If you didn't get a PM/DM from me (I tried to remember everyone!) let me know. My "office" is wherever my laptop is now, so I'm always around. I definitely still want to stay in touch, so I'd love to have your email address. This way I'm addressing a person and not a community and contributing to the civil war on OC.net.

Again, thanks for the information and the conversation (mostly had outside of this forum!).
So I wish you well
You too, Gebre. I hope you keep writing, mate.
That's an issue that has fascinated me for about a year and a half now. Where do you stand on it? You a dualist, Mysterianist, or do you think the problem cannot even be formulated like Chomsky does? Or maybe some form materialism, whatever that might mean these days?
You are as much your hand / foot as you are your brain. There's nothing special about the wetware between our ears. Your thoughts / ideas are just a product of your physiology. The mind / body distinction has been a huge problem for the church (here come the slobbering ultra hyperdox!). It's the cause of beliefs in such things as spirits and souls. The mind / body distinction was also considered a gnostic teaching by the early church. I am definitely not a dualist, but I sympathize with this position. I was tapped to participate in a study about how the brain funtions during religious experience and got to see what my brain did during times where I "felt the presence of God". Which is why I still believe theists when they tell me they "know" Christ or have a personal relationship with them. And so should you, don't doubt that claim... they really believe it (with certainty). What they don't know, is that they're having an experience with themselves... nothing external. Despite it being very convincing. On Chomsky, I cannot stand him. He's feeding the liberals all sorts of horrible ideas that spit in the face of the traditions that got us this far as a species.
Tried that way, as you are going. For me it turned out to be hell.
It's good you have made peace with what you've found.
Steady on.
Thanks, mate. All the best to you.
Why were you excommunicated anyway? I'd feel more like Heimbach.
When I still believed, I was teaching my children that neither heaven or hell existed and that there is no afterlife.
If you're actually a "scientific" atheist now, this doesn't even make sense. How can one who completely rejects the concept of religion and bases their worldview on scientific evidence and logic believe that anyone who believes in the notion of these fairy tales are some of the "smartest" people that they've talked to? Most educated atheists that I know believe religious people are either foolish or seriously delusional and misguided at best. There are no "smart" Christians.
As for the "stupid" people who post on here, I percieve you believe this because you might disagree with their philosophy or politics on certain issues. Not so much their deductive reasoning.
It's a matter of epistemology. A first philosophy that requires more presupposition that what is reasonable causes flaws in the entire worldview. However, that doesn't mean that someone who has a worldview that allows them to contribute to the species positively most of the time is stupid. Especially when they stay busy helping their fellow primates.
This thread makes me feel sad 
It wasn't my intention to do so. Sorry! I meant to thank you folks. Cheer up!!! I am the one going to hell.

lol
It's telling that you came back to this forum, OP. I like how your post is an attempt to convince yourself, and not us.
Care to chat in real time on Google Hangouts? PM me and I'll work around your schedule. Or perhaps we could exchange telephone numbers. Serious.
Thanks for your post, Michael. I'm sad to see you go, but I appreciate many of the things you said. Best wishes.
Thank you! You too! All the best to you and yours!
Many years!
The same to you!

Hope you hang around for a bit, MichaelofSN. I've enjoyed your prior posts. I'm sorry to hear about the direction your faith has taken. I've taken that journey myself, and returned back to Christianity. I can't prove its true, but I like myself a lot more as a Christian than I did when I was an agnostic (never made it quite to atheist, seemed a bit too definitive for me. Maybe I just disliked the label, I dunno.).
I don't know if I want to come back. The in-fighting (as is evident with this thread) is head-spinning. Most of the people from this forum, who I really love, contact me outside this forum. It's what caused this post in the first place; I got an email and a phone call last week from 2 folks on this forum and it made me think of some of y'all. Either way, thank you and I hope you find satisfaction in your endeavors too!

Allow me to fast forward this tired old conversation a page or two of posts. Erhem...
Stock atheist: If God caused the universe, then what caused God?
Stock Christian: Nobody. God is an uncaused, logically necessary being.
Stock atheist: But if God can be uncaused and logically necessary, then why can't the universe be?
Somebody's been reading heretical literature and spending time on the DevilTubes!!!! Ha! j/k, mate.
MichaelofSN,
You and I had an exchange in the past, an exchange I left all the more disappointed because I found your newfound worldview so naive and incoherent, perhaps because I myself tried for so long to find true meaning in my life within my atheistic perspective. Maybe you will get lucky, and you will be able to ignore the tormenting conclusions thinkers like Nietzsche and Camus found at the end of their worldviews. The world increasingly offers ways for those of us in Western society to ignore just how horrendous is the world that we inhabit.
I do wish for you the best, despite our disagreements, and I hope that someday you realize that, although you were unaware, God was more real and intimate than anything or anyone else you know.
If I ever caused offense, please accept this as a heart felt apology. Best wishes, mate.