Please correct me where I am wrong

[Simon Moon]

If someone points out that I have a belief based on faith, not evidence, you know what I will do? I will stop believing it. That is what rational, critical thinkers do.

Here is a an interesting point though, if you believe that you're a rational critical thinker then you can rationalize why you're not guilty of a fallacy or cognitive dissonance, etc. 

Because logic is a formal system for evaluating the validity of an argument. 

There is no guesswork. If there is a fallacy, it can be demonstrated without too much ambiguity. If someone points out a fallacy in my thinking, I will happily accept the critique, and modify or drop the argument. And I have done it many times in my life.

I care more about having more true beliefs, and as few false beliefs as possible, than being right in an argument. I thank people that correct me, and integrate the new info into my thinking.

And I am not saying that you do this and attacking you at all personally. I just think that absolute statements on unknown/unknowable things seem to be irrational in the first place. And we would all agree with it but when you start adding ad hominem attacks, straw men, red herrings, or just being ignorant to what someone really believes then you're just bringing down the dialogue and encouraging cognitive dissonance on the other end. I think that even when we don't know the name of a specific fallacy, we still can sense when someone says something that kind of makes sense but something is missing. WLC, who i know is beloved in this community, often points out in debates that his counterpart avoids answering to certain refutations and points that he has made. And I personally don't believe that is to be minimized. I just find it humorous that a lot of the comments in this thread have gone straight to ad hominem attacks on christians and theists.

Please point out any fallacy you see me making in these forums. I will go out of my way of acknowledging it, and drop the argument.

As far as WLC goes, he tends to get a lot of criticism in atheist forums because he is intellectually dishonest. 

His arguments, that contain physics in particular, have been demonstrated to be false many times, yet he continues to use them. 

One of the best example is on his debate with Sean Carroll (Ph.d in physics, research professor at Cal Tech). where WLC attempts to support one of his arguments by quoting physicist Alan Guth, and in Carroll's response, he shows a video of Guth saying that WLC is wrong about his  (Guth's) position. The debate is on youtube. 

WLC does not apologize for misrepresenting Guth, and he still uses the same argument in his debates. If that is not being dishonest, what is it?

[Aractus]

I started surfing on this website to help me try and come to a logical well reasoned conclusion to what I truly believe. I don't believe that this will be either an easy, or a short process. However, one thing that has been frustrating is that it seems like some on this forum don't believe that they're positions could be muddled by cognitive dissonance, confirmation bias, and logical fallacies. The most common fallacies that I have noticed, is the red herring and the straw man. Or even posters that are completely ignorant of what I believe/believed as a JW and asserting conclusions based off their ignorance. So I ask, are atheist immune to common human fallacies and emotional roadblocks? Or is religion and god the one main cause of such things? Because from what I am concluding, belief in god and the supernatural seems to be a byproduct of human emotions not the cause

As I've mentioned 1,000 times over, belief and participation in a religion does far more good in a person's life than harm; generally speaking. There are exceptions, for instance if you're a Scientologist and you stop taking your schizophrenia medication because you "don't believe in psychiatry". On average though you will live longer, be healthier and happier if you are participating in a religion. It's just one of those things - it holds true. Just like say the health effect of the "Social Gradient" holds true even when the "poor" in one country are financially/materially "wealthy" when compared to another. So when you take that into account along with the general principles of evolution and other scientific patterns (not chaos I think we're beyond chaos theory); which describe a system - say society - that is geared towards continual improvements over the long term. So you could make predictions today based on this - and people have. People have predicted for instance when they think more than 50% of the world's countries will have legalised same-sex marriage and those predictions if I'm not mistaken go all the way back to the 1980's. So as I mentioned when you take that into account, and you realise that overall religion has a health benefit for its participants then you would expect it to grow organically just because of that one reason.

The atheist problem is that we're right, but, it's not necessarily what's best for us.

PS: do excuse me for checking whether it's possible to give myself Kudos or not.

[The Grand Nudger]

Every time you make this claim someone reminds you that the relative situation between atheists and theists often has to do with the shitty situations theists have created for those not part of their group.  It completely undermines this "religion is good for you" business from the very outset....and yet you persist.

"If you join his club, the bad man will stop hitting you...and because he has stopped hitting you, you will be better off.................."

I will grant that you are absolutely, factually, correct.  Being part of the group administering the dickings has benefits, I understand that, as an American...  

[Aractus]

Well it also has benefits here in Australia where we are one of the most multicultural and accepting of other's beliefs anywhere - certainly much more so than mother England. Here's a peer-reviewed Journal article with plenty of references to relevant studies done: . It's up to you to come up with evidence for your hypothesis.

[The Grand Nudger]

Yes, we've seen your link, we've discussed it before.   

[Aractus]

Good. It's now in my sig. When you have evidence for your interesting point of view do remember to tell us. I put it to you that there are two effects and not one effect; social isolation is an effect all of its own and even in the absence of the effect the religious health benefits are apparent.