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How did this get to +4 insightful? Your derisive comments about "Christianity" and "sin" fail to meet even high school-level anthropology and sociology qualifications. Go pick up almost any book on some "godless" culture and you'll find that they've got their own historical/ingrained issues with nudity, chastity, etc. Shocking as it may be, many of these issues overlap with "Christianity" (whatever that is anymore).

Valid or not, you've polluted your own cries of "knee-jerk reaction" with your own knee-jerk reaction.

Try heathens. Godless infidels. Whatever, don't use my lack of interest in your fantasies to insult my intelligence. Most religious beliefs come from the same old shit that's been repackaged over and over again. I don't care if you disagree with the pretend game the Catholic church is playing and decided to make up your own rules. It's unimportant.

Cable companies are working diligently to find technical and legal solutions to ensure the security of their business model. It is important that the dangerous socialist technologies such as compact discs, magnetic tape, vinyl and radio, which have nearly destroyed the music industry. The cable companies had a close call with VCRs, but luckily these have been nearly eliminated. Unfortunately this required the introduction of DVDs, which further disrupted an industry still reeling from the introduction of talking pictures and the rise of the star actor. Have no fear, legislators are burning the midnight oil to find a method to preserve our freedom and way of life from the horrors of ... oh wait, you want a la carte programming?! You godless communist bastard, won't you think of the poor starving TV stuntmen?

As someone who was once essentially an agnostic and and felt then very much as you do now I can tell you that you really are all in a fuss over nothing.

The "Religious Right" is a bogeyman created by liberals of the Reagan era to give some shape to the Jerry Falwells/Moral Majority-esque as an artificial construct to knock down and to give further clarity to the position of everything liberals are not.

In any case the notion that the religious right is a significant cultural force to be reckoned with is simply false. James Dobson, et. al. have never been kingmakers. They have influence within an ever-diminishing percentage of Americans that identify themselves as Christians in more than name only - less than 15% by my estimation and various statistics that get tossed around estimating how many Americans regularly attend church. Of that percentage fewer still live in what might remotely be called a committed Christian lifestyle - i.e., regularly studying their Bible and praying and living their lives and raising their children in as disciplined a manner as humanly possible, that is, as close to the truly sacrificial model of living that Christ exemplified. Church going Christians often go out of a sense of tradition, obligation, or simply to look proper in their community (esp. in the South).

America is very much a post-Christian society - perhaps not so much as Europe certainly, but definitely post-Christian - but we have this kind of artificial sheen of propriety, derived mainly from propped-up memes like the "Religious Right," which is ironically perpetuated vis-a-vis liberals convinced that there really is someone out there who wants to tear down their freedom to be liberal and godless.

There is no such problem, no fundamental lack of full intellectual freedom on every academic and personal level and in fact the academy is quite invested against the idea that Christians are a cultural and social force of import in our nation. Those that are writing books decrying the "Religious Right" so they can bulk out their CV and make sure they get published occasionally.

If you don't believe me, fine, but just look at abortion if you don't. If even half of America was truly Christian, Roe v. Wade would never have stood this long. The hue and cry would have been so outrageous that Congress would have been unable to ignore its constituency and an amendment or law would have been created to reverse it. But clearly Americans - including "Christian" Americans - want legalized abortion.

Thank God for the Godless Chinese Government and their concern For The Children(tm).

Fear is the mind killer. Good song, btw.

And yes, fear is the downfall of the US. And many other countries. We (including the US, most of Europe and a lot of other so called developed nations) are so terribly afraid of losing what we got that we don't dare to risk going ahead.

Just recently I saw a good documentary explaining why God plays such a huge role in a country that (IIRC as the first) separated church and state. The riots of the 70s were blamed on the godlessness and hedonism of the period, and people were terrified by those riots. The religious right gained a lot of steam in these days and they still got it today. And, when I look around me and ponder what people are the most "God fearing", I notice that the age bracket matches quite nicely.

