[Didymos Thomas]

If you want me to concede that the Bible, Talmud, Koran, ect consider deep and meaningful ethical/moral issues and communicate these in a compelling way - fine, i have no problem with that, but where there is a requirement of faith in something that cannot be known, this cannot be purely figurative, and is not presented as such.

And some traditions do demand faith in the unknown. But again, not all do. With respect to God, I would argue that the subject is usually presented in a figurative way, using metaphor and allegorical stories, to explain the concept of God. This is true of the three major western monotheisms, anyway.

So here's the problem. If God, a supernatural entity, actually exists then the cause and effect relations that seem to bind reality together, and render it knowable, within reason, but without absolute certainty, are nullified.

Again, this all depends on our conception of God. As a supernatural entity which we believe literally exists (if we take scripture literally, and therefore miss the point of scripture), then yes, God is a rather silly notion. However, notions of God are not limited to literal interpretations of scripture, therefore not all notions of God suffer from this intellectual flaw.

If you want direct evidence against a thing that doesn't exist, anything, then you're asking me to engage in a task greater than showing all religious notions to be false. Assert the existence of a 10ft chocolate statue of Ghanid's grandad - and challenge me to disprove it. I can't. The same with God's, ghosts and goblins. What i can do is try and understand the origin and nature of these ideas and compare them to what i can reasonably, but not certainly know.

Right, so we try to understand the nature and origin of these ideas. And when we understand that God does not have a universal nature, that the notions of God are far too vast and diverse for such simplification, then we realize that we cannot throw such broad blanket criticisms against God at large and then expect our blanket criticisms to hold. To some notions, these criticisms will be difficult to overcome, but to other notions, the criticisms do not apply.

No, we couldn't absolutely know, but that hardly gives licence to claim validity, figurative or literal, for unfounded assertions that have such massive implications for who we are and what our purposes should be in the world - particularly in face of reasonable knowledge that has been hard won, and offers such potential benefits.

Nope, no liscence to cast out what we seem to know - I agree. However, your initial claim that the notion of God causes this problem (that everything might be just ten seconds old, and our memories might deceive us) is wildly off base as the problem exists God or not.

And that's the thing - while some notions of God force us to throw out what we know, for example, scientific knowledge, not all notions of God share this terrible quality.

Religious ideas holding fast to a skeptical defence are offensive - an insult to man's greatest achievement and to the very essence of man - the learning animal. We need to embrace the spirit of knowledge and religion kills it stone dead with cliams to secular, relativist and skeptical protections for notions that are fantastical, supernatural and unreasonable.

I'm sorry, was this another blanket criticism of religion when there is no way you could even begin to support the criticism? Once again, religions are vast and varied. Fantastical? some, but not all, then again, so are some scientific claims. Supernatural? Some, but not all. Unreasonable? This is just an expression of your bias.

I do not think people have a right to believe whatever they like. They have a duty to truth - a duty religion absolves them of as they pursue the agendas of thier little circles of the faithful.

Again, this is just an expression of your bias - and far from any sort of evidence to support your claims, much less a response to my arguments (yeah, argumenets).

I've tried to be as forthcoming as possible - though admittedly, in my own terms. I am hearing you, i just don't agree with your analysis, or the terms in which it is made. If you wish to make this point again, please do so, but indicate which arguments you think i have not addressed.

Well, I've argued that religion and God notions are too diverse to be addressed by blanket criticisms. For example, you criticize God as being a supernatural notion, but not all notions of God rely on supernatural claims.

Here are a few in case you missed them the first time:

It's not a matter of logical necessity, it's a matter of logical possibility. If it is possible to conceive of a God which does not suffer from the flaws you mention (taking God and God language to be figurative instead of literal), then your criticisms cannot be universally applied to all notions of God.

First, you are mixing up culture with religion.
Second, you still suffer from the same flawed argument I outlined in my last post.
When you say 'But should someone come along who doesn't share those beliefs, they are ostrasized and demonized - perhaps ritually murdered as a heritic, or an infidel.'
You definitely identify something terrible that has happened before. The problem is that this does not necessarily occur - the religious are not necessarily xenophobic.

And no matter how many examples you give of xenophobia among the religious, you will never establish that all religious people are xenophobic. Why? Because clearly some are not.

Again, you are right to criticize misguided religious ideas, but the jump from some religious notions are misguided to all religious notions are misguided, something you have not been able to establish at all, is the irrational leap.

So, if you want to talk about primitive, racist, irrational and false ideas, before you cast that first stone, look at yourself. You draw hasty generalizations (illogical, false ideas) to demonize every culture on the planet (primitive, racist). I'm not saying you are illogical and racist, but the mistakes in your words here are mistakes of logic which result in racism.

That's why we need a degree of sensitivity for the variety of religious notions. So that we do not unjustly demonize nearly all of the species for no good reason.