A study published in 2005 found correlations between a highly religious population, in Western democracies, and various social ills like murder rates, prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases, and juvenile mortality and suicide.  Compare these results to the murder rates and overall crime rates of various states.  It seems obvious that the states with the highest populations of devout religious believers suffer from high rates of crime, especially violent crime.  These same states are also more likely to execute people than states without large populations of believers.

I thought religion was supposed to secure the morality of a society. It seems that reality once again gives the lie to religious claims.

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In response to Caposkia's request, I've started this thread in the hopes that the conversation will actually progress somewhere. 

The topic of this conversation is very simple. 

- show me evidence for the existence of a spiritual world, basically, any world other than this one.

- evidence for the existence of a "soul."

- existence of some "creator" or "higher power."

etc.

I am pretty lenient on what is evidence: refer to a scientific journal with an article discussing evidence for the supernatural (even theist websites are okay, but it better be good. Not AIG), some aspect of nature or life that requires an outside force, valid philosophical argument, and even anecdotal evidence. 

Oh, if I start seeing stereotypical, lame arguments like the fine tuning argument, every painting has a painter, appeal to fear or guilt, argument from morality, argument from faith, I'm going to be royally pissed.    

I hope I have made this clear.

Email I got from a friend who I was discussing some issues with. Tell me what ya'll think."

osh,

You actually amaze me. I cannot condemn a man for his beliefs when he has spent so much time studying to find what he believes, doesn't believe, and questions why on both sides. You have absolutely spent more time trying to prove His non existence than I have trying to prove the He does exist. I only wish that you felt towards God the way I do, I only say that because I would love to learn learn more about Him from you. Not because of any other ulterior motive!

Again, I will say that believing in God is right for me. This is one of the few things I do not question. Whether it is for the purpose of comfort, fear or some other reason. I just "know" it is right. I have a problem with certain aspects of being a christian, like the going to church story that I told to you last night, but at the end of the day I do have guilt about not going as often as I should.

You are a very insightful man and I do know that you will overcome the obstacles you encounter in life. But I do think that time will either make your current convictions strong OR make you question them to the point that you find answers elsewhere.

Luckily we have freedom of choice and freedom of religion, and some of us choose God. There is no evidence that God is real, however we don't have evidence that you are real either, we just have to assume that you are real. I've never met you, it's quite possible that you could be a robot or artificial intelligence or several persons posting under the same username. Or you could be a figment of my imagination.

Since I don't have proof for your existence, would the "logical" position be that you do not exist?

I got this in response to some comments I made on a YT video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTwJ-d2ODFQ). I have no interest in private debates, so here it is in public. Feel free to respond.

How fucked up is this video? A myspace "friend" of mine decided to make a bulletin of this... and he was being serious.

okay...

GO!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BXXavl1uvE

Hi guys, I am new on this forum and I wasn't completely sure if this this was the correct section to start this topic in. If I broke any rules with this thread, please inform me of it. I look forward to debating with atheists here. I'd love to see a fruitful discussion and for you guys to try and lay out your best arguments.

So here goes:

Why do many of you believe that being an atheist should be the default position rather than being an agnostic? Many of you may claim that because there's "no evidence" for the existence of god, that it automatically means that the default position should be that he doesn't exist. Well I can easily say to that that you can't disprove his existence either. So wouldn't the most rational position to take be that "we don't know whether or not he exists" and subscribe neither to theism nor atheism?

Here's a thought:

If atheistic philosophers consider the arguments for God's existence of sufficient force that they think that they should respond to them, then atheism should not be the default position (which doesn't necessarily mean that theism should be the default position, merely that atheism should not).

I think that you would need to actually show that theism is completely irrational and out of bounds before you could set atheism as the default position. Can any of you show that?

I'm curious to see the opinions of board members, theist and non theist, in relation to the law of cause and effect, particularly regarding consciousness, conscious actions ("moral" or not).

Is there a direct effect which will be manifested in the future or present of every action and thought we experience? If so, what is the relationship between the cause and the effect? Or do these laws only apply to the strictly material universe?

If man is purely composed of and sustained by matter/energy, and we know that these things cannot be created or destroyed, only changed, then does this not extend to our consciousness? If so, what does this mean for our consciousness after death?

A month back in http://guestbooks.pathfinder.gr/read/kenthovind are 2 quotes from RRS forums. The first's more or less

"Hambydammit", "BobSpence1", and "Kellym" do not exist. Those are just labels that lazy people apply, for their own convenience, to bunches of subatomic particles that are simply going about their business. Just as they have for the last 12 billion years. Those bunch's "ideas" (perhaps one of them is that they're Free Thinkers) are nothing but configurations of the Universe's matter/energy that occur as those particles follow the Universe's purposeless, impersonal laws. So are those of the bunch labeled "Kent Hovind". And who's to be arbiter between these two bunches, other than some other bunch of purposeless particles?
 

The second's