Dogs and cats can actually have a fairly wide variety of mental problems. This is especially apparent with animals that have been abused or neglected, or live in unusual situations. Just because they can't talk to us about it doesn't mean they don't have the problems. (Just tune into Animal Planet sometime, they have like 8 different shows about people's weid pets.)

I've seen my dog get depressed before. I've seen horses mope. So yeah, they can have issues.

My dog was depressed because I was sick and couldn't take him out for a long time. I also had just divorced and probably wasn't paying as much attention to him as he was used to, so yeah, it was a "human's fault", but the capability to be depressed, even if he'd been running in a wolf pack, is both possible and not unlikely.

One horse moped because he missed his "friend", a co-op pig, that had been butchered. We locked him out of the barn and kept him away so he wouldn't know what had happened, but he knew his friend was missing. He would have mourned a friend had they died in the wild as well. As for the pig, we didn't really want to butcher him in the end, but you have little choice with co-op animals, especially if you can't offer a replacement.

It don't make much sense to me either. Hell is described as fire and an abyss, so will it be light or dark? I don't know, but both descriptions are found in areas full of of metaphorical language, so I think it's best not to take either description literally. Also, demons are going to by thrown into Hell as well, so they aren't going to be ruling the place and torturing us - it's not going to be fun for them either.

Even in this life, there are decisions that we make early on that set the course for the rest of our lives, so it doesn't sound absurd to me. Also, if something is true, then it should be believed regardless of whether we find it to be absurd and uninteresting.

You have that backwards. That analogy is typically given to the faithful to make it more clear as to just how silly some of the beliefs appear to outsiders. Which on some level you get, you just don't understand the intent of the analogy.

Pew begs to differ on that. The sample size you're talking about is miniscule compared with the size needed to have reasonable confidence. I'm sure there are such individuals out there, but on the whole they're not representative of the community.

http://www.pewforum.org/U-S-Religious-Knowledge-Survey-Who-Knows-What-About-Religion.aspx

That good you speak of was a means of controlling the population and subjugating alternative points of view. And was ultimately used as a stick to try and fend off other people's rights. Doing the right thing for the wrong reason is something which genuinely moral people are supposed to avoid doing.

Now, if they had kept their nose out of politics and hadn't been using their tax exempt organizations to engage in political activity, I might be a bit more willing to buy into the good they were doing.

You're removing a risk that's near zero to begin with, that's not medical necessity. If you cut off the feet of a diabetic they won't lose them to infection either, but you don't see any support for such a radical notion even though it's far more common of a procedure than ones major treatment of infection of the penis.

Well if youre born lets say in middle of amazon and live your life there without knowing "the Word" (of which ever particular religion) youd still end up in hell? That is one thing I find tiny bit weird. In my opinion, if there's God(s) either he/she/they/it dont mind which ever particular religion you follow or just plain dont care.

Now whether that makes you damned depressed or totally free is then a matter of perspective.

-> Especially when you start to think about the usual "good boys go to heaven and bad boys go to hell" thing - I mean what is good and what is evil in the first place? Depending wether you live 2000bc, year 0 or 2000ad - there are plenty opinions even in the same region and religion, never mind the differences with cultures.

I understand the need of many people to look for some holy book or prophet to explain them in absolute terms how to do and how not to do, but cant bring myself to believe in it. Too detailed, too singular - should there be some kind of divine über law I highly doubt it could be put in a book or teached by words alone.

Anyway, I am not totally convinced that the possible God would have any sort of personality or even be self conscious entity. Certainly if that was a case, think what sort of being omnipotent personality would be? The God would propably have to know and sense anything and everything in the universe - that would lead my thoughts on to pretty deterministic path. ...and unbending fate and destiny are something I dont believe - would be damn boring for the God too ;)

In this case there isn't "true" there is only faith, isn't that what most religions believe anyway?

And as for religion's truth, there's some pretty damned good philosophical arguments against all of them. Many of them are so simple George Carlin (and possibly others) are able to distill them down for a comedy bit.

That's where I think it all falls down, btw, people think science will disprove god/religion. While this is possible, the ability to "move the bar/claim god is behind the next mountain instead" makes it fairly not useful. Whereas philosophy is much better equipped to pose the sorts of questions and demonstrate the incongruity religion. I guess that's a long way to say, if you need a way to disprove religion, look to philosophy, not science.

Just saying hello, slightly off topic, but being a teacher of English is evident.

Would Santa be a main clause, or a subordinate one? :-)

I thought they called him "Sandy Claws!" and that he had no hands at all!

This is quite possible, and I must check my regional dialect and usage manual directly!

Haha, I missed this one. If that ends up being true I suggest we mount a concerted effort to kick his ass and take over.

^ Already been tried ;-)

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again!

Plus, the dude sounds like a right bastard. Seriously, screw that guy!

If I were to say I was questioning the silly idea that we evolved from apes from about the third grade onward when I stopped believing in the tooth fairy and Santa Claus, all while ignoring what ToE says and the reasons people have for believing it to be true, then I would be making a statement that was no less ignorant. There are many ideas that may look silly from the outside, but our ignorance about them should be a reason to either learn more or keep silent rather than to assert their silliness. Sorry, I misread your statement, I thought you were saying that the people who left their religion tended to know more about the religion they left. It's a shame, but I guess it doesn't surprise me that people who left one religion would be more inclined to learn about other religions that people who tend to consider other religions to be false by nature their religion being true. I personally only missed one of the answers on the quizz because I changed it at the last minute, but it is kind of hobby of mine. I have a friend I admire who regularly reads books by authors he disagrees with, but I haven't gotten there yet.

I'd be happy to see a source if you had one, but the good I was referring to was along these lines:

"During the first half of the twentieth century, the agency began primarily as an adoption/foster care agency, then continued to expand and evolve in order to provide direct assistance to poverty-stricken families, the elderly, single pregnant women, and newly-arrived immigrants. Between 1916 and 1920, branch offices opened in Brockton, Lawrence, Lynn, Salem, Somerville, and Lowell to assist needy Catholics and to reach out to include non-Catholic immigrants.

During the Great Depression, Catholic Charities joined with local social service agencies of all faiths to form the Community Federation of Boston, directly assisting hundreds of thousands of needy individuals. Catholic Charities supplied food and clothing to thousands of families daily and continued to find homes for orphans and children in need. As the Depression ended, Catholic Charities shifted its emphasis from direct assistance to adoption, foster care, marital counseling, alcohol abuse treatment, and immigration and refugee services."

Again, I agree that it's something they shouldn't be doing, but that does not negate all the things that they have done right.