That's Okay Dream we can't agree on everything. :)

How would you stop families from raising children as they see fit? Children generally reflect their parents behaviours and beliefs in any case even if implied rather than implicit.

I trust that most children will make up there own minds when entering into adulthood and throughout life, with the benefit of maturity and the onset of self-awareness.

Interference from the State is not a reasonable alternative. Much better to let parents make the decisions, they have one advantage - the bond of love (granted not always evident in all cases).

There are laws to prevent child abuse or forced marriages or circumcision within that framework. And a child raised in a non-theist family is no guarantee of preventing homophobia. There is also no guarantee of preventing child abuse by banning religious teachings. Crimes of child abuse and/or neglect is more influenced by disadvantage and by 'evil' (to use a religious term) than the belief system in which a child is raised IMO. As history has shown, pedophiles can come from a broad spectrum of society and cuts across all beliefs, classes, education and wealth

Pericles writes:
<< It would help is you could describe a consciousness that is not spatio-temporal, in terms other than that it is merely "not spatio-temporal". >>

One example is a non-sensory mode of perception that attends to symbols rather than facts. Thus, the “tree” that I see from my study window and the “birds” that breed in it annually may together be an illustration of how a single human life lived boldly and adhering to a firm point of view can nevertheless bend to endure the winds of change for centuries and become a prolific cultural home and reference point to untold generations.

The empirical observer may perceive a sample of the species Eucalyptus marginata in which another species, Barnardius zonarius, finds convenient nesting-hollows each year.

<< Also, on what is a judgment that is not based on logic, based? >>

It could be based on values. It might use categories like “good” and “bad”. How about aesthetic judgements, based on how “beautiful” something is—a poem, a musical work, the way someone walks?

<< Life has no "meaning", except that which we, individually, choose to give it. >>

If this refers to “life” as an object I think I would agree that it has no meaning in and of itself. But “life” as experience, both recollected and ongoing, is where we can and do seek meaning. And yes, I agree that each individual finds his or her own meaning, although I think relationships in one form or another are essential to the process.

<< Introducing subjective reality doesn't help much either…It's a bit of a cop-out, really, just another way of saying "I don't understand the 'why' of our existence, so I'll describe it in a clever way that cannot be disproven". >>

By “subjective reality” I mean a person’s experiential life. The thoughts and tunes I hear in my head, the feelings I have, my fantasies and dreams— all these really occur. We need to admit that it is so if we are going to find a more valid framework for studying human consciousness.

davidf

'Atheists may have strong beliefs in what is right and what is wrong. '
You could of fooled me and many others. Stalin and Hitler also had strong beliefs in what is right and wrong. Social Darwisn certainly shaped their thinking a lot more than Christ.

spindoc,
>>The more complex your answers, the less believable you are. That my fine feathered friend is the point you are missing. <<
One can read something like this often on this OLO, at least that is my impression. So I am just curious: is this what you suggest one should also tell “fine feathered friends” like Steven Hawking, Lawrence Krauss, Steve Weinberg, Brian Greene, Michio Kaku and others who try to explain to the man or woman, with a limited understanding of contemporary mathematics, what is the present state of our understanding of the cosmos and physical reality?

Simple answers to complex questions are usually peddled by zealots, fundamentalists or fanatics of whatever political or world-view “colour”. If, in spite of everything, there is a credible and simple answer to such a question - there seldom is - it usually takes a genius to find it. Of course, poets and mystics might have a direct feel of life’s complex questions, but that is on a different level; not susceptible of rational analysis.

Dear runner,

Hitler was a devout Christian, was not excommunicated and signed a concordat with the Catholic Church. With few exceptions the Christian churches in Germany supported Hitler and the Nazis.

The words of Christ have promoted hatred.

http://johnshelbyspong.com/sample-essays/the-terrible-texts/

“No one comes to the Father but by me” (John 14:6)

“This text has helped to create a world where adherents of one religion feel compelled to kill adherents of another. A veritable renaissance of religious terror now confronts us and is making against us the claims we have long made against religious traditions different from our own.”

http://www.evilbible.com/hitler_was_christian.htm

Hitler's disdain for atheism, pagan cults and the strength of his Christian feelings:

“National Socialism is not a cult-movement-- a movement for worship; it is exclusively a ‘volkic’ political doctrine based upon racial principles. In its purpose there is no mystic cult, only the care and leadership of a people defined by a common blood-relationship... We will not allow mystically- minded occult folk with a passion for exploring the secrets of the world beyond to steal into our Movement. Such folk are not National Socialists, but something else-- in any case something which has nothing to do with us. At the head of our programme there stand no secret surmisings but clear-cut perception and straightforward profession of belief. But since we set as the central point of this perception and of this profession of belief the maintenance and hence the security for the future of a being formed by God, we thus serve the maintenance of a divine work and fulfill a divine will-- not in the secret twilight of a new house of worship, but openly before the face of the Lord… Our worship is exclusively the cultivation of the natural, and for that reason, because natural, therefore God-willed. Our humility is the unconditional submission before the divine laws of existence so far as they are known to us men.” -Adolf Hitler, in Nuremberg on 6 Sept.1938. [Christians have always accused Hitler of believing in pagan cult mythology. What is written here clearly expresses Hitler's stand against pagan cults.]

Stalin was, personally, a devout Christian, too. He probably did suppress his seminary-training when he entered communist politics, but he did later have a revelation that encouraged his to open churches and theology colleges in WW2, particularly in St Petersburg and, according to is daughter who died in the last year or so in the USA, he remained personally religious for the rest of his life.

There are indications that is the reason he fell out with his fellow communist laaders.