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to incite violence yes and it is. What matters is intent. How do you prove intent? With a jury.

Meant to say, I disagree with this. Freedom of speech means the right to say unpopular things.
Your right to call Muhammad a pedophile should not be constrained because some people are violent.

You may not remember this event. The attacker was acquitted. I thought the judge's reasoning was insane.
https://friendlyatheist.patheo...
https://abovethelaw.com/2012/0...

Forget about the ISPs, the big players are Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon. Those four can do more for censorship of the internet than any ISP can.

>Actually the republicans donate more money then democrats do, often to help the poor and charities.

really where are the numbers ? And relatively more or absolutely more ?

Better yet, what's the effectiveness of their charitable spending.? And what's the spending really on?

Because you know, those Conservatives often have their charities being less than perfect.

Not to mention that Hobby Lobby business. Which the usual suspects defended.

Yes, the one that didn't happen so bad that Tea Party groups ended up with a $3.5M settlement.

As Donald Trump says, Settlements don't equal guilt.

Of course, Donald Trump's the one who settled it, so....

Keep on being a dumb fuck though, it's clearly working for you.

You're the one who's expecting us to forget the facts.

Sorry, but Donald Trump's got no credibility when it comes to pandering to the Tea Party.

The flowchart is never wrong.

I'd be the first to reject the traditional notions of what a man or a women is or should feel, but that's not how people experiencing it describe it and I'm curious to know what you base the claim on.

Yes, yes it is, and perhaps you should do some more reading before making declarative statements, since mine are based on things people have actually said while yours is based on what you imagine that people have not said.

And yet home schooled kids nearly always beat the pants off of public school kids performance wise (70-80th percentile, or 20-30% higher than public school)....

There is actually no data that supports your view.
If your citing the Rudner study, read this section, from the actual study:
This study does not demonstrate that home schooling is superior to public or private schools. It should not be cited as evidence that our public schools are failing. It does not indicate that children will perform better academically if they are home schooled.

"money makes you moral, and the more you have, the better a person you are".

pure bullshit.

more realistic: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/d...

best part:

The truth, contra Francisco’s assertions, is that profit incentives distort morality; they always have and always will. Rand seems to think that the aristocracy of money and the aristocracy of pull are non-overlapping magisteria, but in fact, capitalism has always been about influence and connections. People play favorites, give sweetheart deals to their friends, and scratch each other’s backs. And when large corporations are left unwatched, what we see time and again is that those connections develop into collusion, conspiracy and fraud at the expense of both customers and potential rivals. Free and fair competition isn’t something that just happens: it only arises and persists when a watchdog is there to make sure everyone’s playing by the rules.

This is all quite recent history. The "traditional doctrine" that fetuses have the same moral value as a child is younger than the Happy Meal.

Not according to the US Catholic Bishops:

* http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/human-life-and-dignity/abortion/respect-for-unborn-human-life.cfm

Going back to Aquinas (~1250 AD):

He that strikes a woman with child does something unlawful: wherefore if there results the death either of the woman or of the animated fetus, he will not be excused from homicide, especially seeing that death is the natural result of such a blow.

* http://www.newadvent.org/summa/3064.htm#article8

Records go back to the first century AD condemning it:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_thought_on_abortion#Early_Christianity

So for the Catholic (and probably Orthodox) Church, it's been there since the beginning. (I'll let the Protestants try to justify their own position.)

I absolutely do not understand this OBSESSION with fetuses, [...]

Sure, let me help you out.

Before the late 1970s, the obsession with fetuses was an entirely Roman Catholic thing. At the time of Roe v Wade, most evangelical Protestants in the US were fine with legal access to abortion at least for health reasons.

In the fallout from Watergate, conservatives got into bed with fundamentalists, taking over both the Republican Party and the evangelical church. The previous wedge issue, segregation, was no longer viable, so to get Catholics onside, abortion was chosen as the new wedge issue.

This is all quite recent history. The "traditional doctrine" that fetuses have the same moral value as a child is younger than the Happy Meal.

