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> they STILL somehow believe that "goodness" can only come from religion. That's nonsense.

Have you ever considered, though, that for some people that is the truth though? That maybe these are people whose only motivation for good comes from religion and therefore cannot understand those who don't need religion to be decent? People are generally bad at extrapolating beyond themselves like that. ;)

> But the fact that your presumption that it was Christians and therefore Christianity which was responsible
> for creating the constitutional government of the US only serves to prove my point. Was the government
> of England not ALSO Christian?

Indeed it was, and that's where many of the notions the built America came from. England wasn't all bad you know, had that Magna Carta thing which is probably one of the most important legal documents ever (certainly up there with the Declaration of Independence).

Anyways, Nietzsche (who was not much a fan of religion) covers this topic quite well, and hints of his ideas are in the GP. Christianity (and Judaism) inverted the natural order of 'the strong can do as they want to the weak' and created the modern ideas of ethics and rights of the masses. Not every idea would always stick completely, but in many ways the fundamental way that you think, with ideas of individual rights and collectivism, hell, even 'godless' socialism and all grounded in philosophies that were grounded in Judeo-Christian ideas. So even if American wasn't exactly founded Christian, the ideas are solidly there.

I'll do that right now. As they say, Hitler made the trains run on time, but I still think we're better off without him around.

People have the capacity for decency, with or without superstitions of an all-seeing magician looking over their shoulder. Furthermore, I think it's fair to say the world has been a more perilous place because of organized religion.

There's just no good reason I can think of to keep harmful, vestigial garbage like that around. Our species is better off without it.

Actually, it was Mussolini who made the trains run on time, not Hitler. As for the rest of your post, all of today's morality is based on primitive superstitions (especially if you consider religion a superstition). It is fair to say that without organized religion, the world would be far different than today - for one, it was the monks that preserved all of the ancient texts we have today when most of the civilized world was overrun by the the many hoards. It was the church that developed the structures that we, today, call our judicial system. Same for universities, hospitals and a plethora of other social institutions that until recent times, were taken over by the government.

One cannot simply dismiss the role of religion, both good and bad, in the formation of our modern societies. Whether religion is based on a real deity or is just superstition, does not change the impact it has had. One has only to look at the so called godless societies of the past to envision a world today that would not have had religion. Things like survival of the fittest, subjugation of women, slavery, genocide, infanticide, etc. all would be prevalent. Moral codes that put an end to those all stemmed from societies that believed there was a greater purpose, outside of themselves.

Maybe we don't need those structures anymore today, but to deny that they shaped and influenced what we accept today is like denying the earth revolves around the sun.

It was not just about "freedom of religion" it was also about "freedom from religion."

Peopel never cease to [amaze/annoy/disappoint] me in that they STILL somehow believe that "goodness" can only come from religion. That's nonsense. But that's part of how religion build a false sense of trust which is *ALWAYS* exploited by leadership. Religion is yet another "team affiliation" which creates a sense of Us vs Them.

Most of the founding fathers are 'suspected atheists.' I say suspected because especially back in those days, people in leadership positions who announced themselves as "godless" would immediate lose the trust and faith of the people. If fact, things haven't improved too much since those days. It's all part of an ugly and vicious cycle of expectations. But the fact that your presumption that it was Christians and therefore Christianity which was responsible for creating the constitutional government of the US only serves to prove my point. Was the government of England not ALSO Christian?

Which is why combining church and government is such an incredibly scary thing, yet there are so many naive idiots on the authoritarian side of politics that want to do exactly that.
A fascist state run by televangalists would be just as nasty as a communist state where the church is outlawed.
Tell those Godless "Christians" that go to Church for just the political power to look at their Bible for the bit about Caesar.

There are only a few country where politics rule! Almost all of the world is ruled by religion!

No, most of the world is ruled by culture. The fact of the matter is that very little of religion's commandments are actually followed, whether we're considering Christians, Jews or Muslims.
Having read all three books (Torah, Bible and Koran - what can I say, I like to read science fiction stories before going to sleep), I can tell you that they all (yes, all) condemn such things as stealing, killing etc.

If religion was so powerful, there wouldn't be that much violation of its fundamentals, like stealing and killing. Religion is used as a means to not-so-religious ends, and that is because all three monotheist religions,are easy to misquote, misinterpret, and misuse.

Getting rid of all religions could be A Good Thing...or not. Even if they went away, there would still be plain godless Ideology, which has been proven to be at least as effective in turning whole countries into shit for supposedly noble causes.

That's a load of crap

That's as stupid as saying "all philosophies are equal". Nobody with a brain would equate the belief systems of Ghandi and Hitler, or of Abraham Lincoln with Joseph Mengele... it's the sort of thing a moron who spent too much time smoking dope at college and soaking-up the drivel of some old-sixties-hippie-turned-professor-with-ponytail would mindlessly spout.

What a person believes matters. The substance of what we believe has a direct impact upon our actions. The fight against slavery in England and in the US was a Christian religious effort. Martin Luther King Jr was a baptist minister and if you actually read his speeches/sermons instead of pretending you respect the man for a day every January you see that his entire argument was based upon Christianity. The American system of higher education and much of our pre-1990's hospital system were rooted in the churches. The basic arguments for individual rights in the US are rooted in the Christian concept that individual is a creation of God who has rights and dignity given him by that God... and as a result the government (created by men) does not have the right to trample. Look at a map of the world and think about what religions and philosophies were prevalent in which locations and what the societies there were like and what they produced.

Most of the scientific progress and human rights progress in the history of the human race happened in predominantly Christian areas, and Christianity is built upon Judaism. Even where they have become more secular, it is still the case that your odds of living a decent life are highest in Christian or Jewish societies. Disagree? Prove it by moving to some place that's run by cannibals, or move to pakistan, or cambodia... show some confidence in the beliefs you claim to hold.

The simple fact is that most of the left-wingers in the western world who spout that "all religions are the same and they are all evil" garbage would be perfectly happy to insult a Christian or a Jew but would be terrified to insult a Muslim. No? PROVE IT!... with science. Put up a website with your photo, your name and your work address and put anti-Jesus cartoons on the site. Put up a second, identical, website but with anti-Mohammad cartoons and your home address and leave both online for a year so they can get some traffic. Then tell us if you feel safer at home or at work. Note: use the work address with the Christian site so you do not expose your co-workers to any radical Muslim violence.

Look at where all the world's most in-human, backward, genocidal evil has generally occurred... it's been under officially godless governments: NAZI Germany (Germany was historically Lutheran, but the NAZI party was not... and NO, Hitler was NOT a Christian), Stalin's Russia, Mao's China, Pol Pot's...fields, etc.

Hitler: “Along with the fight for a purer morality we have taken upon ourselves the struggle against the decomposition of our religion. We have therefore taken up the struggle against the Godless movement, and not just with a few theoretical declarations; we have stamped it out. And above all we have dragged the priests out of the lowlands of the political party struggle and have brought them back into the church.” Documente Zer Kirchenpolitik

Also The Taiping rebellion alone killed as many as World War I, and that was a long time ago. You're not factoring in the countless destruction of cultures around the world deemed Satanic by the puritanical invading Christian armies either. Lastly Hitler was also not a Communist, the communists were his enemies, he attacked the communists, and where do you think the concept of the Third Reich came from? The First Reich was the Holy Roman empire.

No, it is not a religion. AS has been explained quite well, many times.
Believers need t prove the existence. Saying there is X, and and no one can prove it is crazy.
Not believing there are purple dragons on the moon is not a religion.
The word 'atheism' comes from the Greek word atheos, meaning godless. Atheos is derived from a, meaning "without," and theos, meaning "deity"."

Atheism is the word for not having a religion. By DEFINITION it is not a religion. Please learn logic.

Those godless slanteyed fucks have no morals or ethics.

Eventually the US will realize it is us or them. Both cannot exist
in the long term.

A first strike is by far the best option. Park four or five SSBNs in the Strait of Formosa
and let those dog-eating lowlifes have it.

This is nothing more than attempt to co-opt the language of science in order to explain away racism.

'Survival of the fittest' became a socio-political banner cry for Western Europeans in the 1870's who were bent on justifying their violent domination of other's resources and bodies. It was a convenient means of obfuscating the cognitive dissonance between the claim to power on the part of monarch's who had conspired with the Vatican for centuries to justify God-given right to power and the obvious philosophical conflicts with so-called New Testament Christian morality.

It's the same zenophobic basis for Truman dropping nuclear weapons on 200,000+ Japanese civilians in order to demonstrate to the Godless Communists of Russia that the United States was superior.

And underneath this thin veneer of ridiculous prejudice is the laughable assertion that 'economics' is a science. All you have to do is pick up any newspaper and read the business section to understand that this isn't so. Financial activity can be predatory or cooperative, and it is always subject to manipulation at the hands of people whose only goal is to amass wealth utilizing whatever means is at hand. It's complex behavior that takes place within a group with rules that are insufficient to preclude 'unfair' advantage.

Sophisticated people like it that way, and so they concoct elaborate arguments to keep it so.

