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This is what we railed against with the godless Communists. Now with the neo-conservatives, they are bringing their business practices into the government and law enforcement realms. Look at Abu Grab, the recent Psy-Op's scandel from Afganistan. etc.

Actually they could pick up some tips from the law enforment departments that have been trying to trap people online by posing as underaged children that want to go have sex with them. I think we are veering away from some basic core principals that used to make the world look up to us. Hell used to make us look up to us.

The point of the Pledge of Allegiance is not to actually teach kids anything, but to indoctrinate them into being good loyal patriotic Americans ready and willing to do incredibly stupid things (e.g. sign up for the army to go fight in a country they've never heard of who poses no threat to us) on behalf of their country. It's the same sort of instinct that led my schoolteacher to use class time to force me and my classmates to make yellow ribbons and care packages for soldiers back during the 1991 Gulf War, despite my opposition to the war.

The "under God" bit, besides being completely unconstitutional, was introduced in the 1950's solely to demonstrate how much better we were than the godless Commies because we didn't try to indoctrinate our kids with lies about patriotism and duty to country (yeah right).

Everyone trots on Mao, Pol Pot and Joseph Stalin as extreme examples of "atheists" who demonstrated the cruelty of "atheism". The problem, of course, is that none of them were actually atheist....

I believe in one thing only, the power of the human will. -Joseph Stalin

League of The Militant Godless -- Operating in the Soviet Union during Stalin's rule (with official permission and support)

The Black Book of Communism - Crimes, Terror, Repression --100 million deaths

Not only that, but the Russian Orthodox Church announced that Stalin was "the divinely anointed leader of our armed and cultural forces leading us to victory over the barbarian invasion" after he abolished the League of the Godless in 1942. He may have been an atheist, but he had the willing support of the Christian Church in Russia.

What was that saying about good men doing nothing again?

... your intellect suggests your a godless aspie.

You say that like it's a bad thing. WTF is an aspie?

These links were not posted with summaries saying "This is what so-and-so said" but rather "This is the truth"

So then WTF is the inkscapee writes part? Whatever inkscapee wrote is true for him and him (her?) only. Nobody is forcing that sentence down your throat as if it were truthful. Your UID suggests you have been around for quite some time, but your intellect suggests your a godless aspie.

You don't need to be so blatant. Just show up with an *athiest* sign on your shirt. Then you can't possibly be held in contempt, and no one will pick you anyhow. You know us Godless heathens can't be trusted!! ;-)

The urge to advertise your personal beliefs about God and insert them into unrelated discussions about jury selection is what is difficult to trust. I am not saying there is anything wrong with discussing such topics, in fact that's what I am about to do now that it's come up. It just seems out of place or off-topic in this particular discussion, like it's not driven by a desire to elaborate on the jury selection process at all but instead by the way the less-enlightened respond to what you believe.

It reminds me of those Christians who think every discussion about every subject is an opportunity to evangelize. The disservice they do to Christianity is tremendous. I say that as someone who does not believe that spirituality is something which can be organized and institutionalized. Herding the genuinely spiritual would be about as easy as herding cats. The self-aware understand the folly of group identities and the undue importance they are given. For that reason I ask that you please do not paint me with the brush of mainstream Churchianity. My point is, I believe that to a lesser degree, the disservice you are doing to Atheism is similar.

I realize you were making a joke but all the same it reflects a feeling of persecution. It sounds like you have been treated differently and maybe downright discriminated against because of your Atheism or you have seen this done to other Atheists. When Jesus taught people to love their neighbor he didn't say "oh, unless he doesn't believe what you believe". Therefore, the "Christians" who would learn you are Atheist and then treat you with anything other than genuine kindness and respect are phony because they don't really understand what they profess to believe.

It reminds me of what Mahatma Ghandi said. As a Hindu, he said "I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. They are nothing like your Christ." You don't have to identify yourself as a Christian to understand that; all it takes is the ability to think for yourself. Ghandi certainly had that talent. I don't know if this would apply to you so please forgive me for being forced to generalize here: most Atheists I have personally met weren't terribly pro-Atheism. They were anti-religion. They didn't talk very much about rationality, logic, philosophy, etc. They primarily talked about religious people. It's sort of like most US elections -- few vote for a candidate they like. Instead they vote against a candidate they really don't like.

Sadly it is rare for me to meet an Atheist who wants to edify himself and build himself up; they were far too preoccupied with trying to take religion down a peg or two despite generally being smart people, the kind with whom one can reason. That is not an attack on Atheism because it is not unique to them. If anything, it's a lament about the human condition for this pattern is not at all limited to the subject of religion. It tells me something, at least about those particular Atheists I have personally known: they have been as damaged by organized religion as any of its followers and do not wish to let that go and deepen their understanding of who they are and what they believe.