If this is news to you, look at what's now happening with contraception. In 20 years time, people may find it hard to believe that most American evangelical Protestants were fine with contraception at the turn of the 21st century.

Where is equality mentioned in the bible?

Quite a few places. Just a couple search results

http://bible.knowing-jesus.com...
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/c...

"Equality" is not part of Christianity.

Except, of course, in all the parts where it talks about it.

But only retarded leftist westerners believe we're equal in the eyes of Mother Nature.

"Retarded leftist westerner" is a pretty accurate description of Christians.

In the same way most organized criminals in Sweden are of certain ethnicities, most leftist westerners are of Christian tradition. You might even go as far to say that it's only in Christian nations do you find retarded leftist westerners

Remember MLK? Christian. He also said this

This Christian teaches Sunday school. He also plays political blackface to mock conservatives.

And then there's the Catholic Pope himself getting into a little twitter spat with Trump.

And then they'll turn around and spit at Christians for "not believing in science,"

Well, that's another funny thing about Christians (though they aren't the only religion that does this, of course): they love to turn on their own. The one thing Christians hate more than a non-Christian is another Christian who doesn't follow the exact same sect or interpret the Bible the exact same way as they do.

I know that they have done mass bans on alt-right accounts, which considering their white nationalist views, doesn't surprise me. I haven't heard of mass bans towards basic conservatives(brietbart is not basic conservative, btw. They fall into the alt-right category), so I'd need some evidence of that before I can make any judgements.

As for Sargon, he DID break a twitter rule:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/b...

From the country that invented feminist snow plowing.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/m...

Oops. ... the Economist, Cited here ...

Let's see... An organization's management wishes for the lower-level employees of the organization to seek the management's approval before publishing the organization's documents outside of the organization... Yes, outrageous... Impeach now!

Science. Allow me to repeat that - Science. You are apparently celebrating that when Science is not in lockstep with Policy, it must be suppressed.

There was nothing in the memo about "science" — nor about "suppression", actually. It is all your and your team's fear-mongering.

You and your team are rapidly becoming the policy equivalent of 1930's Bolsheviks [...] See Lysenkoism

Wait a minute. It is You and your team, that sought civil and even criminal prosecution of people disagreeing with the modern-day Lysenkos. For treason and crimes against humanity, no less. And you are telling me about Bolsheviks? See Projection.

Since the single largest group of evangelicals (about 16 million), the Southern Baptist Convention, was specifically created because slavery was more important than jesus and only got around to condemning slavery, jim crow, etc just 20 years ago it isn't so crazy to believe that about evangelicals.

Also, they are total hypocrites about abortion. The SBC supported full abortion rights at least until 1976.

Not disputing that FRC is icky, but I wouldn't quote SPLC on anything these days, given that they have decreed Maajid Nawaz (who is actually a Muslim himself) to be an "anti-Muslim extremist"; and among the reasons given for that designation was this response of his to the whole "depiction of Muhammad" controversy.

You seem to be asking a different question than the above. The reason why crooked is preferable to crazy is about incentives - a crooked person is at least rational, and in order to sustain their crooked ways they need the system to function. Maybe not function well, or function efficiently, but if things really break down then they have lost everything.

With a crazy person, sometimes you have no idea what they're going to do. Other times you do know, but what they're after is so contrary to the present working of government that the result is unpredictable or otherwise abhorrent.

The crook vs crazy thing has come up before, so I went looking for a reference to the 1991 gubernatorial race in Louisiana between the notoriously corrupt incumbent and the white supremacist... I found this article which does a pretty good job of covering it.

don't know how to say this as nicely as possible, but..
are we sure we are talking about the same book?

I'm not the person you're replying to (obviously), but yes, you're almost certainly referring to the book with Acts 15 in it. Wikipedia has more on the Noachide laws if you're curious; this is absolutely settled.

Oh, it's also the same book which gives a method for terminating a pregnancy via magic. Hopefully it's not the same book that cynical politicians have subtly rewritten to suit their agenda...

