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In my country there's no student loan, we beleive that a free education is part of equality of chances, so nobody has to pay for getting graduated. If you can't afford a place to live, then the gov. provides it for free as weel a small student room on the campus, plus some money each month so you can eat. Yes, I'm French... And proud that we have this system!

But you don't understand! We have to make fun of the French. After all, you people
1. Don't work yourselves to death
2. Don't die because you have a private insurance company that decides to screw you over when you actually get sick
3. Get guaranteed vacation every year

You see, to be real man, and not some weakling Frenchman, you have to be willing to work yourself into a heart attack by age fifty, do without vacations, and die young of some illness while fighting with your insurance company to get them to actually cover you according to your policy. That's the real Godly American way, you stinking Godless Communist!

....Except that I have yet to see such an electrical force actually worked out..
I know that mainstream cosmologists largely ignore electricity in the large-scale function of the universe. I believe that is a grave mistake. That doesn't mean that the theories of those who advocate for an electric universe are all correct and the others are all wrong. I'm just saying that the electrical force should be paid more attention to than it currently is. There is not a single mathematical equation, the changes in the slightest, whether one acknowledges God or not.
(...Whether religion can change a person....)
It is never any religion I'm talking about, but a living relationship with the person of Jesus Christ that will always change a person for the better.
(...Again, if he was an honest skeptic..)
he is not pretending to speak for atheists, but merely chronicles his journey from atheism to faith in Christ. There is also a DVD out, based on this book and having the same title.
(...The burden of proof is on the person making the claim....)
that is true, and there are plenty of atheists who are trying to prove their claim.
(...He cannot forgive one who does not believe in him...)
That is right! The Bible says our relationship with God has to be based on faith. It is the only criterion that is universal. There's not one person on this earth that CANNOT believe. It is a matter of WANTING to or not.
(...yet he will only save his friends...)
That is not true, but Jesus will save anyone who wants to be saved.
(...A judge sits in a courtroom...)
when his aged mother is brought before him, having been caught red-handed in a crime, which in that society was punishable by 40 lashes minus one with a whip. The judge knows that his old momma would never survive such a punishment. He steps down from the bench, takes off his judicial robe, has the executioner with the whip to deliver those lashes on to his back instead. The crime we have all committed against God is eternal death, that is, eternal banishment from his presence. So God stepped out of eternity into time, became a man and took the punishment in our place.
(... This is your divine justice?...)
yes, God took your punishment you so richly deserve and I too, along with every other human and now gives you the opportunity to go free. Justice has been met, in that the decreed punishment of death was carried out, but not on us sinners. Jesus took your guilt and bore it so you don't have to.
(...The claim is that he simply said a prayer...)
Jesus claimed to be God and as God the Creator has perfect knowledge of the structure of matter. It is easy for him to restructure a collection of atoms of water into wine or to multiply a few loaves of bread and some fish to feed 5000 people. Just because we don't have the foggiest notion how such a thing could be done doesn't mean it can't be done and hasn't been done.
(...once you accept the premise...)
there are many things we accept on faith, that is, they are axioms upon which further reasoning is based. The Bible puts it like this:
Hebrews 11:6 But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.
There is a promise in this verse, in the last phrase.
(...Problem of Evil...)
that is a problem and stumbling stone that has caused many thinking, honest people like you, (yes there are honest atheists) to question faith in God, especially a God who supposedly is love. Theologians and philosophers have wrestled with this throughout the ages. The Bible tells us that this problem of evil started for man, when he disbelieved God and in effect declared himself independent from God, becoming as it were godless. The first of the 10 Commandments tells us to love God. In order to love someone, we must also have the choice not to love. If you want to know what love looks like, from God's perspective, read 1Corinthians 13 in your Bible. The bottom line is simply this: God gave man a love

kill/invade/torture/ for faith, whereas your decent religious people do it all the time.

Only a handful of individuals in remote areas of backwards countries have killed/invaded/tortured for faith in recent memory. Their religions don't consider them "decent religious people" at all, even when denouncing these apostates and their tactics costs the denouncers their own lives.

All real mass-murders — or attempts at same — over the last 100 years have been perpetrated by folks either actively (like Communists) or passively (like Nazis) godless. The only possible exception is the Ottoman's decimation of the Armenians — shocking in itself, however, it is dwarfed by the "achievements" of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, or Rwanda's thugs. Osama bin Laden — the worst religious murderer of recent memory — does not stand near those guys, because, in no small part, the fate of innocent people actually bothered him somewhat and he tried (if unconvincingly) to distance himself from the 9/11 attack.

Even when you are cornered by religious zealots bent on killing "infidels", one can escape death by converting. But there is/was no escape for "kulaks" from Stalin and Mao, for Jews from Hitler, or for Bosnjaks from Milosevic...

