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I actually don't want to discuss religion under this article, but I have to react.
The statement might be insulting, but I'm quite sure it is true - I'm not trying to be politically correct on Slashdot.
(a) Vast majority of muslims are religious idiots. From pools conducted in muslim countries, non trivial portion of people support terrorism, al-Qaeda, or bin Laden ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_attitudes_towards_terrorism#Recent_polls ). That are normal people, not a few fundamentalist idiots that would be an exception in muslim society. This actually is just about terrorism and killing people - to call somebody religious idiot, I don't need him to support terrorism, just support for stoning people for adultery ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoning#Support_for_stoning), insulting Quran, apostasy is enough. Even forcing women to wear burqas, forbidding women to drive cars, to divorce husband, are grounds to call them religious idiots (Don't have statistic for that but I suspect it will be much higher percentage than the percentage of people supporting stoning). Even so called secularized muslims seem to be secularized as long as they don't have the majority in society (just an example from a debate http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r018ohLUuL4&feature=player_detailpage#t=411s). I, based on such data, conclude that vast majority of muslims can be safely called religious idiots. I BY NO MEANS CLAIM, THAT ALL OF THEM ARE, but the portion is great enough.

And as for the contributions from muslims to sicence and culture ... yes they did, what does it have to do with religion and religious idiocy ?

(b) In social studies there can't be any conclusive proof but we have clues. For example statistic about people in prison, atheists are there far less often than religious people: http://www.freethoughtpedia.com/wiki/Percentage_of_atheists . And atheists don't have an imposed twisted sense of morality provided by any abrahamic religion.

I'm trying to be as objective as possible and not stereotypical. If I got the facts wrong please correct me, but I think, that the facts I provided point towards my opinions.

Nobody, as far as I know, has ever claimed that a non-religious person can't perform moral acts as religious people do, merely that they don't.

They claim so, but they are wrong. Atheists generally behave morally far better than, for example, Christians. Christians commit more crimes, kill people more often, spend more time in jail, get divorced at a higher rate (and for Christian conservatives at a significantly higher rate) etc than atheists. Christians generally also have more abortions than does atheists even though the average atheist is more likely to be pro choice than the average Christian.

In reality, Christian beliefs generally lead to more double standards, but not a more moral life. In fact, in almost all measurable ways, atheists lead a more moral life than Christians or just about any religious people.

The fact that people who are guided by magical thinking are less moral than people guided by logic and reason should not be all that surprising. Magical thinking means you can justify just about anything. Think about it, the group of people in the US that is most strongly advocating that abortion should be a crime is the same group of people that have the most abortions! It takes an enormous amount of mental disconnect to behave that stupid.

Name names or be known as a liar. Christians don't hate athiests, we fear them.

I've corrected this on your behalf.

Ever wonder where all that money Christians put in the collection baskets goes?

To the churches. Some of it does trickle down to humanitarian programs, and sometimes there are "Special Collections" in addition to the regular one, usually for some particular charity, but most of that money in the collection plate goes to running the church, not to the poor.

Can you name one single athiest charitable organization? I certainly can't think of one.

You apparently fail at Google, too. There are plenty of non-theistic charities, including several you may have encountered, but didn't realize they aren't non-theistic. Amnesty International? The American Civil Liberties Union? OxFam?
Here's a list: http://freethoughtpedia.com/wiki/Secular_charities

The GOP candidates, except for Ron Paul, seem to think that laws should be made based on religious views.

On the contrary, he thinks that there should be no separation between church and state, and rather that laws should be based on Christian religious views. Ron Paul is pro-life because of his religious views. And, rather than thinking the government shouldn't be involved in private medical decisions, he thinks it should be criminal, and investigated and punished.

Ron Paul also doesn't believe in evolution.

Uhm, no.

Pi is not 3. Putting a striped stick in front of a pregnant horse will not get you a zebra. There is no evidence of a worldwide flood, Noah's ark couldn't've been built as described and still float, and there's no way to get two of every species on a boat like that (let alone seven of every "clean" animal).

Bats aren't birds.

I could go on.