Tell that to all the Star Wars misfits around here. Grown men still obsessed with a plaything of their youth.

And how is that any more weird than grown people believing they must modify their behaviour according to the whims of some guy who's set himself up as a priest/prophet/grand-poobah and who says that if they don't obey his imaginary friend (whom only he can see and hear) will destroy them in a rain of fire and brimstone and then send them to spend eternity in an inferno for whose existence there isn't a shred of proof? Say what you will about Lucas hounds, making Jediism the fourth largest 'religion' in the UK was sheer genius and one of the best demonstrations of how nonsensical religion really is other than Pastafarianism which is also pretty cool. In the UK they've actually got prisoners suing the prison system for failing to recognise Jediism as a religion. Some 2.6% of the city of Bristol claimed to be Jedi in a census. In Germany a guy actually got his local council to allow him to hang out an official road sign directing people to his Pastafarian church. The sign also contains information about when Pastafarian services are held. The thing looks awesome next to the church signs: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/f...

She hasn't been particularly as overtly anti-vaccine as she could be, which is good, but she has given some pretty wishy-washy answers on the topic of alternative medicine and pandering to the corporate conspiracy crowd. At a time when she should be giving a scientific answer she gave a politican's one; something she would no doubt attack other politicians for doing if the topic was climate change (and rightfully so of course).

Although, on the topic of genetically engineered crops, she has just been consistently in the wrong, and the recent thing about 'subjecting children to wifi' was pretty silly as well.

She's in favor of "homeopathic medicine",

That seems to be a little simplistic, given that she apparently even got the Green Party to remove all mentions of homeopathy from their platform. That said, pure placebo's (such as homeopathy, VR and even the colour of pills) can have their use either separately from (in case of e.g. a hypochondriac) or in combination with regular treatment.

and says that nuclear energy is, "dirty, dangerous and expensive, and should be precluded on all of those counts", when the actual data shows just the opposite.

If you take into account all of the government subsidies, including covering the industry's uninsurable risks, I'm not sure whether at least the cost argument holds.

Furthermore, she wants "a moratorium on GMOs", which wikipedia states, "There is a scientific consensus[147][148][149][150] that currently available food derived from GM crops poses no greater risk to human health than conventional food".

While she indeed argues against it because of safety arguments, there are plenty of other reasons why many people are against GMOs. Just look at the majority of comments on the Slashdot story regarding one of the "GMOs are safe" studies.

I REALLY want to vote third party, but we need some third party candidates who are not anti-science crackpots.

Bashing using arguments that are either easily refuted, or at the very least less clear cut than presented, is anti-science. Name-calling while posting as AC is just silly.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/e...

Here you go, now that I'm not at work and have time, it took me all of 5 seconds on google to find and article that references pretty much all the research on the topic and confirms my conclusion: Palestinians are descended from the same group as Jewish people.

Sam Harris had a podcast which contains an audio clip of an imam teaching that it's OK to kill gays, that it was the compassionate thing to do. I got the impression from the 'cast that the clip was from an imam in the Orlando area, and that it was taken a week or so before the shooting.

(I can't link the specific podcast at the moment because the site that I read it at is temporarily offline.)

We have often thought that the right to practice religion is absolute, but I'm wondering now if it should be.

Does being a religion give you a license to say anything you like? We have laws against hate speech even though we have free speech in general, and we have laws against speech that encourage a specific crime.

We guarantee freedom of religion, but we also guarantee freedom of life.

Which one has priority?

Maybe it's time to prioritize freedom of life over the freedom of religion. Maybe we should say categorically that you *can't* preach that it's OK to kill people of a certain class, whatever the class might be.

This would apply to any religion, even Christian ones ("thou shall not suffer a witch to live"), and it would apply to all cases: people who leave the religion are free to go unmolested (Islam, Scientology), people that the religion dislikes would be free to go unmolested (Christianity, Islam, Hinduism), and so on.

