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I think you need to re-read my post. Your response makes absolutely zero sense in the context of it, perhaps you responded to the wrong person?

I made it quite clear that there are some atheists who still have tribalistic tendencies, but simply that it was not inherent in the nature of atheism as it is in religion.

I'm not sure why you brought up the inquisition, I didn't even make any reference to it, nor did I even begin to go down the route of trying to fathom what religions were involved in what wars, though you do seem oblivious of the fact that American Christianity was a driving force in it's battle against "godless" communists which implies you're not exactly coming at this with any objectivity - Vietnam et. al. was as much about trying to instill and spread Western Christian values as it was Communism vs. Democracy.

Don't respond to that though, I'm not interested in what you have to say about it, hence why I didn't raise that point in the first place.

Except, this law will never get passed. Or even have a hearing. It was introduced by someone that's only been in offices 2 years and a few months. It's a political stunt. His district is Tiny, I couldn't find stats on it but I bet there's no more than a few thousand people in it from the looks of the map. They probably all go to church, and they HATE people like you just as much as you hate people like them. (you're both bigots by the way) This will be all over the internet in a matter of no time and all your elitist rage will fuel their righteous anger... and they'll turn out in droves to support their poor, beleaguered representative in his humble attempts to remain a Godly man in a Godless world.

You're both rats, he's the piper. Congrats.

Pretty soon now you will be just another religious state, just like the ones you are fighting right now, but with a different religion.

There is another, more optimistic way of looking at this: we are seeing the last frantic struggles of a reactionary movement which can't adapt to social change. If you were to go back in time to, say, 1950, do you really believe that Americans as a group were any less superstitious or closed-minded? In that era, not only were racism and sexism often overt (or even violent), gays were subject to criminal prosecution in most states, often with involuntary psychiatric commitment, and I suspect evolution wasn't even an issue because it wasn't even being taught in most schools. Maybe the reason why there wasn't a big controversy back then is because there wasn't much disagreement - the country was far more conservative as a whole.

Look at it from the perspective of the religious fundamentalists: in the past century (and some of these trends are far more recent), women have career opportunities that were unheard of (and are a majority of new college graduates); gays are "out, loud, and proud", with gay marriage now legal in four states (and civil unions in several more); no-fault divorce is available in nearly every state (I think NY is the lone holdout), and the divorce rate is something like 50% as a result; young women write exhibitionist columns in college newspapers glorifying their promiscuity; single motherhood is more common than ever; cohabitation before marriage is practically the norm (at least if you're a coastal elite like myself); the biological sciences are changing so fast that in another few decades (a century at the most) we'll probably have redefined reproduction (and humanity); the government has replaced the churches as the primary distributor of charity; and last but not least, we know more about the history of our universe and our species than ever before, and it's simply not compatible with Biblical literalism no matter how hard you try. The religious conservatives perceive their entire belief system to be under assault by the government, pop culture, and the dreaded liberal elites, and they are frantically trying to hold back the flood of perversity and Godlessness by every legal means at their disposal.

Mind you, I'm absolutely not defending them; I find them ignorant and contemptible, and their actions contradict nearly every moral and ethical value I have. But, as someone who reads a lot of history, and often feels just as alienated from modern society, I think I have a pretty good idea how they feel, and the word is desperate. They're not winning, they're fighting a rearguard action, trying to return to a idyllic, morally virtuous, and thoroughly mythical past.

One thing about those online forums is the amount of truly deranged people out there. It's quite an eye-opener. Worse. Deranged, stupid, ignorant, and arrogant. And dishonest. It's simply unbelievable.

Yeah, the Internet is for sharing. So, let's all copy/steal the materials posted/created/written by Others. Why stop at just websites? Let's do the same with books, magazines, movies, music, etc. It's all information of some sort or other that SHOULD be shared. If you don't want your work copied/stolen DO NOT WRITE ANY BOOKS OR MAGAZINES OR ESSAYS, DO NOT MAKE ANY MOVIES, DO NOT COMPOSE ANY SONGS. Jeez, that's SO OBVIOUS. STOP WHINING, damn it!

Google is God. They (like God) have the Divine Right to do whatever the Hell They Want because they (all but) own Internet searches. If Google wants to scrape your site and post your high-resolution images on its search engine for all to see and copy without having to visit your filthy website filled with repulsive ads (who cares if you need to earn a living???), that's Good. Why? Because it's GOOGLE who decides what's best for EVERYONE based on its INFALLIBLE research. As well it should. Because Google IS GOD. And like GOD, Google KNOWS what's best FOR YOU AND FOR EVERYONE. Got that? Yes? Good!

If Google is a near-monopoly when it comes to online searches, that's because GOD wanted it to be. And You Can't Argue with God or Google (Godle, for short).

Now, as for an increase in bandwidth usage thanks to the new Google Image search, well, only a complete godless idiot wouldn't understand WHY that's happening. The Bejeezus! If Google is loading the high-res. image it has scraped from a website, then more bandwidth will be used -- WITHOUT THE SITE GETTING AN ACTUAL VISIT -- than if only a thumbnail were loaded (as was the case in the past).

Only a godless moron would fail to understand that. But again, if you don't want your bandwidth stolen via Google's Image Scrape -- er, Image Search, well get your images and your site DEINDEXED!!!. Oh, but you'll then disappear from searches, won't you? Too @$%@#% bad. You DESERVE to disappear from the Web, from the World, from the Universe if you refuse THE HONOR of having your content scraped and stolen by THE GREAT GOOGLE.

Enough said! GOOGLE, please SHOW US THE WAY!!!! ENLIGHTEN US!!!!! GUIDE US!!!!! Thank you.