Which takes one to the major point/revelation — religion is not the reason. Like a gun or a hammer, it is a tool, that could be used for good or evil depending on the user's motivations and desires, which are usually far deeper seated, than the religion can penetrate. If anything, religion softens the rough edges we've all inherited.

I strongly suspect that you have been indoctrinated heavily against Com.

That's true. I was heavily indoctrinated against Communism — by Communists...

Your comment about the lamppost I will not even attempt to answer - it is so childish and shallow....

It is not at all shallow — I'm against death penalty in general for fear of uncorrectable mistake. But a person, who openly admits sharing the most murderous ideology known so far (Nazism is not even close), is an unmistakable danger. Killing such people is the least we can do in memory of the millions of innocent victims of Communism.

You actually trust people whose moral standards are from an old book

I don't trust — I trust them more than others. There is a difference...

I don't buy a word you are saying. I grew up in a Communist country as well and I am an atheist. The moral standards of all people around me in my country were never lower than the ones I am seeing now, living in Western Europe. The difference is that my beloved godless family and friends could never be persuaded to kill/invade/torture/ for faith, whereas your decent religious people do it all the time.

I strongly suspect that you have been indoctrinated heavily against Com. and because that implies atheism you made a connection where there isn't any. Forgive me to speak like I know you, but I definitely recognize the mindset. Its one of the most unpleasant ones - blindly accepting everything which claims to be anti-Communism. The Democratic Party in my country which from its creation was betting on anti-Com message and was attracting people like you went from 52% support to 3.5% support in 20 years (they had 4 goverments in this period). Because everyone finally realized that com. , cap. whatever are just labels. And that the hypocrisy of the democratic, religious First World rivals in nastiness and unpleasantness the arrogance of the communists.

Your comment about the lamppost I will not even attempt to answer - it is so childish and shallow....

You actually trust people whose moral standards are from an old book and who could hug you all your life and then kill you in a second if they suddenly perceive you as a treat to their faith! Speechless....

When we do it, it's to protect the children from porn and terrorism. When the godless commies do it, it's just plain evil.

Although with our modern day aversion to risk, I can't see it getting a very enthusiastic welcome from todays "sailors".

People were always risk-averse, and back then - when their entire world often was one small country - they were terrified to live their homes and go to some land far away that they never saw. Today, in comparison, even a trip to Mars is a sure bet - you know exactly how to get there and back, and what you will find there, and how to survive on day #1, and on day #2, etc.

The New World was colonized by people who wanted to get away from Old World's totalitarian governments. Saddam Hussein would be seen as a savior compared to kings and laws of their time. I think Mark Twain, for example, mentioned this somewhere.

As the world unites, however, the prospects of global (and totalitarian) government are not to be dismissed. It's not here yet, but many countries have less than democratic governments, even though they say they are more democratic than anyone else. Rights that were assumed to be natural and inalienable are questioned. There are no telescreens in our homes yet (except in some UK homes) but they are coming (see UK's CCTVs as the first step.) Why? Because a government can only strive for more power, never for less, and it continues to acquire power until it is overthrown, one way or another. However modern governments are far from kings of the past - they are guided by modern social sciences, they know what to do to keep the populace pacified and motionless in front of their telescr^W television sets. So far they are very successful.

Eventually - and it is happening already - the society will stratify, so that a small number of dissidents just can't take it any more. They will come from all directions; you will see racists who are sure that $nation is responsible for all their ills; you will see libertarians who can't exist in a socialism-lite (or not so lite.) You will see conservatives who totally disagree with governments' policies; you will see democrats who do the same; you will see workaholics and entrepreneurs who can't pay confiscatory taxes; you will see atheists who can't live in a theocratic state and you will see theists who can't live in a godless one. This separation will happen when government becomes more intrusive and more insistent on its own agendas. I don't know how many years it will take to recreate the USSR, but I'm sure it will happen - because the USSR is a great, shining example of how to take control and keep it. The USSR fell, but that's only because the leaders were just stupid old fools who were not devious enough and often not fit for the office. These mistakes are correctable, and the resulting society can be very stable and people will be happy enough - and the rulers will be gods of the domain (just as USSR's nomenklatura was.) Science fiction is full of viable frameworks of such future societies.

If that - admittedly dark - future happens then there will be plenty of people willing to go somewhere, anywhere, as long as it is many parsecs away from this pitiful planet. They will carry the seeds of destruction with them, of course, but they will buy a few thousand years of reprieve, maybe.

> Which is a big relief, at least for me (being an evil godless file sharer and all that).

You made a typo there, I believe :-)

M.A.D. is obsolete in the age of the evangelical suicide bomber.

Just imagine a group of 9/11 style 'dead enders' with a couple of box cutters and a few loose nukes. Ramp it up and shut down this whole Godless mess.