So for example, I would cite The Westboro Baptist church claiming that gays should be put to death, or evangelists calling on their flock to assasinate abortion providers.

As a country, I think we might legitimately say "not in this country" to these extreme views, and in these specific cases maybe intervene and say "no, you can't preach that even if your religion believes it".

Personal safety should be absolute, and the right to religion isn't more important.

In the aftermath of the Orlando shooting, imams haven't stopped teaching that gays should be killed.

Perhaps they should.

Even without the Internet, this guy could've simply attended a talk by an imam:

killing gays according to Islamic law should be done "out of compassion"

(This sort of bigoted hatred is Ok, but arguing that sayers of such stuff should be carefully watched would get you banned from Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit.)

FBI Director James Comey echoed President Obama's statement that he does not think the Orlando shooting was a plot directed from outside of the U.S.

At least, he is not blaming an anti-Islam movie by some weirdo...

I know, this stuff is crazy.

The good news is that there’s 50 less pedophiles in this world, because, you know, these homosexuals are a bunch of disgusting perverts and pedophiles.

[...]

But these people all should have been killed, anyway, but they should have been killed through the proper channels, as in they should have been executed by a righteous government that would have tried them, convicted them, and saw them executed.

[...]

That’s what the Bible says, plain and simple.

Oh wait, wrong religion.

Because the crazy imam calling for the killing of gays is totally representative of Islam.

But the crazy pastor calling for the killing of gays is just some nut who has nothing to do with Christianity.

Oh FFS, don't blame Jimmy Carter. He was a nuclear engineer in the navy, and actually did some work INSIDE a running nuclear reactor undergoing a meltdown. When Three Mile Island popped he was one of the experts on site.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/s...

http://www.theglobeandmail.com...

couple more from same author:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/f...\

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/f...

The point is simple.
Yes, the rote methods we learned by memorization work.
But they can be damn hard to explain, especially to young children.
All too often they don't know WHAT they are doing, or WHY they are doing it.
They just know it works.

that's not a recipe for success down the road when the math gets harder.
these methods take the opposite approach: teaching kids the math we ACUTALLY do in our heads (even when using the rote algorithm methods of carrying or borrowing), to ensure that the kids actually learn the WHAT and WHY of number manipulation, not just the HOW . building that innate number sense now, when they are young and just learning numbers, will make math easier for them down the road.

couple more from same author:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/f...\

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/f...

The point is simple.
Yes, the rote methods we learned by memorization work.
But they can be damn hard to explain, especially to young children.
All too often they don't know WHAT they are doing, or WHY they are doing it.
They just know it works.

that's not a recipe for success down the road when the math gets harder.
these methods take the opposite approach: teaching kids the math we ACUTALLY do in our heads (even when using the rote algorithm methods of carrying or borrowing), to ensure that the kids actually learn the WHAT and WHY of number manipulation, not just the HOW . building that innate number sense now, when they are young and just learning numbers, will make math easier for them down the road.

It's only looney if you don't know what you're talking about.

To correct that deficiency, I suggest reading these:

http://www.salon.com/2015/11/2...

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/f...

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/f...

It's only looney if you don't know what you're talking about.

To correct that deficiency, I suggest reading these:

http://www.salon.com/2015/11/2...

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/f...

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/f...

The American College of Pediatricians is a right-wing shill group with perhaps 200 members. The real pediatricians' organization in the United States is the American Academy of Pediatricians, with around 60,000 members and which supports transition as an appropriate intervention for transgender people.

another AC that doesn't know the difference between a Learning Objective (or goal, or standard) and the word "curriculum".

the point 2nd and 3rd math problem btw, is to learn how to break a problem into its parts, and illustrate the same process you use in your head (or most people do, being a stupid AC, that may be too much credit) when you simplify or chunk up a more difficult problem to solve it.

borrowing and carrying 1's works great on paper, and a quick simple process for solving math. on paper.
for many students its learning by rote, without understanding. its a magic black box little different from a calculator.
how does it work? they don't know. they just 'know' (they trust or believe really) that it works.

