Many people believe that life does not begin at conception. Should they be allowed to choose abortion?
I haven’t read the thread, I’m just posting some book recommendations.
No, they haven’t. Every one of these cases that has been examined by neutral observers has come up lacking. If that’s in the blurb for the book, I don’t have high hopes for the actual content.
If you’re unwilling to share your relevant experiences, you SHOULD NOT HAVE BROUGHT THEM UP.
That’s literally advocacy for insanity. No; people ideally should believe what is true. Believing something that is false won’t make it true; it just means that the person who believes it is living in a fantasy world. If I fling myself out a window because I believe I can fly, I’ll plummet no matter how hard I believe. Anyone who actually acted according to your ideal would quickly end up in a prison, hospital, or dead.
I have told you where to go if you want me to share my life. nanarita 23 at gmail .com (without the spaces). No one has bothered contacting me through my e-mail so I guess no one is interested after all.
I am interested in debating relevant anecdotes (which again, you introduced in the first place) in this thread.
I’m talking about believing or not in existence of the soul. If you can’t prove the soul isn’t true, then you can’t say that what they believe in is false.
Thank you for regarding my anecdotes as relevant. I’m very flattered. If you don’t have a google account there is also skype. Are you more comfortable with skype?
If it is your proposal that a soul exists, because we have no evidence to date as to its existence, it is up to you to provide evidence that it does exist. Without positive evidence, the null point is that it doesn’t exist.
What have evidence do you have that will take the existence of a soul from “does not exist” to “might exist”?
I am comfortable with posting evidence in this thread.
Again, if you didn’t want to share it in this thread you should not have brought it up in this debate.
Are you uncomfortable with making claims and submitting evidence in public?
Oh, now anecdotes are evidence! Well, someone had a change of heart. 
My experiences are subjective, I interpret them they way I see logical. I have no illusion that my anecdotes will convince anyone because I suppose to you subjective experiences are not scientific evidence because they cannot be tested in a lab… at least not yet. It was asked of me what my criteria of believing in something is, and it is based on observation and experience. My observation and experience is not going to convince the people here of anything because there is nothing I can say that hasn’t been said by many other people who have had the same experiences.
Yes, I can. Prove me wrong.
How is this relevant in this thread?
You said people should believe what suits them. If I believe that a blastocyst is not human, should I be constrained by the beliefs of those who do?
The soul is as about as disproven as anything can be in the real world. It violates physical laws, there’s no evidence for it, what evidence there is is against it, and it’s clearly a concept that originated entirely in myth. If it wasn’t a popular religious/superstitious concept, people would just call it disproved instead of playing word games - but since it is a popular superstition, it gets a place of undeserved intellectual privilege. You are doing what believers always do; demanding that your beliefs should be taken seriously, because your beliefs are utterly baseless and can’t stand on their own.
The belief in things which cannot be adequately empirically explained, which do not stand up to proper scientific analysis, which require faith in their inherent veracity in order to justify and which rely on a lack of evidence to the contrary to be believed and have none supporting their claims are all purely symptomatic of a lack of critical analytical thinking. The ‘science doesn’t have the one hundred per-cent foolproof explanation of this, ergo any superstitious nonsense will do’ attitude typifies religious people and ‘new-agey’ spiritualists who seem to have a predilection for taking things for granted based on faith, rather than logic and rationality.
If there is no evident objective truth to a claim, and no strong, rational supporting evidence, then you shouldn’t believe it nor claim that you ‘know’ it to be true, or even that it’s a valid point of view. The sooner we have done with all manner of silly superstition, the better for the human race in general.
If you can’t prove it’s real (and you can’t), why should anyone take seriously your belief that it’s real?
You suppose ideally we should all be atheist. My point is that people are free to choose their religion and also free to dismiss it altogether. Where is the insanity or problem in this? There are honest, good and intelligent people regardless of their religious or non religious belief. The opposite is also true. To say that everyone should believe in one line of thinking is wishful thinking.
Unless you use your intelligence to support your belief and put a wing suit on and fling yourself from a mountaintop high enough where the current would carry you. Like this:
My ideal vision of what people should believe in (an unfortunately many don’t) is to believe in ethics, in respecting oneself, in respecting others and in working honestly. I don’t see how this will make people go to jail, hospital or dead. Please enlighten me.