It's called "The Rapture", and you won't be part of it, you godless motherfucker.

Most fundamentalists did this long ago. They traditionally don't consider Catholicism legitimate Christianity and have allied with the Church only out of desperate necessity to stem the rising tide of sin and godlessness in the world. Or something like that.

I'm just a little puzzled why he's running unopposed. I take it that the Democatic candidate was lynched on his way home from a satanic ritual. (I was going to say Black Mass, but then that people would think that, in the context of "lynched," I was referring to a church service held at a predominantly African American Catholic church.)

your idea of being humane is to butt in and put people in cages or have them shot based on your arbitrary whims?

If putting one guy in a cage (or against the wall) means that a million people don't starve to death because of the actions of that aforementioned guy, sure, that's quite humane.

I love how, when speaking of "godless evil commies", right-wingers love to quote figures like Stalin's death toll being 50 million, where 4/5 of that are deaths from starvation; but they don't count the same in hell holes where all the First World's wealth is produced by wage slave labor because, hey, it's voluntary - all those people have a choice of working and starving not quite to death, or not working and starving to death - we don't decide that for them. How nice of us.

You do realise this is like a report from a Saudi Arabian university proclaiming that electric vehicles will never work, right?

Hey, I read that report!
It said (with persuasive evidence to back its conclusions) that electric vehicles would work perfectly on electricity generated by burning oil. On electricity generated by burning coal or coming from nuclear or renewable sources, every conceivable kind of electric car would become appallingly bad - just a seized-up godless sputtering commie rustbucket for pedo terrorist file-sharers.

So, why with 'you' it is an issue if a politician plays a rogue in WoW?

Legislation in exchange for phat lewtz!

We went a bit mad with faux morality during the cold war - anything to differentiate us from the Russians. It's why we have the reprehensible 'In God We Trust' on our currency, unlike those godless reds, you see. While the cold war is over and we're happy to present our papers whenever asked by Comrade Commissar, we somehow kept the religious-fueled nonsense of sticking our noses into everyone's business, not only in spite of but especially when it has zero relevance to the matter at hand.

This isn't that surprising, I suppose - our nation was originally populated by fringe religious groups fleeing Europe, and we banned beer at one point.

We banned beer. There's really no hope for us.

The point of my response was to make you realize that you are not the center of the world

Ha! That just what I want you to think.

Then why do you jump at anyone that think that ?

Or why you didn't answer any of my questions for that matter.

They sounded rhetorical. Also, couldn't be arsed. My original post was intended as just a silly quip.

Noted

Cheer up.

Don't worry about me.

It's nearly Christmas. I'm godless, too, but even I like Christmas. :-)

Christmas is also a pagan holiday. Santa Claus has nothing to do with religion.

The point of my response was to make you realize that you are not the center of the world

Ha! That just what I want you to think.

Or why you didn't answer any of my questions for that matter.

They sounded rhetorical. Also, couldn't be arsed. My original post was intended as just a silly quip. Cheer up. It's nearly Christmas. I'm godless, too, but even I like Christmas. :-)

Wow. Sorry. Didn't mean to offend your god.

I am godless, so you didn't offend my god. Note that you didn't offend me either, so there really is no need to apologize.

Sorry to hear his train of thought can be so badly disrupted by picking out a shirt.

Who said anything about badly disrupting anything?

The point of my response was to make you realize that you are not the center of the world and that a story saying that someone does A to be more efficient does not mean YOU are horribly inefficient if you don't do A. The world is made of many types of people and it is usually enlightening to learn about others. Which does not mean you should do whatever works for someone else. I am genuinely wondering why you find the story "just dumb"... Or why you didn't answer any of my questions for that matter.

It reflects excellently.

If smart people were more interested in and outspoken on non-technical matters, the idiots would be getting away with far less of their idiocy. Half of all Americans don't believe in evolution, and even more of them don't believe in climate change. Hell, almost half of all Americans are going to vote for this man. How is this tacitly accepted?

This stupidity needs to be openly ridiculed and shamed at every opportunity. Geeks are not impartial powers on the sidelines of pointless political struggles. It's a war of the smart people against the dumb people. The dumb have already realized this: they rage at the evil hives of godless intellectuals; universities. It's time to fight back.

How do you know he didn't? I mean, Vic's been big on knowing what's going on in everyone's computer and bedroom for a while. Maybe he just can't keep the "queer" list up-to-date because he's too busy keeping the "liberal-lover" list, the "filthy pirate" list, and the "godless bastard" list up-to-date. Especially that second one; his fellow party members didn't go to all those little meetings with Sony and EMI and the rest of the RIAA for nothing after all!