Or, maybe someone's wish for a simple eco-reboot.

Lots of dream scenarios for those who have no qualms about dying for the cause.

You do realize that open source software is designed by thousands of (presumably) intelligent designers, making it nothing like evolution.

Godless Evolution would be if someone just started a random character generator and a Linux kernel popped out.

Theistic Evolution would be if someone started a random character generator and looked through the results for pieces of code that could be used.

Phil didn't win anything for anybody, at least not for a long long time. The Info-ZIP Workgroup went through the same grief back in the 80's when we were trying to back-engineer Phil Katz' ZIP / UNZIP utilities, porting them to virtually every known operating system in the world.

We got unofficial rumbles from US Customs, NSA, etc. that they would crush our virtual fingers if we dared release source code (and everything in Info-ZIP was full open source) for the ZIP encryption. (PKWare had restrictions too against export, but they could and did pretty much ignore that.) But we were actively distributing source, and that was somehow ... different. And far more heinous.

Amazingly, coincidentally, miraculously, some of the Workgroup boyos in France produced some wondrous code that (wooo!) gave us full PKZIP encrypt / decrypt capabilities. So since we were now _importing_ the encryption algorithms from France ... we thumbed our noses at the Powers That Be and went about their business, distributing the whole source code package world-wide.

The rumbles just kind of went away, and that was the end of that.

Since I was the official "coordinator" for source code archiving, distribution, compatibility, coordination, etc., I know whereof I speak. And I'd already been through the "No Export of Encryption Technology To Those Godless Commies" grief with a commercial encryption package of my own (CryptoMax and CryptoComm).

Glad to see the Feds finally realized that Ivan, Ming, and all those other 'orrible folks were perfectly capable of inventing their own encryption if they had to, and quit all that silliness. And also glad to see that Zimmerman didn't go to jail. I sure was surprised to read all that PGP source code in Dr. Dobbs :-) (And weren't THEY the brave ones to publish it too? Usenet be damned; Dr. Dobbs should get the credit on that one!

Isn't that why they're called Red States? Doesn't New York pay out more in taxes than it receives?

It's that way with Red States in general. Hell, even in Virginia, Republicans talk about the "Real Virginia" (Virginia minus Northern Virginia) and bitch about "subsidizing DC Metro" whenever anyone talks about roads or Metro-rail projects. But, it is Northern Virginia that is their biggest tax base. Without "Real Virginia", Northern Virginia would be much better off. And so it is with the rest of the Red States. If it weren't for the "Godless, Communist Blue States", they wouldn't be able to afford their own fucking roads, let alone basic infrastructure.

I say, let them seceed and the rest of us can watch them turn into a Theocratic dumbass country that makes the Third World look wealthy and progressive.

Oh, and fuck Oklahoma!

Technically it could be any god, even a specific god of a polytheistic religion. I choose to think it represent Apollo. The only ones it specifically excludes are atheists, which was the exact intent of the original measure -- a moral strike against godless communists.

We all know though that it's really referring to the Christian God though, since "This is a Christian nation."

Another big source of uncommon metals is sub-Saharan Africa - for example, something like 80% of the world's supply of either Cobalt or Coltan comes from mines in the Congo. And China has been making big inroads into that region too, in terms of international aid and trade.

There are times that being an officially godless commie state comes in handy, really. US shows up and says "we'll give you aid money as long as you don't promote safe sex, and oh, sorry, our business community is a little too nervous to really trade with you." China shows up and just says "look, we want to do business; you have resources we need."

Unsurprisingly, African governments are talking more to China these days.

The issues are very complex. My family goes well back into Canada's roots on both sides and, as a family we reside pretty much country wide.

Canada's heart lies in the idea of a cultural mosaic, maybe that came from our bilingual heritage and the more orderly development of our frontiers. Maybe it came from it being just to fucking cold to bother to with hate, and, hockey got rid of the aggressive edge. I think it was J. Cartier who said, "This must be the land God gave to Cain." What is certain is that Canada as a country bound to the idea of a cultural mosaic has always been deeply attentive to the rights of minorities and not without reason. Mackenzie King, one of Canada's longest reigning PMs, who held seances with the spirits of his dead mother and his dead dog fought against immigration into Canada by the mountainous Shik people of northern India because our climate would be too inhospitably cold for them (not as cold as the Prime Minister's shoulder).

I think what's new to the mix is a shift in demographics, a shift in political tactics and maybe the first hint of a Brave New World. The European stock that initially invaded North America has been recently outnumbered and, last year, Asian immigrants were the most prevalent. The shift in demographic to a truly multi racial, multi cultural mix probably has heightened the likelihood and exposure of racial hate. The law was to some extent enacted to combat racism doing more than rearing it's hydra heads. Political Correctness, OTOH, has become a witch hunt captained by any cavalier politician seeking power at any means. It's amusing that the Harper Government, presently in power, openly, passionately uses "attack ads" while posing as politically correct. It's all very relative.

