That's quite true - in which case you might call yourself an ignostic - one who requires the very definition of god to be defined before one can even say whether or not they believe in it.

I agree in spirit with the parent and grand parent of this post, but I think we can all agree it'll never happen - the state will (and maybe shouldn't?) interfere at that level of parenting. Instead, I think society should ensure that there is sufficient counter balance, in the way of increase education on all religions. This is something Dawkins advocates. No Bible in the school? That won't help -- instead, get kids to read the bible (old and new), the koran, and a host of other mythological texts. Have the child see that there are multitudes of these myths, and not only are they contradictory with each other, but are self-contradictory in and of themselves.

The only cure for this virus is more information.

Interesting point, but irrelevant. I suspect that the vast majority of people here "Body of Christ" and go along with that, without thinking about whether or not it's the essence or "physicality". I note that Wikipedia appears disagrees with your statement, in that the belief is that the bread actually does become the body of Christ.

Take a look at celiac sufferers and the struggle they have in obtaining a gluten free eucharist. Apparently the church was so distraught that someone would attempt to make the crackers out of anything but wheat, thus somehow changing the essence (or is it physicality?) of the whole thing. Really, if it was just the essence, would it matter if the cracker was made out of rice flour vs wheat flour?

In any case, my point was that these are the sorts of discussions that most religious people tend to shy away from, because it tends to point out the inconsistencies in their beliefs.

I think it's far fewer than 90% actually "believe" in deities, rather a good chunk of them profess belief in deities - that is, they say that they do to fit in.
When pressed on the details of their beliefs, I think that only a few people will actually say that yes, they truly believe in transubstantiation (after that
term is defined for them, after all I've talked with a lot of people who claim to be catholic who have no idea what that meant), or that jesus was of virgin birth, or any other number of ridiculous notions in any of the current day mythology texts.

Not surprisingly, people get quite defensive when you do actually ask them about this stuff - and often resort to the "well, a lot of it is just stories, but I do believe in the CORE stuff" response, leaving to question what is actually core to a mythology. Dan Dennett wrote a great book about this stuff, Breaking the Spell, worth the read!

my parents use the search bar to search for google.com (with the .com, mind you), and then use the google home page to search. I wish I was kidding :(

Funnily enough, for crimes like negligent homicide committed by a corporation, they usually face insignificant penalties. So instead, the government might use the EPA and those various laws to go after the company. Frontline had a great episode on this with regards to a foundry that was polluting like crazy, and also killed a few employees by having extremely lax safety standards and negligent management. The death of the employee? Punishable by like a $7000 fine. Dumping crap in the nearby river? Millions.

Watch the program online: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/workplace/

Actually Bush's policy is that this could have been done with a faith based initiative. A group of people would surround the woman and pray, and then this sort of miracle could have occured. In fact what's to say that's not what happened with this other lady and this whole stem cell thing is baloney just like evolution. Maybe we should consider both possibilities, just like with creatio^H^H^H^H^H^H intelligent design??

*tongue firmly in cheek, fingers firmly in ears*