You have to use percentages as the validator, either that or upscale all the previous votes to take account of the fact of population/demographic changes.

Otherwise that's like saying Man City scored the most ever points to win a league title, well yeah you get 3 points for a win now rather than 2 a team used to get.

Taking the bungy jump since 1964. Never to see John Jackson in a shirt again

Sorry to see Lee Hills go, did we ever see Alex Marrow? We did January 2013

To be fair, all religions are equally loony.

It does make me chuckle when people call out other religions like theirs is the absolute bestest, purest and only one that could possibly be (out of however many thousands).

As this is often a cliched topic of derision, I’ll go with it as an example. One of my main bugbears is the ‘Islam is violent/despicable/evil’ trope.

Maybe take a look at the rape, pillage, murder and mechanism for control that your own religion was founded on first.

A bit off topic, but just challenging the my religion is ‘sane’ and the others are loony statement. They’re all nuts. Its not 5AD anymore, and most people know what the sun is, fairies don’t exist (well, actually I can’t prove that) and that the earth isn’t flat.

Oh and that religion you’re following?

You’re probably following it wrong, seeing as it’s been distorted so many times from it’s original conception (see Roman Catholicism, the classic lazy mans Christian) that if Christ was an actual thing (sorry I can’t prove that either), he’d be pretty annoyed that his profound teachings had been cut, pasted and b******ised to suit whatever agenda was needed to control the at the time. And that sinning is fine man. Just don’t forget to confess.

Segue rant over. Proceed

Did you know? 98.0000001% of people are morons.

No doubt. Although it's debatable how many of those terrorists actually could be defined as Muslim. Much like any extremist of any religion.

I suppose my reasoning for picking on the violence theme is that people love to label Islam itself as violent first and foremost (not true) which your average yokel then takes as anything related to islam is violent. It's not the case, and as you point out, it's just its turn in the limelight.

It's the same vile, to quote again, 'loony' dross played out again and again, this time these two are the largest protagonists. See Pagans and Christians for one example of the same thing, different era.

It's amazing how many people don't seem to get the basics of how religion is used as a vehicle to control, disrupt and attain power, with little regard for the actual practice itself. The religion in question is meaningless. Most were born out of or warped into providing the same purpose. Any purity was lost a long time ago – save for the odd monk, that's how you really practice – if it ever existed at all.

Also re. Agnostic Atheism, technically we are all agnostic. None of us know or don't know whether any god does or doesn't exist. I'm therefore also technically an Agnostic Atheist, but someone that believes in the almighty one of many is also an agnostic theist (relative to whichever potentially meaningless forked version of christianity they follow).

So I find it simpler just to say that I'm an atheist. You either believe or you don't, until proven otherwise.

Although I'd wager an atheist would be quicker to convert to a believer when confronted with irrefutable evidence than a theist. This one would convert pretty damn quickly, that's for sure.

Did you know? 98.0000001% of people are morons.

People are allowed to self define as a Muslim. Anyone who tells you that there is an Islamic system that officially decides this is lying.

Perhaps what you are saying here is, 'how many of them can be defined as Muslims' that so and so tells me is Islamic.

Well hang on there.....What Hitchens said was undoubtenly true yet lets not be simplistic with this. Islam was always violent. Anyone who knows the history of how quickly it spread and its early conquests knows this....the beheadings of a whole Jewish tribe.....I take it that you actually know something about Islamic history? There are plenty of different narratives other than just the Qu'ran and hadiths and other Islamic writings.

Islam wasn't as violent as Christianity hundreds of years ago because it wasn't as widespread.....but they did a good job in catching up. If it wasn't for the Battle of Tours in 732 the history of Europe would be very different.

While I consider myself a layman's student of history. The only relevance is in how the past affects the present. The reality is that the only religious extremists that people boarding a train in London today have to worry about are extremists calling themselves believers in Islam.

So relevance to a life being lived in the UK today is sensible.

Are you trying to claim that all religions are the same? They may all be as flawed in logic as each other but when it comes to threats to life within western countries they are most definitely not the same. The swelling in size of our national security budget and its activities and arrests towards just one religion are painfully obvious testaments to this.

As with describing yourself a Muslim you have the liberty to do this (even if disowning the religion is a different matter). However, for myself the usage of agnostic is in recognition of the fact that knowledge as to a 'creator'....its form or purpose isn't knowable.

So essentially we agree here and it's just a question of preference between us on what we wish to highlight.

The question of a some type of 'creator' isn't of course restricted to the personal god religions. This is why I empathize the agnostic word.

I agree with you that when it comes to the question of belief in a 'personal god' then I'm an atheist.....that classical spirit(s) in the sky who cares about where you stick your love stick and keeps score on how kind you were to your neighbours dog...etc etc. It is clearly nonsense....any observation of nature tends to blown this out of the water.

But as to the wider question of how the universe came to be....I'm an agnostic atheist.....apologies for waffling on here as essentially I think I've just repeated myself.

Edited by Stirlingsays (15 May 2018 7.19pm)

'Who are you and how did you get in here? I'm a locksmith. And, I'm a locksmith.' (Leslie Nielsen)