The thing with religion is you are never going to be able to debate it. You have believers on one hand and non-believers on the other.
If anyone cares what I believe.. I am a die hard atheist. I wasn't always but after investigating over my lifetime I came to understand that we are alone without any deities and that is in fact a very liberalizing thing!
Once I realized that this life was it.. I really took it seriously and began to do as much as I could to enjoy this my one and only life. I would (and do) ask everyone religious or not to just think for a little while and imagine that when you die, there is nothing and then reflect on what would you like to do with this drop of sand called human life!
Other than a form of control, belief in deities and religion only serve one purpose and that is to control vast populations of people.
When we grew up we stopped believing in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy; somewhere along the way we forgot to also stop believing in gods.
I can only think of one magic "tree" and that is the reason why I am on these forums in the first place
As an aside, I did a TON of research on paranormal activity long before ghost hunters and the like came along. Along with the scientific community I came to the conclusion that there is really no proof of an afterlife whatsoever even as regards "ghosts" and other non-religious *cough* beliefs. I'm talking about the kind of extensive research when you know what infrasound is and that there are NO people in the world with true psychic abilities whatsoever. This might explain why almost all universities have long since closed their paranormal psychology departments (liverpool hope university being one of the very few exceptions (for obvious reasons - most haunted)) and instead concentrate research on infrasound, matrixing etc. (google if you are interested
).
The U.S. and other governments spent a lot of time and money on this stuff as late as the 60's and 70's (google remote viewing (CIA) amongst other things) and I am quite sure that any government worth their salt who had found even the slightest hint of anything related to the paranormal would have tried somehow to harness it for their own evil ways and we all know how well they can keep secrets
poopmaster: awesome picture I am gonna swipe it and share it with my friends
Not up for a debate, just sharing my thoughts for what they are worth.