Tim, you seem to have missed my other posts: for several posts, I referred to phenomena of telepathy or disembodied consciousness as apparently taking place in Mohammed's annunciation (if you prefer), Mary's annunciation in Christianity, and Moses' hearing of the voice of God at the burning bush. These posts thus addressed the three main Abrahamic religions, with their two billion adherents. I settled on the Islamic example as just one handy shorthand for it all, to reduce the original sample further, because I figured people had gotten the point.

I chose the Abrahamic religions because for the sake of my argument, taking in two billion Muslims, Christians, and Jews was enough to make the point that although the minority of atheists in the world don't like it, their lives are being affected by people's belief in such mystical communion. This is particularly so in the case of denying funding for medical research such as stem-cell research; fiddling with textbooks so as not to offend the religious; and other cases of meddling in science. However, I might also have added that such disruptive and destructive effects of religion are not limited at all to science. Though I do believe in positive effects accruing from prayer, I certainly don't want to believe something delusional. Why not enlist our scientists to prove or disprove it?

It still seems to me that

1) atheists are being meddled with, often in destructive ways, because of religion;

2) that it's ridiculous to assume that this meddling will spontaneously stop happening without scientific refutation, or that such refutation won't help to stop it;

3) that at least the three main Abrahamic religions, Chinese ancestor worship, and some of the other examples you give rely upon disembodied consciousness or telepathy in order to exist;

4) that a disproof of such disembodied conscious or telepathy would debunk these as false religions; and

5) that although the religious are as responsible to prove their position as the atheistic scientist is to prove his or her position that God does not exist (unless they make no such claim), they are as yet unlikely to try to do so, and the frustrations that the atheists experience make it incumbent upon them to mount that disproof, for the sake of their fellows in stem cell research, etc.

It's also odd to me that, considering there has been some scientific research into telepathy already, unrelated to questions of religion, atheists should jump out of their skin in their haste to shriek down the idea that such research should continue, for what I consider a much more important issue, considering that religion affects the entire population of the planet, religious or not. But none of us are scientists here, so I suppose the question is moot, unless someone knows a scientist who would be game. Anyone?

I didn't mean to imply that the proof of telepathy, for example, would confirm the Abrahamic religions, only that the _disproof_ of it would conclusively _disprove_ Mohammed's channeling of Gabriel, and therefore the entire basis for the Islamic faith.

Anon2, what is it about Islam and Muhammad that continuously draw you back to this anachronistically expressed idea of 'channeling'? Muhammad received his revelations in the same way that the Hebrew prophets, Senegalese prophets, Javanese prophets, Mormon prophets, Neanderthal prophets, and all the rest did. Why single out one claimant over all the others? You're pissing on one tree in the Amazon - and you don't appear to appreciate that tree or the Amazon basin as infinitely complex bio/eco systems. Likewise the biology of your own urine production and the mechanics of your zipper.

"Religion" is a universal human phenomenon. Period. It serves some of the same functions as "science" and arises from the same set of social and biological imperatives. And "both" play central roles in the discourses of knowledge-power now, as they have always done. Seeking the ontological footprint of Thor, "nirvana", Amitaba's Western Paradise, the uncreated Qur'an, "the self", "America", or a million other things posited by religionists as real is a waste of time. Quiddity is meaningless for these things, entirely beside the point. They aren't what's important about religion and the worldviews generated by godbelief.

Thanks again Ben and deluxe. Deluxe, I like your discrete classification system; I actually only settled upon the scientific realm because it's the only one that I expect will have any effect on the atheist, and because I don't respect the religious who reject scientifically proven or well-supported concepts, such as the theory of evolution.

The best we can say is, there's no measurable evidence to cause us to postulate Santa's existence, or God's. They have no measurable interaction with the known world

Now, are we sure there is no such measurable interaction? I'm not a scientist myself, so I have no idea, but do you have some basis for declaring that it's impossible to isolate and measure the activity of thought? (You may, I'm just asking.)

The problem with stating that one shouldn't posit email 200 years ago is that it rebukes every visionary who's ever lived. Leonardo da Vinci observed a flying toy hundreds of years ago, and posited manned flight. Are you suggesting that Leonardo da Vinci should never have made any of his sketches or models? Secure in the knowledge that there is only one genius for every large group of people, you would crush every da Vinci and prohibit his (or her) experimentation.

The difference, of course, is that da Vinci had an example he was observing, like Eli Whitney did when inventing his cotton gin. Yet unlike the vanishing magical Santa Claus, (we don't observe people vanishing), we do observe the effects of thought, if not thought itself, and we have no reason to think that it _must_ be confined to human skulls. I know that you don't include the "God _must_ not exist" proviso in your atheism, but most do. The possibility of thought occurring elsewhere than in human brains is nowhere near as patently ridiculous as atheists insist that it is. I'm not clinging pathetically to God, by the way; I said, I'm as eager for a disproof as a proof.