Hi Bex

Russell, you could start backing up your confident claims with something
Happy to, just point out the claims you’d like me to back up. I’ve already posted the supporting evidence for most of what I’ve just said to Jeanie and I don’t want to repeat myself but if you missed any of it I’m happy to point you to my sources. Just tell me which bits you want me to post again.

You present yourself very well, very confidentally and respectfully. You are articulate and intelligent.
Thank you. I try to be respectful. I’ve never thought of myself as particularly confident but I have been researching these topics for quite a long time and many of the details I’m explaining here are things I’ve done a lot of reading on, it’s mostly very well supported so I guess I am confident in my position.

What you tell us or the particular sources of your choosing tell us, may not be the absolute knowledge on all these things regardless of what you may tell the rest of us.
There are always alternative points of view and I’m happy to discuss them. Remember however that evidence is what I use to measure ideas, no matter how appealing a hypothesis may be without the evidence it will not get far with me.

On your ideas of the devil attacking Christian marriages before atheist marriages I can certainly see how you could come to that point of view. I see no reason to suspect that this is true as I see no reason to suspect that there is a god or a satan but within the belief framework you hold it is a logical position. Is it biblically supported? Is there any positive evidence you can bring for this position other than it fits with your world view? I know that’s a big ask as I’ve pretty much asked you to prove god and satan before we can even start on morality and marriage statistics. I’m sorry for that huge ask but without that we might as well be discussing the TV habbits of Santa Claus for all the reality that I see in the discussion. I believe that people exist and that some hold christian views and some do not, I see that those who old christian views have some specific moral like indicators that suggest they are less moral than non christians but I don’t see any reason to believe that there is a satan behind it as I don’t see any reason to believe there is any such being. Without god and satan we are left with only two rational conclusion, belief in god is either detrimental to what most would call morality or those who have poorer morality are drawn to a belief in god. This latter makes sense as god purports to offer absolution to escape your ‘sins’ which has to be attractive to those who see themselves as committing more sins.

That was a mouthful wasn’t it?

See, if you really believe there is no God, then why would you try and make out that our marriages do worse than others?
I’m not trying to make that out I’m just pointing out that Barna Research, a christian research organisation, found that to be the case as that statistic has bearing on the point at hand.

How would this, in your eyes, make much of a difference?
It makes a difference because christians claim the moral high ground while the evidence suggests they are less moral than those who do not hold that belief. That’s an interesting set of statistics when you are discussing morality don’t you think. It doesn’t matter where you think morality comes from if one belief system shows a clear statistical different on moral measures, as christians clearly do, then that’s interesting.

Either they believe in a big bang, or a God right?
Well that or they believe in both as most christians do or they believe in some totally different god/gods etc. There are any number of alternatives.

So tell me Russell, what's the key here? Does a big bang belief (or similar) create an amazing lifetime bond between couples who believe they are the result of random events and nothing more? Does believing in God, cause the couples to split up because they believe that they have a purpose, a point and their marriage has a meaning? GET REAL!
What it suggests to me is very simple. Christians claim the moral high ground, they claim that belief in god is good for their personal morals and good for society’s morals in general and the statistics clearly show that this is not the case. If we find a group in society who are more immoral than the rest is that not suggestive of where we should focus our efforts if we want to improve society? Would you aim your drug rehab advertising at sober teetotallers or at drunkards and druggies? Where would your money be better spent?

Since many do not pray or pray enough, regardless of their religion, such a marriage can leave itself wide open for demonic influence. It actually doesn't matter WHAT a person's religion is, if they are not praying and being faithful, they are even MORE vulnerable to attack, because they not only KNOW better, but again their marriage under God is exactly what the Devil wishes to separate. That which God has joined, Satan wishes to separate/destroy.
Look at what you have just said. Who pray’s less than atheists? Granted it makes logical sense that the devil would be more interested in a christian marriage than an atheist one in which case the stat’s show that god or the belief in god isn’t very good at protecting what you claim god wants. God joins them together and the devil breaks them apart at a higher rate than those god had nothing to do with. Is god impotent that the devil can so easily undo his work? A higher percentage of atheists who marry stay that way than christians who supposedly have the support of their church, their community and their god in their efforts to keep their marriages together.