but its not so good in your head, and not so good at developing an intrinsic almost instinctual understanding of math.
which is what the goal of that particular lesson is. and which that process is good for.

this lesson isn't merely about teaching you had to add and subtract, but about building an intuitive foundation of numbers that other lessons down the road can build upon. merely learning the rote algorithm of carrying and borrowing 1's doesn't accomplish that. if you go farther in the study of math you need that foundation, and if you don't have it cause you never moved past that rote algorithm, you wont go far.
check out http://www.patheos.com/blogs/f...
it explains even better than I.

On the surface, it seems ridiculous. The top makes sense; the bottom is silly; screw you, Common Core!

Except that the top doesn’t make sense, the bottom does, and the connection to Common Core is completely misunderstood. (Says this math teacher.)

Here’s what’s going on: The top is how most of us learned subtraction. I’m sure your teachers taught you what was going on mathematically, but do you really remember what they said? Probably not. For us, it’s just an algorithm. You can do it without thinking. You hope there’s no “borrowing” of numbers involved, but if you had to do it by hand, you could probably pull it off.

The problem with that method is that if I ask students to explain why it works, they’d have a really hard time explaining it to me. They might be able to do the computation, but they don’t get the math behind it. For some people, that’s fine. For math teachers, that’s a problem because it means a lot of students won’t be able to grasp other math concepts in the future because they never really developed “number sense.”

That’s where the bottom solution comes into play. I admit it’s totally confusing but here’s what it’s saying:

If you want to subtract 12 from 32, there’s a better way to think about it. Forget the algorithm. Instead, count up from 12 to an “easier” number like 15. (You’ve gone up 3.) Then, go up to 20. (You’ve gone up another 5.) Then jump to 30. (Another 10). Then, finally, to 32. (Another 2.)

I know. That’s still ridiculous. Well, consider this: Suppose you buy coffee and it costs $4.30 but all you have is a $20 bill. How much change should the barista give you back? (Assume for a second the register is broken.)

You sure as hell aren’t going to get out a sheet of paper and do this:

Instead, you’d just figure it out this way: It’d take 70 cents to get to $5 and another $15 to get to $20 so you should get back $15.70.

That’s it. That’s the sort of math most of us do on a regular basis and it’s exactly the sort of thinking the “new” way in the picture is attempting to explain. Granted that was an *awful* example to use, but that’s the idea. If students can get a handle on thinking this way instead of just plugging

If you look at what the Hammonds have done over the last twenty years or so, what the "militia" up there has done, etc; These clowns got off easy. Because they quote "scripture" and wear cowboy boots, they have gotten the soft approach from law enforcement, and everyone knows it. Just imagine if something similar had taken place, except the "militia" was composed of African Americans, say, in Oakland or Memphis? It would have been a blood bath from the get go. Also, why do these militia/patriot types think its their prerogative to use lethal force or violence to get what they want? WTF?!? That is what criminals do. Isn't this obvious enough?

http://wp.production.patheos.c...

Illiberals used to be rather smug about Academia being Left-leaning — as if it validated their claims of being intellectually superior to their opponents.

Well, folks, you own this professor. And this one too.

And, of course, this whole bunch as well.

Much bullshit here.

There is so much semite in modern jews, even in those long of european descent, it's easily identified with cheap DNA sequencing, as any customer of FTDNA, Ancestry or 23andme can see and test for themselves. As for the Cohen and Levi bloodlines they are alive and well and easily verified by Y-DNA identification of haplogroups such as J-P58* or J-M410* (source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm... ). Same goes for a lot of mitochondrial DNA haplogroups of course. And the results are applicable directly to Palestinians as well, since Palestinian Arabs and Jews are genetically indistinguishable and form a single population.

But then I suspect you already know you're full of shit and are just trolling.

Socialists are getting their bread buttered by chinese money

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/d...

Also, Josephus mentions Jesus in his historical texts.

