It doesn't look edible, or smell appetising, and isn't even especially harmful to ingest in most circumstances. Chances are that if I ever did want to eat silica gel, I'd probably have a damn good reason, and a lifetime of being told to not eat it is an obstacle to that.

People can be stupid. Shockingly stupid. Much like the infamous McDonald's coffee case (which turns out to be much more sensible and fair a verdict when you read the details), I would not be surprised if there were a reason for the warning.

Or do you read the Darwin Awards and think they must 'have a damn good reason' for what they did?

One of the stupidest ones I saw, from personal experience, was when the superintendent of my Middle School took over a history class one day to inform us that if a school bully attacks you, and you fight back, you will be suspended/expelled, and the only way to protect yourself from this fate is to passively accept whatever beating the bully offers you by curling into a ball and exposing your back to them.

What a dick! If my children were sent home with a suspension in such a circumstance I would be sure to give them my full support and assurance that they did exactly the right thing.

I may also explain to them that if defending oneself receives the exact same penalty that attacking someone gets it will usually be best to initiate the combat yourself. Particularly if done with no bravado and noncombative body language right up until you strike. Appropraiate places to hit bullies include the testicles, throat, solar plexus, eyes and nose. The nose and testicles are particularly good for humiliating them in front of their peers.

Hmm? Thomas Bayes was a Presbyterian minister, C. S. Peirce was Catholic and Newton was an unorthodox Christian described as "highly religious". I'd be more interested in seeing a list of esteemed rationalists who were not religious compared to such a list that were religious. In any case, it is pretty clear that it is possible to hold rationality and religion in your head at the same time. This is basically how most people operate.

How do you keep track of PDFs of studies?

What constitutes a "choice" in this context is pretty subjective. It may be less confusing to tell someone they could have a choice instead of asserting that they do have a choice. The latter connotes a conscious decision gone awry, and in doing so contradicts the subject's experience that no decision-making was involved.

The book "The Rise of Christianity" by Rodney Stark was an interesting discussion of the rapid growth of the LDS.

The main point was that the LDS like most religions, propagated via relatives and friends. People tend to "convert" when a preponderance of their friends and relatives have converted. It becomes increasingly uncomfortable to resist.

I suspect that atheism is benefiting from this syndrome at the moment.

Missionary work, including LDS, has a phenomenally low success rate. I don't recall it, but from memory a missionary might convert 1-2 people per year based on cold calls. I suspect that missionary work is done, not so much to get converts, as to reinforce the group identity of the missionaries.

Also my main beef with the work is that we learn too little and too slowly of the answers to Harry's questions. (Such as "how do you think with a cat's brains".)

My usual method when confronted with a situation where a speaker appears to be stupid, crazy, or evil is to assume I misunderstood what they said. Usually by the time I understand what the opposite party is saying, I no longer have any problematic affective judgment.

I usually find that I do understand what they are saying and it belongs in one of the neglected categories of 'bullshit' or "<OvercomingBias style nonsense/>".

I think that the big skill here is not being offended. If someone can say something and control your emotions, literally make you feel something you had no intention to feel beforehand, then perhaps it's time to start figuring out why you're allowing people to do this to you.

At a basic level anything someone can say to you is either true or false. If it's true then it's something you should probably consider and accept. If it's false then it's false and you can safely ignore/gently correct/mock the person saying it to you. In any case there really isn't any reason to be offended and especially there is no reason to allow the other person to provoke you to anger or acting without thought.

This isn't the same as never being angry! This is simply about keeping control for yourself over when and why you get angry or offended, rather than allowing the world to determine that for you.

Edit - please disregard this post

Yes, it seems these critiques are more about the validity of the concept of literal omnipotence than about beings that purport to meet that standard. The problem is that literal omnipotence is impossible, and so humans that care about related problems should probably delineate what specific powers a being labeled as "omnipotent" has, rather than remain stuck on the definitional debate.