"that's simple and fairly obvious to me... it's for the betterment of everyone"

but why should i care about the betterment of others? why shouldnt i take the position of d33zY? (thank you d33zY for that wonderful example, by the way) however, the opposing argument is given later, but im trying to answer these one at a time....moving on...

"I do not understand your necessity to worshi(p) "thy lord" or why commandmants from (somewhere) are so devine" (i took the liberty of fixing your spelling, and would appreciate you editing your post to fix the same)

whoa, i havent gotten to worship yet. lets stick to the basics of, is there a creator, has he given us rules to follow? once those things are agreed upon, then would be te approprate time to move the discussion on to topics such as worship, prayer, etc.

"anybody beginning to wonder if this was (is) a suicide thread?"

"Anybody know if he is OK "

"Yeah I've talked to him in email. "

Much relived to hear that. I hope all is well for him. Tell him we would love to hear any comments he might have on the thread he started.

Darwinian evolution.

ok, the big stuff. If, as you say, religion was created because it helps preserve life, and since you seem to be for the preservation of life, then i take your post to mean that you are all for religion. You see, if it doesnt matter whether or not what i belive is true, but only matters that it helps me (and my species) to survive, then if you are trying to get us to all stop beliving in God and His commandments, then it would seem that you are attempting to commit mass genocide, mainly, the extinction of the human race.

but i supose you are saying, "i only want the truth to be known. i dont want people to be deluded and beliving in lies." well then i say, good for you. but i have to ask you, what standard were you holding yourself to when you decided that truth was a good and right thing? where did you get the idea that truth was more important than the survival of the species? certiantly not from Darwin.

but here is a question for you:

if the earth, and the animals that live on it are a product of chance, and if your and my conception is the product of chance, and the arangement of our bodys is chance and therefor the arangement of our brain is chance, and if all the things i've seen and heard and learned are the product of chance, therefor the nurons in my brain are firing in the paterns they are because of chance.......then how on earth can i know that to be true, since my (and your) conclusion has been arived at entirly by chance? it is as if i knocked a pen off of a desk and it happened to fall in such a manner as to write out how it was produced, how it got to the desk, where the desk came from and how it was produced, where i came from, and how i came to knock the pen off the desk.

now, is this view wrong? if so how? or explain to me how we can trust a conclusion which, by its nature, was arived at entirly by chance.

im still waiting for an answer from somebody on this