My only hope is that time will cure it. People tend to forget, and those that refuse to forget will die, and we will eventually get more people relying on logic and reason again. I hope it won't be too late.

Absolutely. The paper pulp, the glue, the leather, the string in the binding, that's just trash to me. It's the content that matters.

I think that people who fetishize physical books are expressing a reactionary fear of losing control, of losing something familiar to them that they regard as an eternal constant. The problem with that attitude is, physical books are just another form for holding content. Before books, it was the storyteller in the square, before them it was paintings on cave walls. I'm sure there were people who said, "I don't hold with these here books, they destroy the whole storytelling experience."

This reminds me of people who are aghast at the idea of removing "under god" from the pledge of allegiance, because they don't realize it was a recent update to the pledge, added in the 40's to remind those godless communist russkies that America had a potent ally.

But then, what do I know? I could be wrong.

"There are two kinds of fools. One kind says, 'This is new and therefore good.' The other kind says, 'This is old and therefore better.'"

Maybe my turn will come to be the reactionary, when dynamic content replaces static books, and it's beamed into our heads, customized for each person.

Uhm...what price? Less foreigners coming into the country? I don't think you have actually been paying attention. That is EXACTLY what they want. That isn't a "price" that is a "goal". The folks that put most of this psychotic crap into place manage to blame EVERYTHING on a few things. Gays marrying, women working, and foreigners entering the country. The only things they don't specifically blame one of those three issues for they simply pin on those godless liberals for supporting the gays marrying, the women working, and foreigners entering the country.

I blame the pro-Christian slant used to counter the "godless heathen Soviets" in the U.S. during the Cold War for furthering the misconception, not necessarily because the schools are "terrified to teach anything related to politics", as you say. State distortions and mistruths take a while to dissipate, especially when they propagate across generations.

Atheism means there is no possibility of the existence of god. None, nada, absolute zero. The "supernatural" is a crock.

Any believe that says there "might or might not be a god" is agnosticism. Agnostics (look up the origin of the term) simply say there is no way of knowing for sure either way. Hence the hedging of bets with weasel words.

The third state is theism - certainty in the existence of one or more gods. An "almost certainly there is a god" is not a theist - that's also an agnostic, because they admit to not knowing for certain. To say "almost certainly no god" is also agnosticism, not atheism. You'll never see an atheist such as myself use such phrasing, except to mock it.

Is it still "agnosticism" if one concludes from sampling the effectiveness of prayers asking for divine intervention that there is a six or even nine sigma limit on the possible existence of an interventionist supernatural being, with the attendant belief that that essentially precludes the physical relevance of the hypothesized being, even if it does not categorically disprove the existence of it once and for all?

Yes, that's agnosticism - it claims that there is a certain uncertainty as to whether god exists or not.

That is, is can one describe the use of "almost surely no god" as a statement of atheism, or is it simply "hardcore agnosticism"? Does it really matter? Dawkins uses "almost certainly no god" quite often. His background in zoology, ecology and population genetics involves quite a lot of statistics.

Agnosticism.

The "Atheist Bus Campaign" calls itself atheist, yet its signs generally say: "There's probably no god". Are they really agnostic? Does it matter?

The sign is agnostic.

Also, what's the difference between an agnostic who does admit the possiblity of a god or a godless universe (without committing to either, perhaps due to insufficient evidence) and an agnostic who insists that one must include both possibilities because it is not (logically, or perhaps physically) possible to preclude the godful condition?

Nothing - they're both nervous about the final outcome :-)

What's the difference between the second type of agnostic ("it is not possible to preclude the godful condition") and an atheists who accepts that in the long-term absence of any three, four, five or even six sigma events that are most easily explained by the existence of a supernatural being, that there is no god?

