So, if I were to

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- Go around hospitals telling people "You've lived long enough in a delusion, why not die as a rational person".

- Create a massive riot and incite murder every time someone insulted evolution, science, literacy or Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Spinoza, Dawkins, Adam Smith, Keynes, Rawls, Hitchens, or many of the other people who have written amazing works.

- Gather a bunch of people who think exactly like me once a week in a communal building where we'd indoctrinate our children.

- Require the women to wear nothing but Victoria's secret.

- Tell other people's children that if they don't agree with us, they should be killed/will suffer for eternity.

- Demand that all forms of expression we do not agree with be silenced or "bad things will happen"

How would religious people react?

They would see it as a money maker and create a religion loosely based around "science"... Oh, wait, Hubbard beat me to it.

Hmmm. Maybe we should create a true scientific religion rather than one based on pseudo-science and gather together in prayer of Richard Dawkins?

I know a depressing amount of "non-religious" people who think exactly like this in Britain.

Dumb question maybe; Is this about your next president?

Although I claim to possess no mind-reading abilities, I suspect Richard Dawkins would consider that the *ultimate* insult against everything he stands for . It's like proclaiming that Nietzsche is God.

Besides, Dawkins is clearly a FALSE god, a USURPER, a spawn of SATAN, the ANTICHRIST himself (note how my arguments magically become more valid when presented in ALL-CAPS), and his shrines (= universities) should be demolished, his followers should be forced to jump to their deaths from 21st floor windows, and his writings should be put on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum.

Instead, ye must be born again and embrace the divine wisdom of the duality of William Hamilton and Robert Trivers!

Not vile polytheism, of course. If Christianity can get away with claiming that 3=1, then I can surely get away with claiming that 2=1.

And you will heed my message or "bad things will happen". Thus spoke the LORD through his FINAL Prophet (Awesome Be Upon Him), the reverend Jackson.

No, *not* this guy:



*This* guy.



"AND YOU WILL KNOW I AM THE LORD WHEN I LAY MY VENGEANCE UPON YOU" (which is what I always want to say when someone is cutting in line.)

1) Probably nothing, except of course anyone who you insult by calling them delusional. Many of them will have highly rational beliefs.

2) They'd be annoyed you were committing these atrocities, but wouldn't tar every atheist because of it.

3) Nothing, except maybe point out the hypocrisy.

4) Complain that that is degrading and treats women as objects.

5) See 2)

6) See 2)

No. (I love one-liners).

As opposed to dressing them in tents and thus removing all their individuality, which funnily enough literally makes them into objects. As for 3, 5 and 6, I suspect that the reactions would be slightly more grave if someone who wasn't protected by the shield of "it's my religion" did it.

Number 3, I'd probably be a "anti-religious cult", number 5 and 6, would most likely include some attempt at hate speech complaints.

Why not?

Mainly because faith is belief without evidence, and rationality is extrapolating data from evidence. They're sort of mutually exclusive. If God were to announce His presence in a great booming psychic voice, believing in Him wouldn't be faith any more, because He'd be pretty well and truly proven - but in the absence of such evidence, it's faith and not rationality.

In this example you would have to have faith that that voice/entity was God and not a demon, psychic alien, or Cthulhuesque abomination setting everyone up to be soul-raped.

Nobody has faith in something without feeling they have a reason to.

Do you believe in the purple cheese wombat? Of course not. You have no reason to. But if you one day saw some cheese-slathered wombat tracks in the forest, and a glint of purple fur in the corner of your eye, even though you could not scientifically prove the existence of the purple cheese wombat, you would probably be more open to the idea that it may exist.

But that statement ignores first the dividing line between open-mindedness and certainty ("There could be a cheese wombat" vs. "there is a cheese wombat") and what qualifies as a 'reason'. Some people, for example, believe in the Bible because the Bible says it's true. That's not evidence, that's tautology.

You could look at it that way, or you could say that people believe in God because of the Bible. The Bible is their evidence. What makes them believe the Bible is credible? I imagine that varies from person to person.

Just to check - there's not actually a Purple Cheese Wombat, is there?

It doesn't matter what makes them believe the Bible is credible, it still isn't. It's one of those things that pisses me off with this world "I believe", "I feel like", "It's my opinion" prefacing absurd things with the 3 things I just mentioned does not change the fact that you can be objectively proven wrong.

I mean, first off you cannot really establish any facts about who wrote it, therefore you cannot know anything of their integrity, intelligence or sanity. The door to one of the bathroom stalls down at my local pub says "Mary is an easy lay" and is signed by "Dave" there are multiple potential scenarios here:

A: Mary is an easy lay.
B: Dave is pissed at Mary.
C: Dave is schizophrenic and there is no Mary.
D: Dave has a split personality or is a transsexual and is actually Mary.
E: Mary wrote it because she wants to get attention.

But, until I know who "Dave" is and ideally who Mary is, I can't lend much credence to what is written on the bathroom stall.

Secondly, you need to know what kind of source material they were working with, were the events described actually seen by the people who wrote about them, or is this an example of a story being written down after years of being transmitted orally? Because if "Jesus rose from the dead" is actually "Jesus rose from the bed" it suddenly sounds a lot more plausible to me.

I guess I can paraphrase what I say to people about their sex lives, "I don't judge your morals by who and how many people you've slept with, but I will judge your judgement" same with the Bible, if you believe its a credible account, I will judge your judgment.