Yeah, those athiests with their scientific educations, their generalisations are just pain insulting. In a way they scare me because I feel insecure and cry into my teddy at night.

I get where you're coming from concerning educated atheists, but not all atheists base their beliefs on scientific deductions or rationalisation. Here in the UK religions are really underrepresented amongst younger people, but quite a lot of them can't articulate their own beliefs on the matter - it's just a decision to them, just like the decision TO believe. Plus a lot of atheists I know have varying levels of belief in:

Ghosts.
Psychic powers.
Soul-mates.
Aliens.
Luck.
The significance of certain numbers.
End of the world predictions (most notably the Mayan shit).
Tarot cards.
Past-lives.
And so on, and so on.

All these beliefs are as irrational as the belief in G-d or religion, so I'm not judging them for believing that shit at all - that'd be pretty hypocritical of me. It's just the idea that all atheists are educated rationalists scoffing at their ignorant and ill-educated religious peers is really not true. There are people with incredibly shallow views on BOTH sides of the equation. Not all atheists use logic concerning their beliefs, in the same way that not all religious people believe just because their parents told them to.

Besides, religion and science aren't incompatible at all. Religious people are ALLOWED to get things wrong, and if science disproves some beliefs then so be it - those beliefs were based on folly. The world isn't five thousand years old you say? Wow, I guess we shouldn't take the Torah/Bible literally. Noah's ark couldn't possibly have held all the world's animals? I guess the story must be metaphorical then! I mean Orthodox Judaism is incompatible with change, in the same way that Catholicism claims papal infallibility so resists change also, but not all religious groups are like this at all.

I read a pretty good book recently called 101 Myths of the Bible. The author sets out to disprove many notions in the Tankah, putting a lot of the histories down to political manoeuvring by Israel and Judah, and showing where a lot of the stories in the Torah originated from. Orthodox Jews would consider the book pretty blasphemous I guess, but as they make up a small percentage of overall Jews (only 25% of the Jews of Israel for example - the most Jewish country you can get) it's not true that the majority of Jews just believe any old shit. The author of the book is a religious Jew btw, yet he's setting out to point out holes in his own faith - again, the stereotype that only atheists question things and use their rational logical minds to solve problems doesn't entirely ring true. Only a small percentage of people even contemplate what they believe in either case, the vast majority seem to just decide and then go through their lives content with it.

Fair enough XD!

I always feel the need to defend my crazy beliefs by attacking ghosts and numerology. HEY THOSE GUYS ARE CRAZY TOO WHY NOT HAVE A GO AT THEM!!!!!!!1!11!

That's a really great article actually. I wrote my thesis on Interpretation of Shakespeare in Other Cultures, with the emphasis on China, and you'd be amazed (probably not amazed but ok) at the differences that are read into the play. It's also amazing the amount of respect they have for him, even during periods where Western literature was being destroyed due to its corrupting influences and shit. OLD MAN SHA!

Ed: I get what you're saying, but again you kind of put in an assumption that religious people are religious because they were RAISED to be religious. I was totally spoiled as a kid, having pretty much anything I asked for (although I asked for videogames and toys rather than SCIENCE BOOKS - although I did have a science set at one point, bought for me by one of my crazy aunts), and was raised entirely secularly - I've never attended religious worship with either of my parents. No one taught me my current belief system - certain people helped me to put it into practice however.

 Besides, if you have an inquisitive and interested mind it doesn't matter what religion you were raised as - you'd find your own "truth" by analysing reality regardless of what your parents believed.

PS: I would join the cone religion in a second.