"Willhelm. As for your first paragraph. Answers to a thread don't always have to be exactly within it's scope. An answer that is still relevent doesn't necessarily explicitly answer the original question."

you don't have to convince me. i'm with you 100% here. i just find it entertaining that when i have acted similarly - advocating against pornography - the administrators of the site have responded to you & i in different ways with this. because of teh subject matter, in my opinion.

neither here nor there - just funny.

I don't in any way hide from reality, in fact I believe that people who don't question themselves and their worlds by blindly believing what they were told when they were dragged to church as a child are the ones in a small box...

if you're wrong about the existence of God, then you are hiding from reality.

i agree with you again here - your assumption is that people who believe this do so blindly without questioning. why?

"You say it is strength that people believe they will live for eternity and meet their dead loved ones when they pass on? I believe it's making up anything to look away from the stark reality that confronts you."

not what i said. i said it takes strength to confront something discomforting & accept it. agnostics typically confront these issues & cannot accept them, so they create their own system of belief - equally far-fetched scientifically than any religious tradion could hope to be.

"It is folly, in my opinion, to fill in the gaps in your knowledge with superstition."

i'm with you again. you're saying that religious traditions/beliefs are superstitious - that is, imaginary. i won't argue that - not yet anyway.

but can we expand your statement to say it's folly to fill in the gaps in our knowledge with anything other than the appropriate knowledge?

like i said, those questions do have answers.