Okay, so certain comments and total misunderstandings are really starting to annoy me now.
"Just stop bloody insulting people who do believe."
If someone used emotive language to attack something I believed in, then it would be my natural response to offer evidence that I was right. Not simply to say "I believe, go away."
"scientists used to believe that the Sun went round the Earth."
They did. And now they don't.
"The earth also used to be flat and the atom was the smallest thing, and people regularly died of now treatable diseases.Are you all seriously so arrogant that just because something hasn't been discovered/proven yet that it is wrong?"
Absolutely not. You miss the point. When evidence is offered which is counter to the accepted consensus in the scientific community, everybody doesn't suddenly say the new evidence is right and the old wrong. But the new evidence is made available. It's published in papers and journals. It's discussed in conferences and seminars. It's debated on websites. And slowly, very slowly, if the evidence is compelling, a new consensus is reached. That's what happened with Phlogiston, for example. It may well also be happening with global warming.
"Has anyone ever turned round to you after one of your ranting insulting sessions and said "Ah, I see the light, I am a moron and my beliefs were clearly stupid. I will now live a life dedicated only to known facts"?"
First of all, it's not ranting. I may use the odd bit of emotive language, but that's because I'm trying to get a more sensible answer than "I believe it, therefore it is true."
The point is that scientists never deal in absolute truths - but they damn well need evidence before they change their minds - or, more importantly, anybody else's.
So, in the absence of evidence that psychics (there I'll stop putting them in quotes if it annoys), God, reiki, crystal healing, indigo children, etc, etc, actually exist, I'll not believe in them. And the reason I keep saying it is that it depresses me that otherwise intelligent people can't see the sense in doing that.
That doesn't mean you have a closed mind. I have adjusted my thinking on lots of things over the years: socialism, global warming, multiculturalism, to name but a few matters. But the point is that I did so not because of other people's faith in them, but because of weighing up the evidence presented.
"I think Madamez and UQD need to revisit the meaning of the words "faith" and "belief"."
In what way? I know what they mean, I just don't think they are a very clever contribution to a debate.
"As for evidence, please provide proof positive to St G, Flamey etc that a) there is no God, and b) that people absolutely 100% dont have psychic abilities."
This is something which theists always ask sceptics to do, in the full knowledge that it is a logical impossibility. It's like asking a circus animal to jump through a hoop, and when it fails to do so, arguing that it must be lame.
You cannot prove the NON-existence of anything. All you can do is look at the evidence for its existence. You cannot prove that I don't have a six-foot invisible gerbil called Wayne living in my back garden, but as the only evidence is my assertion that I have, you're pretty safe to assume it's not true.
"When people lose a loved one, they are vulnerable."
Lily, exactly - and they are open to manipulation and suggestion.
Sorry that was long, but all those points needed answering.