As for history:

There was no census under the conditions described in the New Testament, and no Roman census required people to return to the town in which they were born. There was no exodus of slaves from Egypt. There is no evidence for a 40-year sojourn in the desert. There is no historic evidence for Jesus. And so on. Many of the stories are taken from other cultures (such as the flood, which appears to be based on the tale of Gilgamesh).

The Bible is neither scientifically nor historically accurate. The morals it presents are generally abhorrent. (Stoning your child for disobedience? Very specific rules for slavery? Hardly a basis for a sound morality.)

the word 'faith' and correct me if I am wrong, but if something has no ontological status, you cannot argue for or against it.

Correct... until someone's faith-based beliefs intersect with the material world in the form of specific claims. Then their beliefs can be tested and proven or disproven, including:

* The power of prayer - Disproven by the Harvard Prayer Experiment.

* The creation myth of Genesis, disproven by numerous areas of science

* The origin of native Americans as dictated in the Book of Mormon, disproven by genetic science

* The claims of scientology, disproven by analysis of their e-meters other science fields

Religion has never been content with merely residing in a metaphysical realm, and that's when problems arise.

Letter to Eric Gutkind (partial) Albert Einstein (1954) Translated from the German by Joan Stambaugh...

... The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. These subtilised interpretations are highly manifold according to their nature and have almost nothing to do with the original text. For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them.

In general I find it painful that you claim a privileged position and try to defend it by two walls of pride, an external one as a man and an internal one as a Jew. As a man you claim, so to speak, a dispensation from causality otherwise accepted, as a Jew the priviliege of monotheism. But a limited causality is no longer a causality at all, as our wonderful Spinoza recognized with all incision, probably as the first one. And the animistic interpretations of the religions of nature are in principle not annulled by monopolisation. With such walls we can only attain a certain self-deception, but our moral efforts are not furthered by them. On the contrary.

Now that I have quite openly stated our differences in intellectual convictions it is still clear to me that we are quite close to each other in essential things, ie in our evalutations of human behaviour. What separates us are only intellectual 'props' and `rationalisation' in Freud's language. Therefore I think that we would understand each other quite well if we talked about concrete things.

With friendly thanks and best wishes
Yours, A. Einstein.

Ref: http://freethoughtpedia.com/wiki/Image:Einstein_letter.jpg

The '"insurmountable hostility" between science and religion is a caricature

Not really. Science is based on testable theories and evidence. Faith is belief despite there being evidence, or in many cases in spite of contrary evidence. Science has dispelled everything from evangelical christianity (proving Genesis to be false) to Mormanism (proving Joseph's Smith's revelations are phony through Egyptology and DNA evidence). There's ample evidence to indicate that religion evaporates in the light of science.

The '"insurmountable hostility" between science and religion is a caricature

Not really. Science is based on testable theories and evidence. Faith is belief despite there being evidence, or in many cases in spite of contrary evidence. Science has dispelled everything from evangelical christianity (proving Genesis to be false) to Mormanism (proving Joseph's Smith's revelations are phony through Egyptology and DNA evidence). There's ample evidence to indicate that religion evaporates in the light of science.

No, if this were tried in a court of law, the burden of proof would be on you.

Why are you so enamored with the rules in a court of law? This is not a course of law, and I am not interested in getting into all of the legal reasons this is wrong. As I've said, Lee Strobel has been answered. Here you go:

Here is an example of Strobel missing a basic concept in evidence law: He never addresses the issue of hearsay. Hearsay is an out of court statement offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted. Subject to many exceptions, hearsay is generally inadmissible as evidence. If the gospels are used to prove the truth of its statements, then they are technically hearsay. If they do not fall under a recognized exception, then the statements would be inadmissible. On the whole (I am not going to go line-by-line here), the gospel statements do not qualify under any of the recognized exceptions.

Chapter 2 is entitled "Testing the Eyewitness Evidence," yet he never once mentions the hearsay problem or that the eyewitness accounts are that of unavailable witnesses whose statements would be inadmissible in court because the declarants could not be cross-examined.

The same would apply to Paul and Damascus:

What evidence can you bring forth that this is so? Were those that were with him on drugs also?

Looks like you are shifting the burden of proof again -- so, what is your evidence that he wasn't, or that he wasn't surrounded by men on drugs? All of this, again, assuming the veracity of the document itself, which I don't accept either.