See, if you wish to downgrade religions on here any which way you can, you also need to know religious reasons. Whether you believe them or not, is not the point. If you bring things like this up, then you need to understand our side of things. Or you will simply give one version of it.
LOL sounds like me ‘preaching’ to Russ T or CTD after they’ve shown their ignorance of some scientific topic or other. I agree by the way that you need to understand the alternative position to argue against it. I was a christian for some time and I have studied christianity in some detail. What you have described here is not new to me but I don’t think it is fatal to the point I have made unless you accept that god is impotent in the face of the devil’s work. Of course the alternative seems more plausible from my point of view, that god and the devil don’t exist in which case it’s interesting to wonder why the difference in the statistics, what is it about christian belief that undermines marriage and good morals?

I am not overly convinced by your claims regardless, as far as I see, marriages are breaking up all over the place from all kinds of people in all faiths or non faiths.
That’s true enough but there’s a clear bias against christian marriages especially the more fundamentalist ones, they fail significantly more often than atheist / agnostic marriages. I find that interesting.

Please stop misrepresenting the faiths on this forum Russell. You'd be surprised at how many marriages remain faithful to the end with couples who practise their religion, keep God involved, and keep a good prayer life.
You’ll have to show me where I’ve misrepresented the faiths? I have never said that these people were good practicing christians only that they claim themselves to be christian.

So your basic argument is that those who’s marriages fail were not real / good christians? Does that about sum it up? Sounds like a very old argument made against those who have left the faith. It’s certainly possible, there are many ‘Sunday christians’ as you call them but there are Sunday catholics, Sunday fundamentalists, Sunday mormons etc yet the statics still show a significant trend towards the failures of fundamentalist marriages over the others. Are fundamentalists more likely to be Sunday christians than other faiths? Is their greater fanaticism a detriment to a long happy stable marriage? Are they more likely to marry the wrong in their rush to get to the sexual part of a relationship because of the taboos against sex outside marriage? That certainly seems to be the case in a couple of fundamentalist marriages among friends of mine.

It's the same as bad things being done in the name of religion, from those who really do not love God at all, but use religion to rouse the masses/emotions. Does one judge all by such people?
That’s an interesting point, I don’t judge all moslems by the few fanatics but we have to admit that virtually all suicide attackers these days are moslem. I’m sure the majority of them are perfectly nice people but there’s a statistically significant correlation between that belief system and that horrible outcome.

As for christians your history is hardly squeaky clean, you could simply declare anyone who does anything that we would despise today a non christian but you would have to exclude many of the people venerated in the bible if you did so. You would also have to exclude many of the later saints etc who did things that we would today be horrified by. It’s a slippery slope Bex.

Since Christ preached love, and to love ones own enemies. Those who kill and pretend it's in Christ's name are liars.
That’s the slippery slope, you’ve just excluded many of the most prominent christian figures in the old testament for starters.

Please quit using historical negative events, when so much has also been done from atheist/communists that have been outrageous/horrific.
I never said that atheists were perfect, far from it, were’ human but I’ve never heard of anyone committing an atrocity in the name of their atheism, it is always in the name of an ideology, yet religious fanatics do horrible things because if their religious beliefs. “I don’t believe in god so I’m going to kill you” sounds pretty lame doesn’t it but “I belief in Zeus and he wants me to kill non believers” makes logical sense from a Zeusian point of view.

Consider the many Christian sacrificed? Consider the same going on today? Do these things deliberately somehow escape you? Do the vast amount of Christian/Catholic organisations around the world devoted to helping the poor, sick/wretched/dying/starving also escape you too Russell?
Christians do good things, Christians do bad things, atheists do good things, atheists do bad things, is there a point to this. You don’t need to be a christian to be a good person, to do good things, to work for the betterment of mankind but religion is the most common instigator of the worst atrocities man has committed.

Would you like me to give you an example of a list of them? Perhaps the atheistic ones could outdo them you think?
There are many more christians than atheists so I doubt it but if you did it per capita you’d be surprised I think. It would be a very hard statistic to gather accurately, atheists don’t make any noise about the good that they do as a general rule and they often give to charities that are religious so they would be counted in the wrong statistics unless they were very carefully gathered. It would be very interesting if you could tease out just how much ‘good’ atheists do vs christians. As I say I think you would be surprised though I have no statistics on it one way or the other.

I think you need to start taking off the blinkers and start looking at history on both sides of issues, instead of the one that suits you because you're simply looking to discredit religion any chance you get on this forum. Oh, admittedly you do it very very nicely!
I would suggest that it is not I who wears the blinkers here.

All the best Bex.

Russell