I've always wondered how those of a deist bent justify the increasing impotence of God as we discover more things about how the Uiverse works.

I mean a few thousand years ago, apparently you couldn't move for all the burning bushes, plagues, destroying cities, raising zombies..

Now it's like God's pay-as-you-go has run out, and he's a bit strapped for cash.

So Twig, what are all these world ills that are directly attributable to religion? Still waiting for the list and the direct links.

Sex being partly / mainly / solely for procreation a lie? Well which bit? Partly or mainly? How else do you suggest procreating?
If sex isn't partly for procreation, how should we procreate?

40+ million abortions every year from ignoring my religion

They'd just have been, effectively, aborted earlier with Catholic chastity - when a gamete's gone, it's gone!

So, we still don't have 40 million extra people (a good thing IMO) but we've missed out on a whole heap of jiggy fun...

It’s the strangest thing about this church - it is obsessed with sex, absolutely obsessed. Now they will say we, with our permissive society and rude jokes, are obsessed. No, we have a healthy attitude. We like it, it’s fun, it’s jolly; because it’s a primary impulse it can be dangerous and dark and difficult. It’s a bit like food in that respect, only even more exciting. The only people who are obsessed with food are anorexics and the morbidly obese, and that in erotic terms is the Catholic church in a nutshell.

Anyone else think it is weird that the Vatican, (an enclave of sexually repressed, celibate men), feel the need to dictate sexual behaviour for others? As Fry said in his Intelligence squared debate;

This is quite wrong. - you can spend 80 years in church and never hear a sermon about sex. But the teaching is there and has always been there, and now more than ever people act in a way opposed to that teaching, so the differences come to light more often. The church is reacting to the madness of the age, and this includes the tremendous social ills brought by the sexual revolution. Fry would defend the depriving of 80 years of life to over 40 million fetuses each year? He would call broken homes, lack of commitment, absent fathers a mark of great progress in society? He is just scoring points not looking for the truth.

If religious people are so moral, why do they represent such a large proportion of the US prison population?

CJ and IainT, you think people are innately altruistic and empathetic and that lack of religion empowers people to take responsibility for their actions and morality rather and that this is better than blind obedience out of fear.
CJ even calls this his belief.
In a comfortably well-off society, it might appear that way for basic material goods. But look a little deeper: a baby is the complete centre of its own universe, it takes years for it to realize that altruism is morally better rhan selfishness or that the world is indifferent to it and cares nothing for it basically - this reality has to be learned, it is not innate.
On a different level, pick up a history of Africa to see the moral bankruptcy of humans.
It's all very well for a comfy bourgeois to say it's wrong to steal, but put yourself in the shoes of the peasant revolting in 1789 in France for example.
As for religion- free types taking over morality, well I'd say >40 million abortions per year thanks to lack of religious morality is a good first indication of the sort of deadly irresponsibility that god-free morality is bringing to the world.
And I call it morality of convenience because abortion is nearly always convenience, yet it is depriving the thing of 70+ years of life. Think of euthanasia too - countries where old people's homes are obliged to have an office giving advice on assisted suicide - and where "permanent sedation" until death does not need consent. These are all steps towards getting rid of the elderly who are a "burden" rather than in fact a blessing obliging empathy and altruism. Morality of convenience. Give me examples of god-free morality making higher demands of people in the name of the common good.

And finally the idea that people follow god-morality out of fear of hell is daft - the obvious reason to follow it is that it comes from the god who wants our happiness more than we do.

You misunderstand intention. If I have sex without contraception in the way that people wanting babies do you are intending, on the level of the action itself, procreation. Whether this is when the two people are 12 yrs old, pregnant already or 102 years old. This is the intention inherent in the act.