[Galapagos]

Originally Posted by Southtown

Can you provide sources for those assertions please?

If you're asking me to prove that Hell doesn't exist, or the inefficacy of Baptism, I believe the burden of proof lies on the adherents of these beliefs.

If you're asking how I know that people believe this, according to this 2007 Gallup poll:

Americans More Likely to Believe in God Than the Devil, Heaven More Than Hell

69% of Americans believe Hell exists. I suppose you can question the accuracy of this specific poll, but it doesn't seem too outlandish to me.
Assuming those who believe in this Hell also believe in the qualifications for admittance in the Christian Bible, 7/10 of my neighbors have no problem imagining me burning indefinitely for a lack of belief.
I can't find a poll on belief in the efficacy of Baptism, but I assume it wouldn't be too far off from the above statistic, being that they both have similar evidence to support them(none).
As far as the world view, assuming the idea of Hell is held by most Christians and Muslims:
Image:Worldwide percentage of Adherents by Religion.png - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
also, Britannica, but I can't really read this table. It's kind of scrunched up:
Worldwide Adherents of All Religions, Mid-2005 -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia
It would seem that 50% of the people on this planet believe that I am going to suffer indefinitely for holding the beliefs that prompted me to enter this thread.

I hope this is what you were asking for. If I made any unjustified assumptions, let me know. I'm open to discussion, whatever gets us to the truth more quickly.

[HydrogenBond]

The cradle of modern science was connected to the alchemists. They were mostly educated men who were doctors and priests, who had to work in secret less the church misunderstood their work. Turning lead into gold may have been the goal, but the goal led to the basis of mixing chemicals. From that early work there was a logic seen in the various combinations, which helped allow the human mind to begin looking at physical reality in a logical way. The fathers of modern science followed the path of these pioneers. But even they were still part of the church, with an alchemist's spirit.

If you look at what happened to the church after science appeared, they were two paths occurring at the same time. Science led us up a good path since it helped us to know the truth about physical reality. But the parallel path was regressive. For example, the Church of England separated from the Catholic Church so the King could get a divorce. He added an easier path for himself. He did away with something too diffiucult for him. He did not have the willpower or ingenuity to make his marriage work. The goal to remove religion from cultural is because it sets the bar too high. By watering it down a lower common denominator can pretend will power.

Ask yourself, what is harder to do, keep a tough marriage together or get a divorce? What is harder to do, have a baby or an abortion? The easier path tries to lower the bar so it is not obvious what constitutes will power. If we can finally place the bar on the ground, by removing religion, than anyone can step over the bar and pretend to be highly advanced.

[Buffy]

Originally Posted by HydrogenBond

Ask yourself, what is harder to do, keep a tough marriage together or get a divorce?

You're absolutely right Hydro: its far easier to just blindly keep believing in a religion than to go through all the difficult and scary decisions necessary to embrace science!

That's kind of been my point in this whole thread: its so much easier to just keep doing what you've always done, and as a result it is going to be a Herculean effort to "stop religious belief," because most people when faced with such a hard choice--one that according to everything they've been told means that there's nothing special about us, and there's no God who will answer our prayers and is thus *extremely scary*--will choose not to make the decision, and in fact will rail against anyone who tries to push them to change, no matter how rational the argument might be...

Ebbing men, indeed, most often do so near the bottom run, by their own fear or sloth,
Buffy

[Pyrotex]

Originally Posted by Buffy

...it is far easier to just blindly keep believing in a religion than to go through all the difficult and scary decisions necessary to embrace science!...

or the difficult and scary decision to burrow every more deeply into one's religion to prove (or falsify) it from within.

The latter is what I did. In an attempt to absolutely prove my religion, and buttress up my flagging faith, I spent an inordinate amount of time reading the bible and books about the bible.

And that undermined everything. Raised disturbing questions. Faced me with inexorable paradoxes. Called into question tenets and interpretations.

And so I ...
paddled right out of the mess.

[Galapagos]

Originally Posted by Galapagos

YouTube - Reading, wRiting, aRithmetic, Religion (Daniel Dennett)
YouTube - Daniel Dennett: Freedom of information and toxic religions

Question- does anyone foresee any solid constitutional or legal opposition to this proposal? Does this violate church/state rulings? I'd guess it wouldn't because it isn't paying particular respect to any one creed, but could someone argue based on separation of church/state?

[Southtown]

Originally Posted by Galapagos

If you're asking me to prove that Hell doesn't exist, or the inefficacy of Baptism, I believe the burden of proof lies on the adherents of these beliefs.

No. You made the statements. Adherents are yours to provide.

Edit. I should clarify. As a bible thumper, I believe adherents to the hell theory and especially the "sprinkle" theory are biblically adjunct. So comments made to them should not be directed toward bible thumpers.

[Galapagos]

Originally Posted by Southtown

No. You made the statements. Adherents are yours to provide.

Edit. I should clarify. As a bible thumper, I believe adherents to the hell theory and especially the "sprinkle" theory are biblically adjunct. So comments made to them should not be directed toward bible thumpers.

I'm still not following you. Are you asking me to provide evidence that people believe in Hell?
What do you mean by "bible thumper"?
I don't really understand anything in your post, what point are you trying to get across specifically?

[Southtown]

Originally Posted by InfiniteNow

Southtown,

Seriously? Which part? That's a rather... interesting... request considering the nature of the comment. Clarify?

Nice to meet you. I'm a boob.

Originally Posted by Galapagos

I'm still not following you. Are you asking me to provide evidence that people believe in Hell?
What do you mean by "bible thumper"?
I don't really understand anything in your post, what point are you trying to get across specifically?

Sorry. I'm stupid. I thought you were saying that "sprinkling" and "hell" were in the book. But re-reading, the "Abraham" and "Hell" sentences were merely adjacent. Feel free to laugh at me like Inow. He knows me pretty well.

[HydrogenBond]

If you look at religious morality, apart from the mythical symbolism of God and the Devil, etc., the purpose of morality was to develop will power. Although repression of instincts is not healthy, this is tougher to do and takes more will power than just following the impulses.

For example, gluttony was a sin. If a person had the propensity to overeat and get overweight, they had to use will power to fight this sin. Once you take away this sin, life does not require the same level of will power. Now the same person can follow their impulses to overeat. Because they don't have to practice the same level of will power, they can get stuck in the eating loop, until culture gives them a drug to compensate. Since these drugs don't always work, we may need to set up social awareness, maybe using the fear of health problems, social stigmatism or the fear of rising medical costs, etc., as a way to help them regain some will power. The sin worked the same way, only it was a way to give the person inner strength apart from the need of the group hug.

Back in the old days, if a person was impulsive, one was not given the option of blaming this on a chemical imbalance. The chemical imbalance would have been called an evil spirit. They had to achieve the same final healing affect, as a modern drug treatment, using will power. If you were an alien, and you saw one person using their mind and other relying on some chemical, which would appear to be using more brain power?

[Southtown]

Yah overeating ≠ immoral... Hebraically, at least. I dunno which Levitical stipulations you're referring to.