Josephus was born after Jesus died. The historicity of his writings are suspect.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/c...

Also, the two (2) references to Jesus that Josephus makes were almost certainly scribal additions, added much later by someone who was not Josephus.

"Josephus was born after Jesus died, so in the most charitable interpretation, he is simply passing along second-hand information. More damning, scholars almost universally agree that this was not original to Josephus. He was a Jew, not a Christian, and this isn’t what he would’ve written. Also, the passage interrupts the flow of the book at this point (that is, the book would read better if this passage were removed), and it is briefer than similar summaries in the rest of the work. This is what you’d expect from a later addition.
From the Jewish standpoint, Josephus was a traitor. Formerly a Jewish commander, he defected to the Roman side during the First Jewish-Roman War in around 67, and his history was written in Rome. Jews had little interest in copying his works to keep them in circulation, and it was mostly Christians who copied them. They might have been motivated to “improve” Josephus.
The earliest copy of the Testimonium Flavianum is from Eusebius (324 CE or earlier). That it is traceable back to Eusebius raises concerns. He is not considered an especially reliable historian, and it’s possible that he added this paragraph.
The second passage is a bit long, so let me summarize. Ananus was named the new high priest. He was eager to establish his authority, and he sentenced a group of men to death, one of whom was James the brother of Jesus. There was an outcry against this execution (perhaps it was hasty or was built on insufficient evidence—the text isn’t specific), and concerned citizens petitioned the Roman procurator to rein in Ananus. The procurator agreed and removed Ananus from the high priesthood, “and made Jesus, the son of Damneus, high priest.”
Let’s return to James, one of the unfortunates executed by stoning. The text says:
[Ananus] assembled the Sanhedrin of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others
While this doesn’t celebrate the miracles of Jesus, it does at least establish the existence of Jesus Christ in the first century, since the book was written in about 93 CE. However, David Fitzgerald (Nailed, p. 58–61) summarizes a Richard Carrier argument that makes an intriguing case that this isn’t what it seems to be.
The first problem is that this isn’t how other accounts describe the death of James the Just, the brother of Jesus Christ and first bishop of Jerusalem.
Next, notice the clumsy sentence structure:
“the brother of Jesus,
who was called the Christ,
whose name was James ”
rather than simply “the brother of Jesus, whose name was James.” Imagine if “who was called the Christ” was originally a marginal note in a copy that was merged into the manuscript by a later scribe. Scholars can point to many examples of these scribal insertions. In the form that we have it, it’s like a chatty email that drops “and then I saw Jesus” into a rather boring summary of a trip to the mall. Surely the reader of Josephus would say, “What?? Who cares about James? Go back and elaborate on that Christ bit!” This is what journalists call “burying the lead.”
The argument for that phrase being an addition goes from intriguing to convincing when we consider how the passage ends. Who replaced the hotheaded Ananus? It was “Jesus, the son of Damneus.” (Don’t forget that Jesus or Yeshua was a popular name at this time.)
Before, you

Evangelical originally referred to protestant churches in general, excepting those that were Catholic in all but name - that is, the ones without assigned "sales territories" were evangelical. This meant successful churches had to "evangelize" in order to grow the flock, and in a nation where almost everyone was already attending one church or another, this meant churches became successful by attracting people away from other churches, often of the same faith. Much marketing, entertainment, and socializing ensued. When "hellfire and brimstone" sermons were in fashion, evangelical churches might seem very conservative if you judged by their sermons, but that was just the fashion. The term has become non-technical over time, but still means "working to attract new membership" as it's core. That's the sense in which people speak of "an evangelical Pope" - no longer an oxymoron as it once would have been.

Here's a long-winded piece on the distinctions. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/r... I think the following captures the distinction well:

The distinctive hallmarks of post-1925 fundamentalism are 1) adding to those essentials of Christianity non-essentials such as premillennial eschatology, 2) âoebiblical separationâ as the duty of every Christian to refuse fellowship with people who call themselves Christians but are considered doctrinally or morally impure, 3) a chronically negative and critical attitude toward culture including non-fundamentalist higher education, 4) emphatic anti-evolution, anti-communist, anti-Catholic and anti-ecumenical attitudes and actions (including elevation of young earth creationism and American exceptionalism as markers of authentic Christianity), 5) emphasis on verbal inspiration and technical inerrancy of the Bible as necessary for real Christianity (including exclusion of all biblical criticism and, often, exclusive use the KJV), and 6) a general tendency to require adherence to traditional lifestyle norms (hair, clothes, entertainment, sex roles, etc.).

My grandparents were fundies in that sense. The perhaps surprising thing was, they weren't all that devout - they never really talked about church except on Sundays, and while their morals were certainly set by this, it wasn't their main hobby. Still, in any discussion of religion, they had great certainty, and they went to a church that emphasized literal interpretation, witnessing to spread the faith, and the like. Really creeped me out when I would go there as a kid when visiting them.

Fundamentalists point to Lakewood Church as the example of the distinction from their side. A church that most would consider evangelical, that "rarely mentions Jesus, and never mentions sin" (to quote from a fundie rant), that is incredibly successful by any objective measure, mostly by avoiding everything quoted above and focusing on an entertaining and uplifting social experience. It's a pattern followed by many evangelical churches, often described as "up with people! and, by the the way, Jesus". This is religion with solid mainstream appeal. Fundies are generally a subset of evangelicals, but they don't like to see it that way, as separation from churches like Lakewood is a big deal to them.

Did everyone forget that many CEO's show signs of psychopathy? (now called something more P.C., like antisocial personality disorder) Some sources:
Forbes
Patheos
arts.mic
thestar

Is anyone really surprised that CEOs don't show the slightest regard for the well-being of the lives they can impact the most?

It would probably look something like this with the tagline "Encryption? I'll break right through that defence."

The studies that show homeschooling was better were skewed badly.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/l...

Sorry your experience was bad. Most are not like that.

Who really knows what most homeschooling experiences are like. There are studies and anecdotes out there saying that homeschooling is great, but don't count on them to be reliable. Think of how difficult it has to be to try to do a decent study of homeschooling versus public education. You have to control for the quality of the schools children would otherwise have attended, for the home environment, for the personal drive of the children themselves, and more. If you were able to do all that, it might show that homeschooling makes a big difference (either positive or negative), or doesn't make that much difference overall on average.

Even if you homeschooling was shown to be a decisive, positive factor on average, it would still be important to figure out whether it makes sense in a particular case (as the story submitter seems to be trying to do). That would require taking into consideration a lot of factors not identified in the original post. What kind of sacrifices will this entail for the parents? Are they looking at someone walking away from a lucrative career? Are the parents willing and able to commit to the work of creating socializing opportunities? Are they prepared to purchase materials for a full curriculum and developing the skills needed to teach them? Are they turning away from a good school system with significant opportunities for stimulating mental growth?

These are hard questions, and a place like /. cannot answer them for these parents. Truth is, it may be hard for them to really answer these questions honestly.

However, it's obvious these parents care about their child's education, and are not completely sold on the ability of their school system to provide their son with what he needs. Before deciding, they should at least consider their full range of options.

Public schooling, private or charter schooling, and homeschooling may all be options for these parents to consider. But, they should also consider options such as public schooling plus after-school and weekend enrichment activities, plus a commitment to being involved in their child's education. Simple things like reading with their child regularly, making sure homework is done quickly, playing games, going to the library often, and limiting screen time are likely to have a big impact with little expense. Outside activities such as sports, music, or drama can help the child develop new interests and skills without being burdensome in terms of cost and time. Getting involved through the school's PTA or PTSA, or in local school advisory committees, can also be a way for these parents to have some input toward making sure the school system is able to meet their son's needs.

Maybe at least trying homeschooling is the right choice here (perhaps because of school conditions or because marital peace hinges on it). But, if the goal is simply to provide the best education for their son by whatever means makes the most sense for their situation, then there are many options that should be considered too.

Your dumb wife versus decades of teaching experience and tested/proven techniques.

Home schooled children, on average, score in the 70-80th percentile on achievement tests.
Very few educational fads are "tested" and even fewer are "proven".

Here is an article that provides an overview of home schooling results.
And for balance, here is an alternative viewpoint.

Disclaimer: My kids attend public school, but I do a lot of supplemental home schooling on the weekends, focusing on stuff the schools don't teach: programming, robotics, electronics, wood and metal working, survival skills, etc.

Mother Theresa was a closeted atheist:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/d...

Christopher Hitchens certainly hated her.

Mother Theresa was a closeted atheist:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/d...

It seems to me she was more of a closet agnostic.

Mother Theresa was a closeted atheist:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/d...

You will find that all of those quotes except that of George Mason are fraudulent.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/w...

The actual Thomas Jefferson quote is, “No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms [within his own lands or tenements]“

The George Washington quote isn't found anywhere but on Second Amendment activist sites. It doesn't appear anywhere in Washington's papers. The first quote, which you attribute to Alexander Hamilton, is usually attributed to Samuel Adams. The only problem is, Adams never said it either.

That's the thing about this Second Amendment "movement", which as I said, started in the 1980s. They lie. They make stuff up. Maybe they don't realize that people can check these things, or maybe they don't care. As I said above, it tells you everything you need to know about the intellectual honesty of the pro-gun movement.

You'd be a little weird too if your biology teacher had focused more on creationism than evolution by natural selection.

When society is outright hostile towards atheists, I'm not surprised that atheists seek to congregate into groups or form Atheist Defence Leagues.

Example: It's dangerous for children to know atheism exists, says Illinois state legislator. Citation.

You have to distinguish between what people more-or-less believe and how much they believe it

Thats a pretty good point, and Id note that theres a difference between the sort of christian that would die by lions in the colosseum and those who would offer incense to the emperor. Lots of people are "christian", but the question is how many are Christian; Im operating on enemy turf here so to speak when I link to that poll, because I would somewhat dispute the fact that people accurately report things in such a poll-- there are a great number of people that I know personally who claim a religion despite it having no practical impact on their life or beliefs, which is pretty relevant to GP's claims about religions being passed on to children.

I would agree that tradition passes on to children easily, and in fact when a large number of people say "I am christian / catholic / jewish" what theyre really saying is "these are my traditions"-- not "these are my beliefs". Sadly, polls on THAT are going to be awfully hard to find; but its sort of hard to argue that people are reliable in reporting what they believe when asked about their religion, because theyre not (which we CAN prove with polls-- see gallup polls where "christians" doubted the accuracy of the bible, the divinity of Christ, and the existence of a personal God).

Did Stephen Hawkings say the Universe created itself? It would seem very odd that a physicist would say something about the creation of the Universe.

He did, and it was. I remember doing a report on the man when I was much younger, and recall both how smart he seemed and how he remarked on the necessity of a deity. Fast forward ~20 years, and he made the remark,
Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.
And, as has been noted, its not only an odd remark, its a circular and nonsensical one. Hawking is a smart man in his domain, but he either misspoke, or was misquoted, or created a massive logic problem.

> Basically, she enjoyed inflicting pain on other people by denying access to painkillers. All while living quite a cushy life herself.

Wow, what a fucked up interpretation. It is just another example of making the perfect the enemy of the good. Sure, she could have done more and better given infinite resources and infinite knowledge. But that is not the same as enjoyment.

Different AC here. If she'd said "If I had more resources, I could have alleviated more suffering," you'd be right.

Instead, she said "I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people.", and (to a dying cancer patient) "You are suffering like Christ on the cross. So Jesus must be kissing you." (She freely related his reply, which she seemed not to realize was meant as a putdown: "Then please tell him to stop kissing me.")

Seeing religious virtue in withholding pain relief from cancer patients is not bedside manner; it is torture. Even Jesus wept when one of his buddies died.