I love religion!

[Zagreus]

I'm sure I made it quite clear that it was fundamentalists that I was referring to.

Yes, and in my opening post I said:

by this I don't mean the herd mentality of simple dogmatic religion

I also said:

(I) think that many (maybe most) atheists don't know what they are talking about when criticising the ideas.

You basically immediately said ‘religious ideas = fundamentalism, which are dumb and I laugh at it.’ Which is exactly what I was saying I have seen many atheists do, and what I wanted to avoid in this discussion; hence my comment ‘by this I don't mean the herd mentality of simple dogmatic religion.’

And how would you express these ideas to make them sound rational???

Each ejaculation as a result of masturbation ends a potential 1,000,000 lives. All life is precious and should be valued, hence why abortion is a controversial issue. Deliberate masturbation, as opposed to a wet dream which cannot be helped, is denying those potential lives of a chance to live. When does life begin? When does a cell turn into a human, and when does it have the right to life? Would you kill a 6 month old foetus?

Look, I’m not interested in debating the ideas of fundamentalists. They are wrong, we are both agreed on this, but I have the manners to listen to another human and not presume they are an idiot because they hold views that are not based on exact science. Simplifying religious ideas to ‘you can’t have a wank ‘cos you go to hell’ is just childish.

You seem to hold the position that religion is separate from people,

in this you are mistaken, religion IS people,

First thing you’ve said that is interesting. You’re also wrong. Religion is an idea, a set of beliefs, a philosophy; it is not a thing that can do wrong in itself. People do bad things because they choose to do so – if they justify this due to religion, or their upbringing (religious or not), or anything else, it is them that is to blame, not the idea. Again, natural selection, via eugenics, did not cause the holocaust, regardless of whether someone claimed this to justify it.

and people will use the name of God to

excuse every evil under the sun.

Cos everything is justifiable when done in the name of God.

No, humans will use any excuse they can to excuse their behaviour if they know it’s wrong, but they still do it.

Your stereotyping of religious people is sadly (and ironically) supporting my stereotype of ill informed atheists.