Yes, I'm doing all well for myself.

Things change as you grow up and while I still really enjoy the atheism discussion it hasn't been as prevalent in internet culture as it was during the glory days of the late 00's. It appears to have been largely replaced by sociopolitical issues which aren't nearly as fun. All the same, I have a lot of great memories here and a large part of my intellectual development took place in bouncing around ideas with the fine members of this forum. I hope you are all alive and well.

If I find that a religious person has their religion as the supreme epistemic criterion for what is true then I might ask them how they came to believe in their religion. If I'm lucky they will answer that they used reason and logic to decide that their religion was certainly true in which case that same reason and logic could be used to uninstall God, the Bible, dianetics or whatever from their epistemology.

If I'm unlucky they would answer that they take their religion on faith or that they just feel that a certain God exists. If they go down this route then you would have to show how anything can be taken on faith or felt to be true ergo it's not a very good way to discover a singular truth. This kind of argument rests on reason and logic though and so if they really don't use that at all in their epistemology then there's nothing more to talk about.

Hey guys, I've just come back quickly to hand the reigns over to your new leader RationalAtheist. He seems to be very active here and making lots of new topics. I can't say the same of myself that's for sure. I'm still in Korea at this point and my interests have meandered away from discussing theism online. Don't worry, I'm still an atheist and still interested the grand debate, I just won't be posting here all that much let alone leading the place.

If you guys have any questions / requests I'll check back on this topic to respond to them.

Hmm, very interesting read SaudiFury. I don't know Islam all that well but you've presented a different take on it that's a step up from the usual monotheistic version of it that I usually hear.

I always end up on the same question when it comes to these sort of beliefs though (pantheistic, panentheistic, new age vaguery etc). What distinguishes your panentheistic universe from my atheistic universe? What special feature is there that we can point to in order to tell the difference between a universe with a God and a universe without one?

[QUOTE="ghoklebutter"]

Is morality objective?

Position: Yes

Frattracide

I will will take you up on that one if you so desire.

I'll moderate that one if you'd both like.

Hmm, who did we lose? I don't really remember who was an officer and who wasn't here. Maybe foxhound.

I don't mind promoting a new officer but there isn't too much to officiate here. Anyone who wants to recommend themselves is more than welcome to.

G_C you make the whole sex and marriage thing really, really difficult on yourself.

You find yourself sexually drawn to women? Good, go and a find a woman that's sexually drawn to you and have fun. Don't want kids? Buy a few packs of condoms. Want a partner that you can trust? Then take your time in exploring your significant other and build up a bond. Sex can help with that. Make her so happy and be such a good partner that she wouldn't even think of leaving you.

Marriage is about love and commitment to another person. Sex is related to those things as well but not so much that you have to confine it entirely within marriage. Doing so does yourself a disservice.

Think of a person who just stays inside all day. They're not actually agoraphobic (or are they?) but they just wont venture outside because maybe they'll get struck by lightning or maybe they'll bump into an unpleasant fellow and because so many nasty things happen to people who go outdoors. You'd want to slap them silly and boot them outside for being so neurotic.

You're a bit like this person and you seem as if you need a little slapping to clear your perspective on things. foxhound-fox was a little bit neurotic about sex as well as I recall. He's over that now and got himself what sounds like a lovely partner. I betcha he wished that he had of gotten a slapping a long time ago.

Anyway, on to your question. I'm not married but probably will be in the future. I don't particularly want to have children at the moment but I probably will end up having some. Pre-marital sex and cohabitation before marriage is fine but you gotta be sensible about it. My best advice is that people just take their time feeling out their partner. Don't rush into sex, cohabitation, marriage or childbearing. Maybe start with kissing before sex. Try going on a holiday together before you go for full out co-habitation. Spend some time getting to love each other deeply before you get married. How about you try and look after a dog before you decide that you're good enough to raise a child?

My own situation is that I have a lovely Korean girlfriend who I profess to love. She's a Christian (not a very good one mind you) and while we don't co-habitate per-se, 90% of the time my night is spent with her besides me. Marriage and children are a possibility but at the moment we're unprepared to commit to any of that. Regardless we love each other and have a great relationship, part of which is due to sex. We've traveled together, adventured together, shared ourselves and are inordinately happy about it.

Now you say that you couldn't bring yourself to be in such a situation. I want you to consider the reasons why next to my real scenario and the scenario of the man who wont go outdoors. Does your reasoning stand up?

Righto that's almost it. I just wanted to add one further comment on the trend of theists having more marriages and children than atheists. I see a somewhat insidious trend of Christians (I'm focussing on Christians here but the same probably goes for many religions) breeding more as a means of strengthening their religion. Much like species survive by producing as many fit offspring as possible, religions survive by producing as many believers as possible and there's no better way to produce a believer than by indoctrinating them from birth. Basically Christianity drives Christians to have Christian children (lots of them) and this is a way to propegate the faith. It's the great commission performed with the methods of a farmer.

Not a wonder that theists outbreed atheists.

Aquinas would have been abhorred to see people thinking God is a literally extant being, and the Bible was his literal law written on paper.foxhound_fox

Oh c'mon now. I'm open to the idea that religious interpretation was done way differently back in the day and that we're looking at history with modern biases. This claim is just way too much though. What about the five ways? What about the divine law? Aquinas spends a lot of time in his work establishing the opposite of what you just said.

Either we're misunderstanding each other or one of us is super-duper wrong. If it's the latter then we really ought to set up a debate topic over the question "Does Thomas Aquinas claim that God is a literally extant being whose law is revealed in the Bible?"