Yes but the same satellites can be used by scientists to study climate change. Therefore the best thing for the government to do, in the interest of protecting powerful energy lobbies, is to ensure that non-defense satellites are not replaced as they age. And scientific research doesn’t deserve funding because so many scientists are godless communists.

  As a member of congress he has repeatedly added amendments to spending bills giving millions to his home district. Then when the bill comes up for a vote, knowing that the bill is going to pass, he votes against the bill. That way he gets millions in pork for his constituents and at the same time can claim he voted against a wasteful spending bill.

But that's clearly not contradicting himself. Since he is representing his constituents, he needs to improve money flow to his district. The money will be spent anyways, so it's better if it goes to his good salt-of-the-earth constituents rather than some godless homosexuals somewhere. Plus, by voting against those bills, he proves that...

Yeah, I can't write that with a straight face. It's kinda like the people who earnestly explain why Ayn Rand wasn't a hypocrite for receiving Medicare benefits. If you are a True Believer, mere facts are like putty to your Superior Rationalization^H^H^H^H^H^Hty.

Didn't you get the memo? Only a godless America-hating communist would allow market forces to drive wages up when there is an alternative.

There are no uncompetitive salaries, only lazy workers.

No, you believe Christ is dead and resurrected. Literally. Otherwise, you are not a Christian belonging to any major denomination. Of course bits of the Bible are symbolic, but many of these bits were first written as literal accounts of the truth. For centuries, the illiterate European peasant was told by his semi-illiterate priest that Christ slept as an infant in a manger, and believed it literally. Never mind the symbolism.

What makes your faith superior? Were this peasant and his priest mistaken? Were they not both good Catholics?

Why, if the bible is not the source of some material truth, would you try to calculate the age of the Earth from it -- and that was mainstream! Why would the Church care whether the Sun turned around the Earth or not if it were just symbolic? Why would people that routinely burnt people for sorcery find that the miracles were suspicious?

Again, what makes your faith superior? That you know there is no such thing as sorcery? Despite the Bible telling you so explicitly? Why is this bit about mixed textile perfectly reasonable and the next bit about sorcery not?

Augustine was a very clever man. And he tried to make sense of scripture using reason and could not -- make no mistake, post hoc "symbolism" is the ultimate cop-out. Had he been born in more recent days, he would probably be some godless atheist toiling in some laboratory...

Yes. This. This is what we should worry about. Going from "those [Godless commie baby-killers]/[uneducated religious warmongers] are trying to destroy America and we need to take it back" to "we need to take it back by force" isn't that much of a stretch.

The solution, of course, is learning how to agree to disagree, but that doesn't sell ads.

Sounds like some godless abomination created by a brony festering in the depths of Deviantart.

send the bible belt soldiers to police the godless liberal traitors in california
send the black soldiers to police the cracka racists in the south
send the northeastern soldiers to police the whackjob traitors in the midwest
send the deep southern soldiers to police the coward yankee bastards up north.

That assumes you've got neatly segregated military units with homogenous biases.

It also requires very careful information control to each of those units. "Wait, the US army just killed friends and family back home" is going to get people thinking.

It's still possible to divide and conquer as you say, but it's harder to pull off than in a low information flow society.

of course it could be done and i'd wager $1000 that there already plans similar to what i say sitting in a file cabinet somewhere.

do it the same way every totalitarian government does, by using soldiers with existing general hostilities to the population they will be suppressing

send the bible belt soldiers to police the godless liberal traitors in california
send the black soldiers to police the cracka racists in the south
send the northeastern soldiers to police the whackjob traitors in the midwest
send the deep southern soldiers to police the coward yankee bastards up north.

if the soldiers you send to each area, blame the people from that area for starting "all of this" they will for the most part follow their orders as long as said orders are not profoundly outrageous "go machinegun some peaceful civillians" but an order to "keep that riot under control, and by the way rules of engagement allow automatic weapons and hand grenades if your life is in danger" will work just fine.

Also at the beginning you keep the rules of engagement too strict and the patrols too small and too sparse until something happens to one of them.

So it is possible he made up that part just to sound good to American ears, but he did say it.

Yep, that's what I think too. It's just words. Let us keep in mind that Von Braun might have been in front of a firing squad, if he had surrendered to the godless commies rather than the people whom he hadn't crossed.

One from the 80's I saw was "Nuke a Godless Communist gay baby seal for Christ!"

Minimum living standards? Cheaper education? What are you, a godless communist?

None of that bullshit in 'murica. Next we know you'll be pushing for better distribution of income and free healthcare.

Necessity is the mother of invention. Greed is the mother of patents.

And sex is the mother of parents.

Scientists promote Godless evil ideas such as global warming, evolution and birth control. They also seem to think you should believe something based on the evidence for it, sound methodology, and peer review. If every idea had to be scrutinized thusly, do you realize how difficult it would be to get every new idea about aliens and conspiracies onto talk radio? Then how would we are to be learning about these important topics?

--
Necessity is the mother of invention. Greed is the mother of patents.

Not to mention having been invented by the Godless Communist Papist Socialist Cheese-Eating French.

If we are going to adopt a decimal system of weights and measures at least we should go with an American one.

> It's the southeast where you are libel to be asked 'are you a dipper or dunker' on first meeting (two
> different varieties of fundy).

I am curious about this. They are not the same? I did some google searching and found many references to "Dipper Dunker" or "Dunkers", but everything I found indicated this to be different terms for the same group.

However, I am from the godless Northeast where the only time I was ever asked about religion at work was by the pagan girl who just wanted to know if anyone else was going to be in the office for Yom Kippur, since most of the office was Jewish.

And forcing us to spell it "litres." How dare they.