Are Atheists Mentally Ill

There's the question of what is the purpose of this collection of self-replicating organic material, and then there's the question of what is the purpose of your existence as an individual. He asked the latter and you answered the former.

Not at all. Plenty of people's lives have had a purpose that had nothing to do with just reproducing. Our lives can, in fact, have a purpose.

And you simply believe that they don't, which is equally irrelevant. But what I said was that they do actually have a real purpose, not just that they believe that they do. A king has a son so as to have an heir; one purpose of that life is to be the next king.We can also make our own purposes in life.

That's not what I've been talking about, nor is it what I think Jon was asking about. I'm talking about the individual level, and how we can have all sorts of different purposes for our lives. Jon's calling them all the pursuit of happiness, in the there's-no-unselfish-acts sort of way.Edited by Catholic Scientist, : No reason given.

I don't believe that's true, in that accepting life has no Purpose isn't a requirement. Can you make it's case with an argument?

Oh. Was I wrong to read "Once X then Y" as saying that X is required for Y? Cause that's what I think that means.

Sure, but its saying to me that if you hadn't turned left on D street, then you wouldn't have found yourself at your house. You might be able to get to your house through another route, but the statement is implying that you're on the one that requires a left turn on D street.

As you approach the more conservative religions, you approach lower incomes and education.

Sure it does. Look at the religions that we know are the most conservative; They fall on the bottom left side of the graph. It doesn't need to. We already know which ones are the conservative ones.

Well there you go, that's the point. It obviously doesn't work across the board. But if you look at the most conservative religions, they do have the lowest education and income.

At all? The Baptists, Pentecostals and Jehovah's Witnesses are the most conservative Christians I can think of, and look how uneducated and poor they are!

Well whoopty-fucking-do. Perhaps we're just not actually "modeling" what you think we are. Its a simple point, really: the more conservative ones are less educated and poorer. You can see that in the graph with a glance.Like I said, the most conservative groups I'm familiar with are on the bottom left. Its a no-brainer.You're just taking us at a lot more than what we're saying. I don't have any kind of "model" that I'm fitting data to. Again, its just a simple point.

The point of contention that I have with that, is that the private Catholic grade and high schools that I went to were waaay better than the public alternative. Of course, there was a shit-pile of money pumped into them (in addition the taxes my parents also paid for the public schools, but that's another topic about how that was unfair to them), but that was part of the solution. We's got monies and it works Well, I don't like that word "insane", but I do think there's an irrational element to just "write it all off". Sometimes we need a good nudging, but I don't think us Catholics are one for ignoring reality.