Just goes to show the human bias in attributing sentience to a thing. If it looks human, it's more likely to have a "soul" than something that looks like an Astromech or a Tin Man.
Getting into the P-zombie dilemma is always a good way to waste time.
I agree that ratings are screwy, but in a different way. I don't see why people can see horrendous acts of violence at an R rating but watching consensual explicit sexual intercourse is NC-17.
Just as sight varies in beings by spectrum and field of view, other senses vary by species and humans lack senses other species and vice versa. Parallel worlds wouldn't be exempt from that.
It's hard to do anything related to relationships that doesn't involve lust.
Seriously, try asking someone out without thinking about the possibility of sex.
No one chooses atheism any more than people choose theism. The belief in the existence or non-existence of deity is something that comes from experience.
And once again I say that atheism is not a religion. It is a singular religious facet.
"When I write a book, I put everything I have into it; so the more I have, the more the books become. Some people get freaked out by them: mostly the people who believe, mistakenly, that fantasy is about escaping reality. To them I say: If you have a problem with reality, you should be spending...
One should typically try to avoid groups that make it a point to say they are fair and balanced. Either they're blatantly lying or they try to uphold it by instituting a false balance:
False balance - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia