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By the way, I think you need a few more conservative buzzword insults in there. You forgot "liberal," "politically correct," "godless commie reds," "Slick Willy," and "goddamn reds." Oh wait, no, you got "political corectness," nice work.

Listen to Limbaugh much?

I doubt anyone would argue that (as a possibly inaccurate example) the guys at Corel are godless commies because they didn't provide the source to their distribution

Well they are Canadian.

O.K., I can deal with the concern about a Linux distribution not including source, even if it might be a bit premature.

What's with all this China-bashing, though? Sure, China's got its problems... but it's not like this is the first time someone's done this. To say it's happened because "the Chinese make their own rules" or "the Chinese don't believe in intellectual property" is speculation at best, and bigotry at worst.

They screwed up. Westerners have done the same thing, and I doubt anyone would argue that (as a possibly inaccurate example) the guys at Corel are godless commies because they didn't provide the source to their distribution.

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Consult, v. t. To seek another's approval of a course already decided on.

Yes! Dvorak layout is a COMMUNIST conspiracy to replace us from the God-given QWERTY layout, which is what the ancient biblical scribes used to record the Word to paper in the first place.

Once they convert us over to Dvorak, then there's nothing to stop them from changing over to Metric, free software, the French language, and Godless communism!

"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."

Don't forget that while it is true that SCIENTISTS use the metric system in R&D, NASA is NOT a scientific/R&D organization, they are primarily an engineering and development organization that supplies services for a lot of R&D. The fact is that most engineers working in the US (especially those over 40) have been trained primarily in the ENGLISH system of units. Most of the engineering fields are now a mess because the science half of the picture is in metric, but when the engineers have to translate their work to the 'real world' a conversion to english units must be made so the shop floor guy or assembly tech or manufacturing plant will understand what is going on.

Unfortunately government mandated conversion to the metric system has flopped at least twice partly because of inertia, and partly because Americans don't like to do what the government tells them to. There have also been riots and protests against adopting something the 'Godless French' invented (see Martin Gardner for some interesting histories here).

It would be nice to have a mass conversion to metric, and it would solve a lot of problems (but not all - ever try to use Japanese metric bolts on a French bicycle????) but I don't see it happen until we get teh schools teaching only metric. And we can't even get them to teach evolution.

"Spending money on developing weapons helps everyone."

Thanks, I'll explain that to everybody over at the local homeless shelter. It will make them feel much better.

I'm sure you can whip up a quote out of the Bible that says something like, "ignore the poor and the meek, don't help them at all, forget compassion, just build lots of weapons, and pay for it by cutting funding for school lunches." Funny that it's us "Godless heathens" who want money to give the poor.

Personally, I see no reason why we should build an anti-ICBM weapon, because whatever the payload of an ICBM might be could easily be smuggled into New York City or Washington, DC. The method of preventing this kind of warfare is, unfortunately, much more expensive than Raytheon's weapon, and the Bible-thumping right-wingers of America lack the compassion to try to implement it.

What? The media has it all wrong /again/? They've merely been pushed the self-created exaggerated, sensationalized conclusion? NO!?

What? These kids where really PEOPLE? Couldn't be! They must have been evil satanic GOTHS. Or immoral godless GAYS. Never real PEOPLE! If they were real people, we'd have to acknowledge that there were real reasons, perhaps caused by other people around, that they may actually have done these things. You mean they're not racists? Not anti-Christian? You mean that stupid so-called martyr I've been hearing so damn much about from every news magazine and foaming preacher is really NOT a martyr, but just another random death? No way!

You mean that everything the media has piped into my soggy little brain is false...that these were just two very frustrated, screwed up teens, outcasts of outcasts, that did a /botched/ job!? And that immediately afterwards, every uptight principal in the US decided it was cause to violate the civil rights of American citizens by denying them public services because they wore a certain type of clothing that in actuality had nothing to do with the perpetrators anyway? Couldn't be!

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This was just an occasion for every selfish stupid special interest to displace the "fault" on to their favorite evil, and push their cause...nobody gave a damn about the real PEOPLE involved. They were too damn busy licking their wounds and feeling sorry for themselves by making out as if their enemy was some big evil unaviodable thing. Well wake up! Black clothing and satan don't cause people to do this! It's everybody's responsibility to see that no human gets in a state that they want to do something like this.

Actually, the God clause is not traditional. The original pledge of allegiance read as following:

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

The phrase "under god" was added in the McCarthyist 1950s as an attempt to distinguish the United States from "godless Communism," a convenient excuse for the religious conservatives then in power. It is not part of the original Pledge, and hence does not reflect any opinions our founding fathers may or may not have had. It just reflects the opinions of the McCarthyists.

The schools are saying that Evolution is a fact.

No they're not (if they are they shouldn't be teaching science). They're saying evolution is a theory. Which it is. It happens to be the best theory (fits the observed world best, and makes the most accurate predictions) that we have right now, so that's what schools should teach in science classes. Creationism - indeed any aspect of any religion - is not a theory, because theories can be disproved. True Believers do not accept any observation that contradicts their beliefs, and would discard the observations rather than alter their beliefs. That's what faith is about. Science is not about faith. If the observations contradict the theories, then the theories must be adjusted or discarded.

Atomic theory is "just a theory" too. No one has ever seen an atom. A True Believer might argue that atomic theory should not be taught in schools, because it teaches that matter is made of amoral atoms, while a True Believer accepts that everything is made of and sustained by God's Love.

Some people might argue that atomic theory is not incompatible with belief in God or God's Love. Analogous arguments have been put forward by scientists who also hold religious beliefs and who want their children to get a complete education in biology (including evolution). But the loudest noises are made by those who want their religious views presented, to the exclusion of all else. Where is the outcry against the routine indoctrination of children (WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!?!) with godless communist atomic theory?

There is no facts provable about Evolution, and the sad thing is they tell you it's true and take an apes tooth and make a skull around it.

Yes, there have been frauds perpetrated in the name of science. But that's no reason to throw out the whole theory as fraudulent. Just throw out the parts that derived from fraud.

Fraud has been committed in the name of religion too (shroud of Turin anyone?). While it is the cause of much consternation in the church, I don't see a call to abandon the whole faith because of it. And that's as it should be. Just acknowledge the fraud, punish and/or forgive the perps (in science this is accomplished by professional rebuke, considered by some to be a fate worse than death) and get back to business.

True Belief is the cornerstone of religion, but it's very bad science. Treating (the biblical account of) Creation as a theory is an insult to both science and religion.

So let's give Texas to the Mexicans, the MidWest Bible Belt to the Canadians and the Deep South to Castro.

We'll keep New Orleans, though, 'cause New Orleans kicks BIG ASS. Great beer, great women, great music and 'gators. Can't be beat.

VOTE NOW for a leaner, cleaner utterly Godless United States.

"Newton's theory is used to guide spacecraft to Saturn. The theory works, and is
accepted and proven to be a truthful description of how the universe works. There is no way that
Newton's theory will ever be falsified. Not even Einstein's theory did that! "

come now, come now, Newton's theory doesn't apply on the quantum scale now, does it? There have even been measurements made of spacecraft (travelling BEYOND Saturn *snicker*) showing object accellerating faster than they ought to be. There are some theories for why this is happening, but I think there hasn't been a consensus yet on what's going on. The fact is, we don't know. Nobody is out there looking at these space probes, seeing if there is a tiny propellant leak, or whatever. I'm not saying Newtons theories are false, they're great, and they've proven to be about the most useful tools mankind has ever devised.

Likewise, no human was alive 65 million years ago, to SEE dinosaurs walk the earth. What we accept as truth, is what we rationalize. True, science is the best systematic way to rationalize our reality based on our observations, but the fact is, no matter what is observed, no matter what evidence you have, you can't possibly know any thing 100% for sure. It's a philosophical question, yes, but that is the root of human experience.

And I would likewise tell you that if God himself came down in front of me and said, "Yo, dude, you got a buger hanging out of your nose", I still, scientifically can't say that I 100% believe in God, because it could have been a hallucination, right? Even if I DID have a buger hanging out of my nose.
But spiritually, I DO believe that God exists, because I take that on faith, which is not a rationalization based on the scientific method, nor is it some lame sense of obligation to parents or religious leaders. It is NOT my faith (or anyone's faith) in God that endangers or costs humans their lives, it's when I justify certain actions based on this faith: I must kill you and invade your country because you are infidels. Well, let me tell you, even the officially "atheist" countries out there have killed folks based on ideology, or what usually turns out to be a personal lust for power justified by a framework of rationalizations. Whether this framework of rationalizations is the Catholic religion, or Godless communism, it's still all a sham. Does that make the FAITH wrong? No, it makes the ACTIONS of killing (or whatever you're trying to assert) wrong. Faith isn't the problem, it's human greed, and human selfishness, and these things will never go away, no matter what dictator comes along with weapons of mass destruction, and chemicals and mass hypnosis - humans will always be the way they are, of course until they destroy themselves.

By induction, you extend your evidence to a tentative statement "There is no god". Well, be as tentative as you like. I'm sorry that you can't have 100% faith in the truth of a matter. But when you rely on science, that is going to be the case, 100% of the time, because that's what science is all about, and thankfully, you state it truthfully by saying "tentative statement" (and by saying "by induction" - which is a method that, by nature, cannot 100% prove something, only deduction can).

Personally, I'm more comfortable making the the DEFINATE statement "I believe there IS a God". Existance just feels better for me that way. Not because of my comfort about (how did someone put this a couple of days back?) "being whisked away to some fantasyland after I die". But rather, that there's a reason for it all, that it's not all just some cosmic accident that may as well not have happened at all.

Ideas don't kill people. People kill people. When you start saying that ideas are dangerous (and I know, yes, it was religious people who first made this kind of thing popular), then you start saying you want to control people's minds. I don't know about you, but mind control makes me kind of uncomfortable.

"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."

What happens to the guy who's wife emails him about the great time she is going to give him tonight and it ends up in some manager's (who happens to be very christian) email box? How will you feel when that manager takes it upon himself to cause as much trouble for the "Godless heathen" as possible?

Then you're an idiot to expect anyemail to be private. You wouldn't send credit card information over email, so why would you send anything else that is private? (If you knew how they worked, you would also not say private things on a cellular phone).

Also, although I've seen this a lot on Slashdot, it is my belief that you should not eliminate something good, just because it could evolve into something bad. Think about banning debuggers just because they could be used to crack some copy protection scheme, or (ala UCITA) allow you to reverse-engineer software.

I have an expectation of privacy when I encrypt something, or when I use a land phone line. I do not have an expectation of privacy when I send something in cleartext over the internet, or when I say something over a cellular phone.

It's quite simple.
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"I already have all the latest software."

You have got to be kidding! What happens to the guy who's wife emails him about the great time she is going to give him tonight and it ends up in some manager's (who happens to be very christian) email box? How will you feel when that manager takes it upon himself to cause as much trouble for the "Godless heathen" as possible?

Any "scan all email" approach is an invasion of privacy and is on slippery footing because the SENDERS are not and can not be notified in advance. Anyone who has given out their work email address so that freinds or relatives can contact them has then opened themselves up to having their email sent to whomever monitors it, and possibly being disiplined because of what someone else sent!

What happens when one employee sends a message to another employee that says, "I fucking hate manager X"? If the script trigers on fucking this non-sexual, work related email ends up in the "monitor's" email box. There is simply no way to write a script that will trigger ONLY on valid "Pornography".

Legally a company MAY have the right to look through employee's email boxes. Morality always depends on your point of view. It varies from place to place and time period to time period. What typically leads the way is the precidents that are set. In other words, whatever you do now will have profound effects on the future.

The thing to remember here is whatever happens will also apply to you, and do you want a "Private" email from your spouse, or significant other(s) being read by the "Monitor"??

As an email admin for a large company, I can tell you that if this issue came to me, I would refuse to cooperate in any way. If it came to the point where it was an order, or they were going to bring in someone else to do it, my resume would be in the hand of Headhunters and on job boards almost immediately. In today's job market, the employee has more leverage then normal. If enough people insist on privacy, corperate america will listen. The one thing I would do before sending out my resume would be sending an email to all the employees informing them that their email was going to be scanned.

I would caution you against saying that you had done it when you had not, or faking the results. These actions could end you personally on the end of a harassment lawsuit (because you covered it up), and make things much worse for the company in the event of a lawsuit (a conspiracy to allow harassment).


Here's some interesting questions to ask anyone requesting email/web scanning:

1. When are we going to start monitoring phone conversations and voice mail to make sure it is work related?
2. When are we going to start searching employee's as they enter the building to make sure they are not bringing in Porn or non-work related materials?
3. When are we going to install the microphones in all areas of the building to make sure no employees are flirting or having non-work related conversations?
4. When are we going to install the cameras in peoples offices to make sure they are only doing work?
5. When are we going to start neutering employee's so that they don't ever get arrosed?
6. When are we going to start monitoring employee's minds to make sure that they only think about work?

and maybe most importantly:

7. Who is the "MONITOR"?


Ben Johnson

The geek stereotype is basicly that of a techno intelectual.
I rember checking out a book writen by a libarian for libarians. Sort of the User Friendly for libarians.
It talks about all the problems libarians face.
One of the grippes was the libarian stereotype.
It's the same liberal godless stereotype that geeks face.
Only libarians are seen as inactive, old, quiet moldy types where as geeks are young active loud types.
The image of a libarian or a geek running nakid in the streets is well outside the stereotype.

In short I think it's a general "intelectual" stereotype that all intelectual groups face from University profesers to poets.

I just pictured a geeket/libarian mud wresling match and I kind of liked the image.

The theory that God created Earth last Tusday, made it look old and implanted our memories. And you stupid scientists can't disprove it can you? You know what that mean: it's right, and my website and national campaign to get last Tuesdayism put into schools in every field of science will soon help to open the minds of our youth!

Then we can all glorify God, since there is no point to life other than worshiping Him for creating evil humans and then punishing us for being evil(I'm sure glad he does that). He must be praised for his goodness.

Only when everyone in our godless society speaks from the book of last Tuesdayism will we be saved by the allmighty lord Christ Jesus! Halleluyah brothers, halleluyah!

This is well thought out, and very informative. Kudos. This is much more what I like about Slashdot.

Its this background that good teachers teach as science. You are also one of the first to explain that religion does work off evidence also. To often, and I don't know exactly why, but religion is sumarily dismissed as people without a brain, much like Regan supporters in the 80's and Clinton followers in the 90's.

Truth is more along the lines that everyone believes what they want to believe. And for the most part most people want to believe whats true. Why do we spend this effort to know and find these laws that already exist? To predict and plan a succesful future. This is the engineering side of Science, and what pure research ultimately results in.

But to begin engineering, you need to have a goal. This is essentialy "something you want." I wish I could put it succinctly, but notice that circle? You want something, you apply laws that predict success in what you want? First you have to find out those laws.

Why is this important? Because Science not only has a blind spot, but it has blinders. Science can only see what it wants to see. if you do an experiment, you will only gather the information you are looking for. You are looking for it because you wanted to see it.

Evolution was based on this. Darwin went out to look for a more scientific (which to many means simply Godless, but not to me) way for creation. He took what he found and packaged it as a way of creation. Problem is it doens't explain it at all. We will some day find out the answer, but evolution isn't it. We know enough to say that.

Simply put, evolution doesn't explain the fact that mutations inside of species happen very slowly. Yet the mutations between so called species happen in the millions very quickly, or by whole Quantum, all at the same time. We don't have just a missing link. We have nothing but missing links!

Radical changes in the environment are used to explain such changes, yet it is a stretch. It is more a patch on evolution rather than a theory or law. Its a stop-gap. Other stop gaps have come and gone.

The bottom line is that the Kansas Scool Board has decided that there is enough "evidence" against evolution to warrant suspending the mandate teaching it. Its all scientific.
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First: we must take it as a given that evolution played absolutely no part whatsoever in human origins -- or in the origins of anything else. There is no way to reconcile the scientific cosmology with Genesis 1. Genesis 1 says the earth existed before the sun, that plants existed before the sun, that birds existed before land animals, etc. Genesis 2 says that God made man from dust (not gorillas). These declarations are utterly incompatible with evolution. The only way that anyone can hope to "reconcile" them is by claiming that Genesis 1 is figurative. The problem with this is that there is no indication either in the text of Genesis 1 itself or anywhere else in the Bible that it's to be taken figuratively. The entire Bible assumes it's literal.

That being the case, we have a dilemma: either the Bible's right about our origins or Darwin is. If the Bible is wrong about this, then it cannot be trusted about anything. God himself has declared that he is not a liar, and that he is omniscient. One or both of these declarations would be false if Darwin were right (which he is NOT). You would therefore have no basis for any confidence in anything the Bible says whatsoever -- about any subject. It's that simple.

The question of whether Darwin or the Bible is right matters. Don't let them deceive you.

Lastly, please note that the article didn't say that evolution could not be taught in Kansas. It says that it is no longer required. There is a big difference, and frankly the Board didn't go far enough. It is not enough to no longer require that lies be taught to our children. It is now still an option for teachers to lie to the children of Kansas. This is completely unacceptable, and Christian parents there still need to get their kids out of those crime-infested, godless government schools.

Hrmmmm.... perhaps I should read that book, "Darwin's Black Box." I usually don't like to poke around with theology because I don't like being offended (and I get offended easily!), but perhaps it's worth a read.

I am also a Christian, and I believe God was responsible for at least part of the creation of the universe. I believe He "ignited" the Big Bang. I also believe in macroevolution, but not "Godless" evolution; I think He tweaked things to His liking. My beliefs sound strange (and I admit that I'm young and have a lot to learn), but I don't think that the world is only 6,000 years old and was literally created in 7 twenty-four hour days. I just keep in mind that the Bible was not written by God, but was written by God-inspired humans; back about 2000 years ago, the number "1 million" hadn't even been invented yet, so of course the Bible won't ever say that the world could be 4.5 billion years old!

Anyway, that's just my two cents. Perhaps you're right about schools not being forced to teach Darwinian evolution anymore, but I still believe it should be taught, if only to give the students a different perspective. I do not agree that it should be taught as proven fact, though.

To be fair (speaking as one of the godless hordes) most Christians, or at least most Christian churches, do not have a problem with evolution. The Catholics in particular fully support it, apart from some mutterings about God inserting a soul at some point in the process. Creationism is largely peculiar to the fundamentalist species of American (although some Native Americans have their own charming variety.) Sometimes I really wish I was European.

Get these godless whores out of our schools! Save the children from eternal damnation! The bible is the word of god, and every line of it is from god!! Burn the books. Shoot the artists and scientists. Burn the heretics at the stake!!! It is time to return to that old tyme religion! Praise god and let's take back this nation for Jesus!!
(for the few dimwits out there, I was being sarcastic)