Debate: Is there God?
Side: No

Tablet again no quotes.Evolution does not directly disprove god, that was not my point. (It contradicts part of theChristian bible, if that disproves anything it is against the christian idea of god / creation and not all gods).My point was god is not needed to explain how we evolved, adding a creator to design is supurflous.More religious scientists now than Darwins time? Not by the link you gave...it stated the percentage is roughly the same. There are more scientists now than before but using numbers instead of percents is now apples and oranges. Also the more educated people get the less religios the get as noted by your study.Religious having advantages over non believers when they are in trouble? Please cite that because it sounds as subjective as it gets. For instance the recent issue in Oregon with the family who wanted to heal their kids with prayer rather than medical science.Several of their children passed away from easily treatable circumstances. Advantage can easily be seen for the non believer in times of trouble as they will not be fooled by delusion in some situations.You say believers and non believers run the gambit on intelligence but want to put a stake on limiting happyness? This is an example of having your cake and eating it too.Prayer and meditation are lumped together all the time, and prayer has no advantages over meditation. Google scholar it if you really have an interest. Also the STEP study on prayer showed pretty conclusive results that prayer does not work on others. The STEP project is the largest controlled study, not personal anecdotes.Edit, it is poor form of me to just say google scolar it if you were interested. I just know there are many studies on prayer and meditation out there. The subject has lots of data about it in the medical and psych fields. Any way here is a couple studies. Neither claim one is better than the other, my point is it is pretty well studied area and the practices are often put in the same group.http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/10516983 Prayer and meditation have been used as health-enhancing techniques for centuries. Their use has been investigated more recently in the context of more conventional, allopathic medical approaches. These studies, despite methodological limitations, show some promise for the formal application and integration of these techniques into western medical practice. Some potential benefits from meditation include reduced perceived stress and improvement in mild hypertension. Prayer appears to offer subjective benefit to those who pray; the effects of intercessory prayer on the health status of unknowing individuals requires more investigation. Back to ResultsFormatsAbstractFull TextPDFExport citation (RIS) Email citationSearch by Subject Complementary TherapiesHumansMeditationMental HealingRehabilitationSensitivity and SpecificityUnited Stateshttp://biomedgerontology.oxfordjournals.org/content/55/7/M400.short A probability sample of elderly community-dwelling adults in North Carolina was assembled in 1986 and followed for 6 years. Level of participation in private religious activities such as prayer, meditation, or Bible study was assessed by self-report at baseline, along with a wide variety of sociodemographic and health variables.