What is stupefying is that statement, you have Free-will, that those with faith believe it is a gift from God doesn't mean God has insisted against our freewill that we should use it. I can give you a toaster, it doesn't mean that you have to eat toast every day or at all.
White noise.
As for the second part; you think that we are all automatons whose genetic and evolutionary make-up decide our every action in advance, that we do not have the freewill to decide whatever we want, that we are limited to follow some kind of evolutionary predestination. Frankly I think that is utter tosh.
Are you an evolutionary biologist? I'm not, and thus, feel I should refer questions regarding such things to somebody competent in that field.
Science has yet to prove anything regarding Self or how it fits into evolution, if it even does. I find it horrific to think that my life is predestined by evolutionary constructs.
I love this argument. You may find it an unwelcome conclusion that you're descended from apes, or may wish that it wasn't true, but it just
is. Sorry. Bertrand Russell said that it's a fundamental dishonesty and fundamental treachery to intellectual integrity to hold a belief because you think it's useful and not because you think it's true.
Those two should both be in the affirmative, as he is a good orator and he does indeed attempt to force his own ideology onto others as his attempt to have the Pope arrested will testify to.
He's an ok orator, but stand him next to Christopher Hitchens (who is an exceptional orator) and he becomes distinctly average in my opinion.
And as for the likes of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris trying to 'ram their atheist agendas down our throats' by prosecuting a man that's known to have concealed numerous cases of the rape and torture of children, that's known to be sheltering wanted men in the Vatican (Cardinal Law for one), I could go on... Are you aware that Geoff Robertson, the human rights council leading the case against the Pope, is a practising Christian?
Naffa, have you read the God Delusion? He basically says he's trying to convert people in the prologue - or did you just skip that bit?
I'll go and check, but does he not say that he simply wants to make people are atheists, but that didn't know they could be an atheist realise that in fact, they could? It's not really the same as 'trying to convert them'.