When I used the need for sex as an exampleyou basicallly said it isn't a need. This is a trap. If you can basically dismiss what I consider a need (sex) then what will prevent you from doing the same if I invoke something less obvious?

 When we agree on a meaning for the word need, I will continue. 

If you won't even define the terms YOU used in YOUR OWN agument so that I may understand you better, I see no point in continuing to converse.

Sorry I asked you to clarify and expound upon your own statements *shrug*.

Seems to me that this particular line of discussion is a case in point. Part of the process of growing wiser, more mature, and indeed happier and healthier is learning that the things we felt were "needs" were in fact just desires, and that one can indeed be happy and healthy without that thing. Isn't that also how people overcome addictions, by realizing the object of their addiction (eg sex) isn't as necessary to their well-being as they thought and felt?

That's the point here (or at least part of it). We know that theists feel that they "NEED" god and/or religion to satisfy perceived problems that are inherent to life, but part of the process is realizing that you don't really need those external things to be internally content and live a happy and healthy life. Religion does things like convince you that you NEED religion to live a normal life, and that anytime you stray from a narrowly defined kind of thinking that you will be miserable. To back that up they continually tell you how bad it is and make you feel guilty for something that's part of your human nature, eg natural desires, so that they can then give you the solution and show you how you'll never get that anywhere else; which is true, but only because outside that religion such things aren't a problem to begin with.

That is a good part of why people are so reluctant to even think about giving up religion, but they cover up the fear with the warm and fuzzy feeling that they call "god" so they can feel that much more justified ("it's not about fear, it's about love!" ).

[Sorry Yellow #5, I hope I'm not intruding on your line of thought here. My intent is to add to it, but one never knows for sure] 

So, what are atheistic societies like Sweden offering that the United States isn't?

(Sweden also has more acceptance for sensitive people like me...wonder if I should learn Swedish and move? ) 

Not a dodge. I am a theist in an athiest stronghold. For me this is a minefield.

First people are not 'going to be reluctant' to give up theism. People ARE reluctant to give up theism. Apology in advance if this distinction is just a difference in grammer and not intent.

Let me go back to the funeral I recently attended. There was a nearly universal belief that the deceased was with us not just in memory but in some form of afterlife. From a purely psychological perspective, this is a coping mechanism. Atheists also have coping mechanisms, albeit different ones. But the coping mechanisms of a atheist are fundamentally different than a theist. The atheist mechanisms require a high level of rationality. Most people will never attain this level. So the coping mechanisms of atheism are out of reach to them. Theism provides an accessible coping mechanism to those unwilling to be fully rational. People WANT to believe in an afterlife.

Before you cry bull****, don't make the mistake that because you are not this way, other people are not. I know a brilliant programmer that constantly forgets that most of the people that use software are just not nearly as smart as he is. And so he regularly makes decisions based on what works for him, not realizing that the majority of people just don't fit that mold. I see a similar dynamic among atheists. What is crystal clear to them is just not fathomnable to many people. And they get frustrated because people don't understand them. Well duh. They DON'T understand.

 [MOD EDIT - removed cursing.  There is to be no foul language in this forum]

 Ironically, the eloquence of your reply actually supports my point. Many people wouldn't make it through the entire thing. Theism is easier.

Here is a major difference. For those that believe in an after life, memory *cannot* have the same significance. Their loved one is not gone forever, just in another place. I don't see anything in atheism that can match the power of this, whether or not it is delusional. For someone that believes in an afterlife, accepting atheism means losing their loved ones forever. That is no small hurdle to overcome.

While I understand your points on theists and their assumptions about atheists, I'm not sure how you got to me making those same assumptions. My only assumptions about atheists and how they handle loss is that they do have a coping mechanism that works for them and that it involves a higher level of rationality than most people employ. If these coping mechanisms lacked emotional content they would be fatally flawed.

However, how did you come to the conclusion that atheists have not lost a brother, a sister, a father or mother or go through other forms of pain and suffering? Believing in a god is not an answer; it's an anti-answer.

