OT 4 More Things Atheists Should Stop Saying

No one said this. I was just using this example to illustrate that the fact that a majority believes something doesn't mean that this something is factually true.

1) See, here's the problem we're having: you don't have the first clue about (ir)rationality and logic. All you know is that they're bad things, and since you don't want to think anything bad about your beliefs, you're denying that they're irrational/illogical. What's funny is that you literally defined what you're doing as illogical when you said "Your desire to believe God exists as a reason for being happy, has nothing to do with whether or not God exists" (IMDB2.freeforums.net/post/4521946/thread). Irrationality and logical fallacies are literally defined as methods of thought that lead to beliefs that have nothing to do with the truth of that belief. So you already admitted to being irrational, to believing in God based on a logical fallacy, but because you don't know what either of those things mean, you're still denying it. It's like someone saying "oh sure, I stabbed the guy until he died just because he laughed at me, but I didn't MURDER him!" 

The fact that you refuse to read those links (even one) says all anyone needs to know about your lack of intellectual integrity/honesty, and at this point you're just trying to project your own ignorance on to me, pretending that I'm the one that doesn't understand something, despite not having said a single thing that you can show I didn't understand. Pretty much your (and SciFive's) entire schtick is a display of various psychological defense mechanisms to protect your ignorance. 

2) How about this, I'll give you one more chance to recognize what you refuse to recognize. What if I start a poll on the Politics forum and phrase the question like this: "Is it irrational to believe things only because you want them to be true?" with the options "no, that's a logical fallacy" or "yes, that's perfectly rational" and see what they respond. Not that I have tremendous confidence in what people over there know about logic/rationality either, but this is so basic I have to be optimistic enough to think most recognize that such a thing is blatantly irrational. 

I agree. I've long been for legalized drugs. But until recently, most states said no.

I've long been for universal healthcare. But the United States is one of the few 1rst world countries that doesn't have it.

One reason I don't belong to any organized religion is I don't agree with their positions on many things.

But still, many people need religion for morals, ethics, and spirituality.

Because the Atheists and anti religious aren't teaching morals, ethics and spirituality. And people gotta go somewhere for a positive and constructive message.

Irrationality and logical fallacies are literally defined as methods of thought that lead to beliefs that have nothing to do with the truth of that belief.

I intentionally left that vague because the idea is that without listed priors you basically have to assign equal probabilities to each bag. 

If your prior odds for cases a - d are W : X : Y : Z (for example, 1 : 1 : 1 : 1 if you consider each to be equally likely) then after drawing one ball and observing that it is blue you update the odds to W : X/2 : Y/5 : Z /10 (equivalently, but without fractions, 10 W : 5 X : 2 Y : Z).

If W : X : Y : Z is initially, say 1 : 2 : 3 : 4 (10% case a, 20% case b, 30% case c, 40% case, sum = 100%) then after drawing one ball and observing that it is blue you update the odds to 10 : 10 : 6 : 4 (probabilities 1/3, 1/3, 1/5, 2/15).

The answers to the two questions depended on the prior.

For equal prior probabilities of 25 % each, the posterior odds are 10 : 5 : 2 : 1 and so there is a probability of 10/18 = 5/9 that you have "type a" hairy blue balls.

1. Yes you're presenting facts, but you're using them in a fallacious manner ("A lot of people believe in religion, therefore there must some truth to it") I've already addressed this.

2.) Did you not see the Pew article I sent you? Also the world is still majority religios only because so many countries are underdevoped and poor. Poor countries tend to be more religious (and yes the data is there to show that) because they have more children and they don't have access to the best education. Once these third world countries start to catch up, the religiosity of them will almost certainly drop.