You don't need to be so blatant. Just show up with an *athiest* sign on your shirt. Then you can't possibly be held in contempt, and no one will pick you anyhow. You know us Godless heathens can't be trusted!! ;-)

Agreed. My choice of words was colored by emotion. BTW, I found out recently where the word "idiot" is coming from. According to what I read, in ancient Greece and idiot is someone who always acts in his our interest only often harming the society in which he lives. Something like a super-ego, or a sociopath.

The major source of my frustration is that "divide and conquer" seems to work so damn well. I used to participate actively in BG political forums but I quickly discovered that any subject of discussion must fit in either "left, Russia, socialism" or "right, America, capitalism" paradigm. It's just so silly - why should you stick to the whole package? Why not take some good stuff from America and some from Russia? What's wrong with BG looking for the best deal for the Bulgarians? The moment I try to take reasonable (middle) ground I was immediately attacked by the commies for being "judeo-christian imperialist" AND by the right-wingers for being "idiotic, blinded, godless communist". I gave up writing a few years back....

To add insult to injury now I experience the same "dualism" in my everyday life. For the people back home I am already "a westerner" and for the ones here I will remain forever "oriental". How can explain that such dualism, when used wisely, frees oneself from plenty of cultural biases, because you can see (if you make the effort) both system "from the outside".

US companies will do anything if it helps them make their dollars.

Next thing, the men will demand that their group and the womens group be segregated into a "Saudi only" group so they aren't defiled by the godless Westerners. Facebook will be happy as it will make their demographic profiling even easier, and they'd be able to charge special rates for advertisers looking to the Saudi market....

Ker-ching!

The future belongs to multidimensional consciousness arrays. Remember, for humans, the world is multidimensional and consciousness is an emergent dialectic of mutually refracting dimensions of metaconsciousness. Video does not take this basic fact of nature into account, which is why it is sterile and leads to godlessness and impotence. Down with vidfeo! Down with the imperialist plot against our brainpans!

It looks perfectly within scales required on the picture, especially since its antenna (and a whip one, essentially, not anywhere near the smallest possible) is simply determined by the wavelength to which it responds. A bit shorter wavelength, much shorter (1/4) the antenna.

And whole device is perfectly close to the shape of a dragonfly, can form its structure. The few acoustic / electronic components - also easily much smaller (The Thing was built at the end of WW2!)

A lot of stuff isn't declassified (what do you think such devices were used for? And in this case, if my guess is correct, it would be largely a copy of something the godless commies did, we can't admit to doing that...)

But ... but ... godless commies ... does not compute!

What is religion? As far as I'm concerned it is just ONE expression of a political ideology. So all we have is that people born into families that are active in politics, are themselves more likely to be active in politics. Jay, big deal.

If your assertions were true, then how has it ever been possible that Western Europe became secularized? We went from a situation with large families, all of them religious, with only a choice on which brand of religion you liked (unless you were a godless socialist) to a situation where 1.8 children are the norm and most of the population is no longer religious. You will have a hard time explaining the history of the last century in Western Europe on this point, if you just take this article as gospel (couldn't resist that one :)).

And the wind shall say: ‘Here were decent godless people:
Their only monument the asphalt road
And a thousand lost golf balls.’”

---T. S. Eliot

A recent program on PBS (I think) that discussed the The State of Tennessee v. Scopes in 1925 where a teacher was prosecuted for teaching evolution. It was said after the trial (teacher was found guilty and fined $100), schools across the country continued to teach biblical creation. After the Soviets launched Sputnik in 1957, evolution was brought into school curriculum because, "we are behind the Soviets in teaching science."

As science is taking a backseat to sales, marketing, and religious dogma, I can see how evolution will be removed from school curriculum. But then those godless commie's in other countries will churn out more engineers and scientists while we bitch and moan.

Bonus if you understand why its apt-get dist-upgrade instead of apt-get upgrade, unless you plan on keeping your old box (for kindling?)

  Because, as a godless heathen Deb user (as opposed to RPM), you don't understand basic commands?

(I jest, I jest).

Now there's a blast from the past.

It's always convenient to start the story at a particular point in history. You choose the early 50s. Others might choose a point a couple thousand years ago when the Persians invaded Greece. Therefore, Greeks need atomic weapons? You might try any point in time. In any case, Persia's never been the same since Alexander, who was followed by the Arabs, and then the Turks, and finally the Brits.

Another problem is the "what ifs" in history. You can assume that any moment of hope would have blossomed into a perfect world, but it almost never works like that. For instance, since the Shah was overthrown, does anyone in Iran talk about Mosaddegh -- or is it against the law since he was a godless socialist?

Seems the BBC didn't want to transmit this year's Nerdstock (aka Nine Lessons for Godless People). Oh well.

Here's a much better version of this performance with a good sound quality: 6Nerdstock: Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People