If your body is in the casket or urn, where did this "after-death" body come from? Will your vocal cords work? There needs to be air for sound to vibrate in. If there is air will you breath? But you're dead right? Ok maybe you think you're going to read each others minds? But in order to have a mind you'd need a physical container like a brain or a substitute for a brain. Ok let's just say you are a soul; how do souls greet each other?

I really do not think you gave this any thought what so ever.

So again, you think there will be man and women in the "after-life"? Do you imagine that there will be reproductive behavior there, whereever 'there' is?

My "eloquence" doesn't factor into my beliefs, it's something that my life would require with or without religion. Without religion, however, I/we just approach the subject the same way that we all approach anything else in life. The only difference is that we don't have pre-made answers.

Note my previous responses where I mentioned that nobody is trying to forcably remove religion, just get people to actually think about it. If people were to start actually thinking critically about things, it is likely that they would just fall out of religion. Many times people don't because they've been conditioned to think that doing so is somehow bad or wrong. Use the same faculties that apply to every other subject in life, which everyone has and everyone uses, and a lot of the supposed "problems" would simply cease to be problems. One doesn't need to be a scientist or mathematician to be an atheist, just get proper perspective on such things. We all approach politics with some level of rationality, and people generally don't find it that difficult. We may think that opposing viewpoints are stupid at times, but we're generally not afraid to learn more about them and settle on what makes sense. That is, of course, excepting political issues that are religiously polarized.

I also wouldn't say that religion is necessarily much easier. Atheism requires nothing like the constant maintenance (eg affirmation) of beliefs to sustain them. I would say it's actually a lot easier to be atheist as you just read the same things, and give them consideration on their own rather than how they affect your belief. We don't have to pray, we don't feel tortured with guilt because the chick at the corner store turned us on, we don't need constant reminders, we don't have holy books to be studied, interpreted, reiterated, filtered, and applied to every thought we have.

Theists and atheists read all the same things, the same news and such. The difference is that instead of following it up by reading the bible and spending all sorts of time and energy in reconciling it with supernatural beliefs, we decide if we want to know more and spend a little time reading on the subject if we're interested. Some people might find that they're VERY interested and do a LOT of reading, but that's not mandantory to atheism.

Since atheism in itself is just a lack in one of many beliefs, each person is different. Some put more energy into such things than others. There's nothing saying that atheists can't find relatively "easy" answers, there's just one that doesn't enter into it. That one just happens to be completely pre-made and prevalant.

Atheists are just going to use concepts (which they have considered prior to the death) that have some rational basis. That's different from specifically using rationality or logic as a tool to get through it.

Perhaps the thing that you're missing is that most atheists have indeed been there. When I was young I used to console myself with notions of things like an afterlife (albeit without a god). When I realized there was no real sense to that, I found consolence in other things. One is no easier or harder than the other, and will very likely evolve with every death of a loved one. So at any rate, I can speak from experience, you cannot.

If you want to swap antecdotes, and many/most atheists I know, have an easier time dealing with death than any theist I've known. I've watched these theists repeat the notion of an afterlife incessantly, as if trying to make themselves believe it. Granted, that's purely antecdotal and so I don't hold it as objective truth. Perhaps you can see, however, how that might be insulting to some, as it implies that they're "doing it wrong" and "my way is better".

What it does say to me, however, is that it honestly doesn't seem any easier, no matter how I look at it. I don't honestly think that either way is really any harder, though, either. Death is hard, and the only thing that makes it any easier is life experience (and sometimes not even that), with or without religion.

You simply fall into the same patterns and same methods of discourse as most of the other theists on this site. To me, you don't stand out from them in any particular way. That's not meant to be derogatory in any way, simply that your assumptions fall into the same type of assumptions as many of the others seen around here. That is to say that you don't seem to have a very realistic perspective on what it actually means to be without religion. I've been saying that a lot of these issues simply fall away when one loses interest in religion, your rebuttal has been that these things are important to religious people - it's just going around in circles, so unless you want to discuss the fact that a lot of those things simply lose importance, I'm done here.

Your statement would be about equal to saying that we couldn't know anything about our sun because we couldn't fit it under a microscope - totally different fields of study with totally different tools. 

Perhaps if theists would better understand what science actually is, and stop thinking of it as a competing worldview, they'd stop using this argument from ignorance.