching *does* encourage prayer, and those who follow Christian teaching tend to hold to that particular tenet of it. So why all the fuss? I believe that the dispute here stems from ideas of religious plurality; if Captain and I see things the same way, then she sees prayer as merely one of many forms of meditation - that is, inward thoughts focused onto an external source. When I look at the whole spectrum of religious thought, and the whole spectrum of prayer/meditation/mantra/etc. I do not see it as coincidence that some form of ritualistic theism is practiced on virtually every part of the globe. To extend the metaphor of the apple, I see that people are brought to religion (or were originally) because we are hardwired to hunger for it.

(To make myself perfectly clear, and to prevent the topic getting sidetracked by what may seem to be loaded statements, I feel that I need to pause at this and acknowledge that there is, as far as I'm aware, no research that supports this view, and that this is merely my perspective, formed from my own experiences with world religions, and with those who practice them. I must also in no uncertain terms deny that the human desire to search for the "metaphysical" or "supernatural" has any implications about the actual existence of such things. Human fascination with things such as UFO's, mythical creatures, and other such conspiracy theories implies nothing about those entities, only about the humans who are fascinated with them.)

To continue upon my original tangent: I see the original claim as having too limited a scope to be largely useful. Obviously, use is relative, and perhaps the claim is sufficient for your use of it, but I don't see it as a useful descriptor of religious practice in and of itself. While your statement of causation with the apple includes both external and internal causes for your eating of an apple (because you have been made aware of apples and their deliciousness, and because you are hungry, respectively), your statement of causation in regards to prayer lacks any stab at what internal forces drive people to pray, meditate, or practice other such rituals.

It is very late, so I will reorganize my thoughts and possibly continue this sometime in the afternoon. I hope that what I've written here can help shed some light on the nature of the disagreement, or at the very least proves to be entertaining, if not particularly thought-provoking.

An astute observation, as usual, Will. I will think more on what I've said and see if I can further clarify my ideas.

Hambi, Capt wont get it anymore than any other theist claiming any other naked assertion. They can empathize to a certain extent but "evidence" to any believing label in a deity is merely that which one wants to be true, not what they can prove.

You can both agree that ice cream is tasty but will argue to the end over who made the ice cream,. Where you and I would not assign ice cream to magic, others would.

Capt is a hopeful to me, not in a strict sense, nor a reality, but in that the "epiphany" or "crack" happened.

Semantics and arguments aside, magic does not exist, and Capt can spend countless wasted hours trying to convince us otherwise. But the fact that Cap finally admitted to a tool that we all can use, says that the myth so fervently clung too is holding as much water for Cap as a spaghetti strainer.

Cap is a cunt hair away from 'Joining the dark side". ( LUKE, I AM YOUR FATHER)!

I have nothing to add but to let Hamby know that either use is acceptable, if archaic. 

Retrod the trodden path tread so many times before.
Treaded? 
Nay, trod upon
And retrodden like that spot on the carpet oft trod upon that's now warn,
Perhaps in front of your bedroom door.