Fine. We'll do it your way, and it'll take forever... ;-)

1. "It's not the conclusion that matters. It's what led you to it--the thought process. That is what is important because without reason, humans are doomed. We are what we are because we depend on reason--not fur, not big fangs, no razor-sharp claws, not the ability to run at 50 mph. We're cold so we make a fire. We're hot so we make an AC. We're far away so we make an automobile or a jet plane. If we don't want to go there but just speak to someone there, we make a telephone. Without reason, we are lost.

I agree 100%.

"God is not going to help us."

No...not in the way you mean. Not unless we help ourselves. People who believe in God as I understand the concept "God" figure that they are being helped at all times, but that would take a long time to explain. You seem to think of God as a separate BIG being of some kind that intervenes in human affairs. I Don't. I think of God as a natural, intelligent, coherent process that is involved with everything at all times, right down to the molecular level. Not just with people, with everything, animate and inanimate.

"What gets us through the day is the use of reason. Like anything else, to be good at it you must exercise it. That's what philosophy is for. It is a vitally important exercise that religion does its best to kill."

True of fundamentalist religion. Utterly untrue of many other far more intelligent forms of religion which encourage reasoning. Have you ever read any books by Sri Aurobindo? He was a brilliant intellectual. Try reading them and see.


"That's why the vast majority of Americans are intellectually morbidly obese. A big fat mind bloated and utterly dependent on pop and trash culture until the mind can no longer move."

I agree 100%. (And I'm not fat and bloated, unlike a majority of North Americans my age these days.) It's not because of their religion, though, that they became that way, it's because of the consumer culture they grew up in and television, primarily. Americans are the victims of marketing, mass media, and pop culture.

Okay? See how long it will take for me to cut and paste and answer to all your points? Forever? Probably. That, after all, was only your first paragraph. Would you consider paying me a salary if I plow through the rest? ;-) I do have the odd other thing I have to do now and then...

See you in a bit...