Why would I start out by doubting this? Because it is an extraordinary claim -- I don't know about you, but I don't often hear disembodied voices, and people who do are generally locked up. When a group of people tells me they saw something (like a UFO), I have to wonder where they all got the idea, but it doesn't mean I immediately believe in aliens.

Name someone from that time who is as well known to as many people as Jesus Christ or the apostle Paul.

Nope, I'm out of patience for this strange ad-populum. Know what even more people believe in? Violence! Surely, there must be something to it...

I think the biblical definition of evil and yours are different. What, in your estimation is the essence of evil?

I don't think I have to provide one, since you indeed agreed with me. You said:

Of course they are not evil, but lost, like sheep in the wilderness.

Either retract that statement, or admit the Bible has a flaw. You really don't have a third option there.

Yes, it does in a big way, especially for those who have no hope of eternal life.

The point is that humans invented the idea of eternal life because they don't like the thought of dying.

Of course, most people haven't thought it through -- do you really want to live forever? How long would it be before you'd watched every movie, read every book, and thought every thought you could possibly think? And then what?

And would it still be you? Think about yourself when you were five years old. Was that really you? Chances are, not a single atom of your body is the same, and your personality is very likely quite different, you don't play with the same toys, you read very different books (assuming you were reading at five)... On what basis do you call yourself the same person now that you were then? Wouldn't it be fair to say you're a changed person?

But that wasn't that long ago, relative to eternity. A thousand years from now, ten thousand, eighty billion, will you still in any way be the same person?

If you aren't, what's the point, really, of wanting eternal life, since it won't be you living it? If you are the same person, don't you think that'd get really boring a

Also, Norwegians go to hell.

I found this essay on Free Will which I tend to agree with. Any time someone deviates from what is considered a normal human desire, that becomes grounds for clinical diagnosis of mental issues, so ultimately the choices people make are extremely predictable and not very "free."

The changes MUST result in a viable individual.

Exactly, which is why Crocoducks roam our streets, eating bananas dipped in peanut butter made by witches and ergo God is a white guy in white robes with gold piping.

http://freethoughtpedia.com/wiki/Atheism

http://freethoughtpedia.com/wiki/Atheism_is_a_belief

http://freethoughtpedia.com/wiki/Atheism

http://freethoughtpedia.com/wiki/Atheism_is_a_belief

http://freethoughtpedia.com/wiki/Atheism

http://freethoughtpedia.com/wiki/Atheism_is_a_belief

http://freethoughtpedia.com/wiki/Atheism

http://freethoughtpedia.com/wiki/Atheism_is_a_belief

Personally, I'd rather not have another president in office who doesn't believe in evolution and thinks man and dinosaurs walked hand in hand. I don't care if he fellates the Constitution every night before bedtime, I'm not voting for a fundamentalist, evangelical Christian who thinks superstition takes priority over science, and nobody in their right mind can afford to have another leader in office who hears voices in his head, even if they have a few good ideas.

So how much gold do YOU have? If we moved over to the gold standard, would you be more or less rich? Oh wait, you think you'll be allowed to exchange your dollars for gold? Really? How many dollars per ounce of gold? Oh gold is at ~$800/oz so you think that's what you'd be trading at? Are you serious? Do you have any idea how much virtual "dollars" there are in circulation and what the price of gold would go to if there was ANY realistic talk of moving to a gold standard? You need to learn a little more about the monetary system before you start jumping on Ron Paul's goofy gold standard bandwagon. It makes about as much sense as any of his other fundy libertarian rantings. Seriously. Do your research. Ask yourself if we abolished half the government agencies Ron Paul proposes, what that would do to society? Ask yourself if you REALLY, HONESTLY believe that privatizing everything in creation would result in better, more efficient service? Seriously? Think about it.

I appreciate Ron Paul's attention and respect for the Constitution, but that doesn't mean I can forgive the fact that he's a raving nutty, fundamentalist, evangelical who believes the earth is 6000 years old. We already tried a fundy evangelical in the white house who slid into power by hoodwinking single-issue voters once. We don't need it again.