The problem Conservatives in Canada and Republicans in America face is that both parties have taken a Sophist, relativist approach to gaining and holding power. In a Godless world both parties have embraced the religious right and pretty much any other splinter group in an attempt to cobble together enough votes to gain power. Rove in America, like Harper in Canada embody the philosophical, relativist road to power by any means. Hate speech legislation is just another iteration of the political rights perennial attempt to position themselves as the voice of what is right, proper and politically correct at the expense of freedom of speech.

In an ever shrinking, heavily populated world of limited resources Hate Speech legislation is a card that will probably be repeatedly played as countries come to terms with a Brave New World. As a species we're creatures of context and thus there's ample evidence to suggest something akin to Hate Speech legislation can be effective, even if people like myself view it as voodooism.

I was simply reporting what the term means nowadays

Thanks mr. colloquial dictionary. I guess I should start writing "loose" whenever I mean "lose." Because that's what the term means nowadays.

Sorry friend, trying to redefine Socialism because a group of people you hang around with can't understand the difference between systems of government and economic systems doesn't change what the term means. It just means that they, and you, don't understand what it means.

And so my friend, although it's probably going to be fun to have some ad nauseum argument about whether the a group of people misusing a term means that it gets redefined, I have one or two more intellectually stimulating things I'd rather do with my time -- like pull the hair from my nostrils.

Thus and heretofore, mr. colloquial dictionary (right-wing edition), Socialism means... well whatever you think it means -- I guess. And while we're at it, we should redefine Liberalism to mean godless, poo-poo headism that makes people cry... and bad things too. And maybe we should also redefine Conservative to mean flowers and love and all good things.

Good idea. I like you thinking!

So I use opera regularly, but I have chrome and firefox for certain things too. I know I know, godless heathen.

So I look at my drop down menu for the address bar. yahoo, google, google scholar, the uni I work at, a company I did a contract for, amazon. Rather dull. Oh, except for all of the things I typed wrong. Typed www.slahsdot.org - it's in there, might not be a huge problem since it is clearly spelled wrong. What about the more amiguous .net vs .com .ca, etc? Or my WoW guild when the website first went up the page was a /dkp/index.htm /dkp/ just gave an error and /dkp/index.html gave an error. Think I can remember which of those is correct? How about roger.com, rogers.com, rogers.ca? In this case IIRC they're all valid, but not necessarily the one I want.

Understandably people don't want their browsing history necessarily displayed when anyone goes to use their computer. But sometimes I don't want to see my own browsing history when it doesn't work.

Yes, the recently visited list is stored in a .xml file which I on occasion have to edit when I fail to type something in correclty.

Russia going to Mars alone could motivate a second space race

Nah, cause Russia is no longer the "Evil, Godless Soviet Union". China, on the other hand, might motivate us.

Our constitution guarantees us the right to drive everywhere and park our SUVs because we're not godless socialists.

You're assuming that the circumference of a circle will always have an irrational length. Not so. There's no reason you couldn't have a circle with a circumference of exactly one meter. Of course, to do so it would have to have a radius of irrational length, but you can't have everything

But according to the bible, both the diameter and the circumference of a circle can even be integers! If the diameter is 10 then the circumference is 30 (not 31 or 31 and a bit as godless mathematicians would have you believe). Clearly, pi must be 3.0, so those guys with their trillions of digits got it wrong in the second digit.
1 Kings 7:23 blurts out: "He made the sea of cast metal, circular in shape, measuring ten cubits from rim to rim and five cubits high. It took a line of thirty cubits to measure around it."

Except, of course, that Hitler was a Catholic. He was baptized, served as an altar boy. His early poilitical campaigns were run as a crusade against the "godless movement." He wrote in Mien Kampf, ""I am convinced that I am acting as the agent of our Creator. By fighting off the Jews. I am doing the Lord's work." He was quoted in 1941, "I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so."

Campaigning against the "godless movement" was how Hitler got his political start, do you really want to follow his example?

For someone who was supposedly an ardent Catholic, he certainly has a funny way of showing it! IMHO, the reality is while he was certianly raised Catholic, by the time he was a young man Hitler didn't practice any recognizable form of mainstream Christiany. He would of course use and pervert any institution if he thought it would help him achieve his goals. In the first half of the 20th Century Germany was a predominantly Christian country, with Roman Catholic as one of the major denominations. Therefore, it's no surprise that as a politician he would at least claim to be a Christian and Catholic.

Oh and by the way Claus Von Stauffenberg was stated that he was motivated by his Catholic beliefs as well. Does that make what he tried to do morally suspect too?