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I personally find your questioning to be nefarious, because the motivations for suggesting what is in the OP is only one thing... the eradication of religion.

Parents purposely lie to their kids about Santa to make one day a year "special" for themselves. Even atheist parents. The faithful are not lying. Shove Santa up you ass. 

Do you think that clear standards of evidence and skepticism are prerequisite to what you call critical thinking?

I wouldn't call them prerequisites. Components, rather.

Also, do you really believe that humans can make "objective judgments"?

Yes.

I don't mean to suggest that people are able to be truly objective. But, by applying logic and reason, one can make the same judgement that would be made if one were truly objective.

There are plenty who come to the church who were not raised in it.

The question  was in the context of the Swedish proposal. Calm down.

Should all members of a religion be forbidden to engage in parts of their faith being exploited by hate groups?

Should the US consider all runes and Norse imagery racists?

Should the US consider all runes and Norse imagery racists?

No, we raise our kids in the faith, and there is nothing wrong with that.

You should mind your own business.

There's no logical difference between rejecting "God exists" as untrue versus the positive claim that God does not exist.

But the actual number of Christians in the world is growing, not declining.

That's not what you mean because you know it makes your position stupid.

So what do you do? You debate people who don't really understand theology and shrink away when someone who does tells you that you've been debating superstition of God rather than God.

You are committing the fallacy of appeal to motive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_motive

Critical thinking alone will get you to truth about as well as tying a bunch of bottle rockets together to construct a space shuttle to the moon.

Critical thinking without a love of the truth will simply lead you to reject everything, which actually takes about as much intelligence and thought as believing eveything.

I think you are confusing critical thinking with skepticism. Critical thinking is a method for evaluating information in order to make rational, objective judgements about what to believe.

If i were to make a claim without a supporting argument it would be playground standard for me to insist you prove me wrong.  There is nothing to be gained by engaging in such faux-debates and a rapid bail out is in order!  But you might (unwisely!) choose to prove the claim wrong, in which case you would aquire the BoP for some counter-claim.

The claim should be evaluated on its own merits. That's the most rational approach.

As usual, your reading comprehension and thinking skills are literally non-existent. You should read more books and educate yourself, perhaps take some remedial reading courses so you can understand what other people are saying as opposed to what you believe they are saying.

It's worth repeating that whichever claim is more rational to believe depends on the preponderance of the underlying evidence.

Mere non-belief is the default position, not disbelief.

To disbelieve something based on lack of evidence is an argument from ignorance.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

"Pasta" is defined as "a dish originally from Italy consisting of dough made from durum wheat and water, extruded or stamped into various shapes and typically cooked in boiling water." There are physical components indicated by its definition.

Yes, "consciousness" is defined as the state of being awake and aware of one's surroundings. There is no physical component indicated.

I say "reject to be untrue" because that's not what the atheist experience hosts mean when they say they "reject" the existence of God claims. By "reject" they mean to remain merely non-acceptant.

Please explain how you can make decisions WITHOUT physics OR chemistry.

I don't see how doing that would be relevant in avoiding the implication I talked about.

I haven't heard a refutation of my argument that it violates the law of identity but you are free to give your opinion on the matter.

If all is determined by physics and chemistry then as soon as you explain how physics and chemistry can rationally accept beliefs I'll concede the point.

I think its possible to define 'free will' in a way that it does exist and in another away that it doesn't exist.

The pasta monster violates the law of identity as a physical but non-physical entity. 

The best argument for free will is that it's impossible to rationally accept that free will does not exist.

It's not impossible to rationally accept that free will DOES exist.

What does it mean to you personally if you do not have free will?

What does it mean personally if you do have free will?

No, they are the words towards someone who rudely butts into a discussion making demands...

That perhaps more useful than discussing the veracity of free will would be to discuss the effects and utilization of the belief itself.

And this is a topic about free will, not the existence of God.

It should be clear that whether or not the cogency of evidence compels one into acceptance of the truth of free will, it cannot be said that there is no evidence.

After all, if one says there is no evidence, they are in denial of the fact that they had to ignore their perception of making the choice to make such an obviously false assertion.

I have given as good a definition as many theists have given me to disprove. You do try to justify your arguments logically (though we disagree on some axioms) but that doesn't change the fact that you have only very vaguely described your god concept very vaguely yourself with words like "prime" and "conscious".

The level of difficulty is claim-specific. It's not inherently more difficult to provide information that something does not exist. The ratio of true to false claims is irrelevant since (1) claims are case-specific and (2) claims aren't randomly selected.

So was that your definition of the flying spaghetti monster?You're conflating the psychological brainstate of believing or disbelieving something with believing or disbelieving a claim. I don't care about psychological brainstates. I only care when people believe or disbelieve a claim. Again, no, I'm not talking about knowledge, just belief or disbelief.

I find it amazing that you say there is no evidence for free will when the fact that you are choosing to post on this forum is clearly evidence, whether or not it constitutes proof to you.I think you really have to make an active effort to ignore reality to maintain that there is no evidence.

However they arose,  my preferences are my preferences, not anyone else's. 

It seems that some people insist that free will has to be independent of any influence whatsoever (ie taking an extreme interpretation of 'free') because it makes it easy to dismiss free will on semantic grounds.

It's patently obvious we don't make choices free of influences.  the most ardent supporter of free will does not deny our choices are influencedy by external factors and internal states such as preferences.  Indeed a form of 'free will' independent of desires would be wotrh having,or wanting.  That would indded be indistinguishable from 'random behaviour'.

But there are entities in the world - such as leaves blowing in the wind - that do not have freewill in any meaningful,sense and entities that do have free will such as DA posters.  

Free will is demonstrable, if we make a choice in a specific set of circumstances, realign our will, then make another choice in the same set of circumstances.

Well you're a more hardcore proponent of free will than I am if you believe even plants can choose between different options.

Loving God for who God is should really be enough.

I don't know whether spiders make choices or not.

What I do know is that I have choices, and hard as it might be for me to choose to do what seems right, it is still my choice whether or not I do what I can discern that I ought to do.

Humans to my knowledge are the only ones who can consider taking different courses of action. Non rational entities who act upon instincts don't possess the awareness required to choose between different courses of action.

Define "choice" and explain how a spider makes a choice.

The ability to choose is what is called "freewill".

Conversion is a part of the Christian religion. You don't get to have as many followers as you do without it. Not sure what that has to do with them being wrong or right. 

Atheists with no soul concept feel all spiritual experiences are invalid because they are spiritual or had by a theists. Theists are mental deficients and therefore not able to have an experience without mixing supernatural into it. Even though there are atheists who believe in such things, for instance atheistic witches who work with the dead and land spirits. 

The gods are clear. Some people don't want to work with or worship them so why bother. 

Well Paul's donkey didn't actually talk. I don't know if that's significant to your point though. I thought I'd just clarify that. Or did I misread your statement?

"Free will" means the ability to choose between different courses of action. So as long as we can do that, we have free will. We don't always act in accordance with our desires.

You mean if you saw a talking donkey you'd become a Christian?

Sounds about right. And that is actually what is meant by free will. Not that the will is totally free to do whatever it wants or that it isn't tempered by the causal universe. We can make choices, but we are still very much bound by a meatsuit. The meatsuit will always have its influence, but we do have the ability to choose to resist many of its influences.

I think I see your point.  Specifically, "fear of the unknown" does not in and of itself = god(s).

However, I believe "an abundance of caution" might contribute to a susceptibility for people to fall victim to the "Pascal's wager" scam.

I think it could too. But from my experience, Christians have come into belief for various reasons. For myself, it wasn't fear. Or....I didn't become a believer (Christian) due to a fear of hell.

Choosing between toast or eggs for breakfast.

Bills have been known to hold the woman liable for seeking an abortion, as well as responsible for the upkeep of the pregnancy, that being a terminated pregnancy (even if wholly natural) could call for an inquiry.  Not only that, should the woman in question travel out of state to recieve the abortion, she is potentially a criminal when she returns.

As it stands (important turn of phrase), through force of law, women's bodies are being commandeered by the state at the behest of another party (the unborn).  A specific onus is being placed, not just a ban of a certain medical procedure.