If you're going to look into Ron Paul, look into all of him. Not just the romantic idea that he thinks pot should be legal and nobody should pay taxes. Look at whether he could get anything done; whether his ideology can become dangerous (like it has with Bush) and whether or not his ideas make sense. Aside from a few abstract, conceptual notions such as Constitutionalism, most everything else he suggests is wildly unrealistic. The guy has no plan, only a few buttons that seem to give his supporters instant hardons.

The problem with Ron Paul is that he's clearly admitted he is a creationist and rejects the theory of evolution, and aside from that there's no substantive evidence in the history of human civilization that his brand of anarcho capitalist libertarianism would work in our society.

Other than that, what's there not to like about Ron Paul?

Normally, I'd say faith is faith and science is science, but theology and science seems to be constantly banging heads. As a result, it's unfortunate that we need these kinds of resources to help educate people on the importance of this ideological conflict. I've found FreeThoughtPedia to be a good place to direct people to who need info to engage in the debate. Whether you're trying to show that the theory of evolution is a fact, showcase how theology constantly invades society or offer hard-hitting questions about the legitimacy of scripture, FTP is a good resource to make superstitious ideologues tuck their tails between their cloven hoofs.

Normally, I'd say faith is faith and science is science, but theology and science seems to be constantly banging heads. As a result, it's unfortunate that we need these kinds of resources to help educate people on the importance of this ideological conflict. I've found FreeThoughtPedia to be a good place to direct people to who need info to engage in the debate. Whether you're trying to show that the theory of evolution is a fact, showcase how theology constantly invades society or offer hard-hitting questions about the legitimacy of scripture, FTP is a good resource to make superstitious ideologues tuck their tails between their cloven hoofs.

Normally, I'd say faith is faith and science is science, but theology and science seems to be constantly banging heads. As a result, it's unfortunate that we need these kinds of resources to help educate people on the importance of this ideological conflict. I've found FreeThoughtPedia to be a good place to direct people to who need info to engage in the debate. Whether you're trying to show that the theory of evolution is a fact, showcase how theology constantly invades society or offer hard-hitting questions about the legitimacy of scripture, FTP is a good resource to make superstitious ideologues tuck their tails between their cloven hoofs.

Normally, I'd say faith is faith and science is science, but theology and science seems to be constantly banging heads. As a result, it's unfortunate that we need these kinds of resources to help educate people on the importance of this ideological conflict. I've found FreeThoughtPedia to be a good place to direct people to who need info to engage in the debate. Whether you're trying to show that the theory of evolution is a fact, showcase how theology constantly invades society or offer hard-hitting questions about the legitimacy of scripture, FTP is a good resource to make superstitious ideologues tuck their tails between their cloven hoofs.

Exactly, that is why all religions need to be banned immediately! They are all nothing more than scams!

No, religion shouldn't be banned. That's not freedom. But there should be a more open dialogue on the legitimacy and value of religion in modern society. You may wonder why someone who isn't a theist cares much about religion, but take a look at the link and you'll see that religion does quite a bit to infringe on the rights and freedom of everyone. The last thing atheists want to do is stop that infringement by employing more restrictions. We just want to be able to have our say and let people judge for themselves whether these things are delusions and whether there's really any great evidence that suggests they're of that much benefit to society.

It's always amusing to see how people spin the Bible. The bible is loaded with inconsistencies and contradictions. And whenever these are pointed out, there is the standard set of excuses: Hey, that's out of context! or That's a metaphor/parable or only applies to Jews/before Jesus showed up.

The funny thing is, the same theists take other passages and suggest they are meant to be interpreted literally and do apply. Every sect of Christianity, and there are over 30,000 different groups, each have their own distinct array of scripture they "pick and choose" as some passages to interpret literally, and others to interpret more creatively.

You guys can't have it both ways. If the old testament doesn't matter, then neither does original sin! And therefore Jesus' sacrifice means nothing. None of it makes any sense unless you begin to recognize the obvious fact that this is a collection of disparate stories, mixed in with some history, that has been an ongoing evolution of very early pagan beliefs and mythology.

Oooh, more good Bible advice:

"And thou shalt eat it [as] barley cakes, and thou shalt bake it with dung that cometh out of man, in their sight."- Ezekiel 4:12

"For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it." - Matthew 19:12

Actually agnostic is a subset of atheist.