Both are agnostics - the so-called "atheist" you posit would accept the existence of god under certain events. A true atheist would, upon being presented with seemingly incontrovertible evidence of the existence of god, say "You've been fooled. There is no god. Now go review your evidence and find your error." A true atheist, upon being visited by a "being" or "presence" that claims to be god, would say "fuck you, liar" and spit in its' eye. It's only a "god" if you believe it is ... same as cavemen would probably think we are gods. Fortunately, we're at the point where we can bootstrap ourselves to the realization that god doesn't exist, only stuff that we haven't worked out the science ... there is no "supernatural", no "magick", just stuff that, given enough resources, we can duplicate. Would that make us gods, worthy of being worshiped? Of course not.

And why would ANY god need to be worshiped .. or even want to be worshiped? It's degrading to both parties. What a fucked-up concept.

Atheists KNOW there is no such thing as god ... Atheists regard agnostics as wishy-washy fence-sitters trying to hedge their bets

Perhaps atheists KNOW the concept of the mathematical limit and that evidence for an interventionist supernatural being (the "theos" part) exists only in the limit of non-reproducible anecdotes, whereas in the limit of readily reproducible physical experiment there is no evidence for such a being, and therefore for all practical purposes there is no god.

Is it still "agnosticism" if one concludes from sampling the effectiveness of prayers asking for divine intervention that there is a six or even nine sigma limit on the possible existence of an interventionist supernatural being, with the attendant belief that that essentially precludes the physical relevance of the hypothesized being, even if it does not categorically disprove the existence of it once and for all?

That is, is can one describe the use of "almost surely no god" as a statement of atheism, or is it simply "hardcore agnosticism"? Does it really matter? Dawkins uses "almost certainly no god" quite often. His background in zoology, ecology and population genetics involves quite a lot of statistics.

The "Atheist Bus Campaign" calls itself atheist, yet its signs generally say: "There's probably no god". Are they really agnostic? Does it matter?

Also, what's the difference between an agnostic who does admit the possiblity of a god or a godless universe (without committing to either, perhaps due to insufficient evidence) and an agnostic who insists that one must include both possibilities because it is not (logically, or perhaps physically) possible to preclude the godful condition?

What's the difference between the second type of agnostic ("it is not possible to preclude the godful condition") and an atheists who accepts that in the long-term absence of any three, four, five or even six sigma events that are most easily explained by the existence of a supernatural being, that there is no god?

"The function of religions broadly has a lot more to do with control than anything else."

And then Nietzsche came along with a bone to pick. He said that traditional Judeo-Christian morality was bunk in the post-Darwin era. How many pages did he use to thoroughly discredit it? In any case, he must have "not been up on the history and true nature of religion(s)" either because his new vision of secular human morality had "a lot more to do with control than anything else." So much, in fact, that he inspired a whole new movement of godless megalomaniacs who raised "power and control" from the poverty of religious practice (where religion tended to get in the way of true and total power) to a high art of philosophical and scientific ideology.

The power-mongers of the religious age had nothing on this new secular religion. It turns out if you want power and control over people, it's far better to get out from under the baggage of religious language and base your ideology on social Darwinism or some other mathematical or secular scientism. Yes, many trusted men of religious bent have lorded over the poor and unfortunate; but the newly godless philosophies of men have proven to be far, far more efficient in their control of human lives than even this.

Can you point to where ALL this fossil evidence that supposedly "proves" evolution is held. What about Piltdown man doesn't that invalidate the rest of the fossils? Please don't point to the tens of thousands of papers and the godless "scientific community" who invariably fail to question the basic premise of evolution becuase the discovery institute has already debunked them using nothing more than a bannana. /sarcasm

Just case the sarcasm is too subtle.

The "missing raw data" is not neatly compiled into an easily acceessible database. It is held by countless weather and archival centers around the world, some of whom are unwilling to share unless you are willing to jump through hoops and wait months. It is on paper, in diaries, incompatable data bases, microfilm, ancient computer tapes, you name it. Anyone remotely familiar with the enourmous effort by Phil Jones and others to painstakingly collate, correct, and open up the HADCrut data set cannot help but see "climategate" for the witch hunt that it is.

Ooooh! The US vs. the Socialized planet!
Only the US will stand alone (or perhaps in a wheelchair) against the godless socialist hordes!
And the socialist hordes seem to be just about EVERYONE except Saudi Arabia, Honduras, Krazistan and the good ol' Red White an' Blue!
This looks like a job for TEAM AMERICA! (And the Dallas Cowboys - well at least, the white ones)
Let's NUKE 'Em, Big John!

And of course it would be impossible to spin the ship, right?

Any ship big enough for a 100 year trip will be more than big enough to spin so that the rim of the ship experiences enough gravity to keep the crew healthy.

Whoops, forgot about that. It would need to be a fairly sizeable ship though, so the gravity at a person's head isn't noticeably different than the gravity at their feet (so a ship like the Discovery One in 2001 is out).

And who ever suggested a small spacecraft? If I were designing it, it'd be 20 km long and 5-6 Km in diameter. With a crew of about 100,000.

Now you're talking about something pretty far beyond our technology; we'd need a space elevator in place just to move the required materials into orbit.

Hint: you don't build a generation ship from Earth. You start with an asteroid, and stock pretty much everything except the lifeforms aboard from other sources than Earth.

That requires massive infrastructure: factories, mines, etc. To get to that point, you'll need to have bases on many places in the inner solar system, such as Mars, the Moon, etc. You can't just hollow out an asteroid and stick 100,000 people in it: you need buildings: schools, cafeterias, living quarters, etc. Starting with an asteroid doesn't even make much sense, except that it gives you a nice outer shell. Plus, it's have to be an enormous asteroid to be useful for a mission this size, with this many people inside; you're talking more like grabbing Phobos or Deimos out of their orbit and using them. Most asteroids aren't that large. Plus, we're nowhere near having the ability to go grab some asteroid and maneuver it wherever we want; that requires some very powerful engines.

What passes for government here on Earth can't look far enough ahead. If we KNEW there was an alien species living there, and that they would be willing to give us the secret of FTL if only we sent someone there to collect, we'd still never get one built...

Exactly right. Even if such a scenario were real, people would be sitting around saying "we don't need FTL", "the aliens are godless heathens", "we can't afford it; we need to finance this war instead", etc.

Apparently it was created in Soviet Russia, and I leave it to another /.er to come up with an appropriately funny saying to that effect.

In Soviet Russia they don't have Christmas, the godless bastards?

(Got nothin'.)

Once Empress Palin has been placed on the throne and Martial Law declared to rid God's Country of the godless liberal commie pinko socialists that have brought the country to its knees.

It's Seti@HOME, not Seti@WHEREVERTHEFUCKIFEELLIKEINSTALLINGIT.

Especially not somewhere that's funded by public money. I don't pay my taxes to waste them on looking for spacemen.

Wake up people! We're alone and adrift in a godless universe, and no amount of "I want to believe" is going to change that.

We're an anomaly. A bunch of selfish amino acids and various meats bagged up in fatty tissue. There's no aliens. There's only us.

And we can't even get THAT right.

This fucker deserves to be anally raped for the time and effort he's wasted.
Throw him on the pedo list too - He fits the demographic.

As we know, sex is dirty enough, but homosexuals and transsexuals are all disease-ridden, AIDS-infested, sex-crazed, godless, hedonistic, er..., I'm sure there are a few more words I could use along those lines

Fuck!! Why wasn't I provided with the handbook when I started on hormones?! And where are all these hedonistic, sex-crazed parties I'm supposed to be attending? I'm not opposed to hedonism or sex-craziness, mind you, but if I'm being obliged to live up to the standards set by my trans sisters and brothers, I'd like to know what I'm supposed to be doing.

You'd think with time for all the destruction of family values and breakdown of gender roles trans people seem to be doing, we could get our shit together for a nice handbook...

As we know, sex is dirty enough, but homosexuals and transsexuals are all disease-ridden, AIDS-infested, sex-crazed, godless, hedonistic, er..., I'm sure there are a few more words I could use along those lines but I haven't had my tea^H^H^Hcoffee yet (of course I'm a real man! tea is for girls!).

Terrorist? ;)