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Wait, so bible hugging Ned Flanders is a godless-communist-leftist (thats one word right?) in your book?

Comrade, you are mixing your scripts.

Love and obedience are both voluntary according to Christianity. We have an invitation, but you and I aren't forced to go either way. It's entirely up to each and every one of us.

In Christianity, God isn't just an adult who is a few decades older than we are. He's eternal.

Of course God could have created a world without the godless afterlife. But that would have been equivalent to forcing everyone into heaven, and God respects our free will too much to do that. His company is voluntary.

Jesus taught that God created us for a fulfilling eternal life. Humanity (you and I and most people in history) messed up, and we are currently subject to a partly-godless world, with a way back provided for us, and another way to try and stick it out without God.

I don't want to change your mind about God. If you want to be an atheist or a skeptic, be one. But the understanding in your comment doesn't have much to do with Christianity.

To the AC 2 below:
The tree of morality (kudos, many don't understand it for what it is) represented the choice between letting God tell / teach humanity what's right and wrong. Eating from the fruit was about taking that right into our own hands, which set mankind on a painful but fixable detour.

If God hadn't left such a way out of the Garden, he would have locked us in, which would have conflicted with that crucial principle at the start of my comment: love relationships are voluntary.

As soon as you say someplace is cool... that's the turning point. These pinky and the brain fucks are playing Godless-World Life-for-the-flying-fuck-of-it Edition.

Any country where Facebook is banned has 50% better chance though. I don't think there are any though... unless Germany is still harping on Holocaust denials.

http://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Germany-warns-Facebook-Clamp-down-on-Holocaust-denial-or-else-413595

Anybody who subscribes to -isms will fail. Judaism is anti-Christian. That is literally all you need to know about it.

why the USA still has an embargo against Cuba? (sensible answers only please).

Votes.

You get the old-people-who-still-fear-those-godless-red-bastards vote, and you get the Cuban exile vote. And you get the agriculture vote, because we grow a hell of a lot more corn than sugar.

Almost everything produced in the U.S. uses high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) rather than sugar and there is a difference. Being a LOT of Mexican stores around I go to them as anything sold there is authentic and made of real sugar, and my source of Coca-Cola for one.

"The use of HFCS in the United States is partially attributable to government tariffs that maintain domestic sugar prices at above the global price and subsidies to corn growers that lower the cost of the primary ingredient in HFCS, corn. Since 1797 there have been a system of sugar tariffs and sugar quotas in the United States that maintains the price of imported sugar at levels up to twice the global price" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H...

why the USA still has an embargo against Cuba? (sensible answers only please).

Votes.

You get the old-people-who-still-fear-those-godless-red-bastards vote, and you get the Cuban exile vote. And you get the agriculture vote, because we grow a hell of a lot more corn than sugar.

We must NOT question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful Gene Roddenberry, who creates faulty plotlines, and then has to plug-in "tranporters" (and then "faulty transporters"), unemotional aliens (who then MUST be hyper-emotional) Godless-value-neutrality (which gets replaced with a "prime directive" "highest law" that must be frequently violated) in a money-free socialist utopian future (where people gamble with money, there is no explanation for the allocation of resources and CLEARLY everybody cannot have his own gleaming new starship) to try to cover for for his own selft-inconsistent beliefs and the resulting mistakes.

People get into trouble when they try to see the universe through the lens of a "prophet" who was just a TV guy who convinced a network to air a couple seasons of his take on a Western ("Wagon Train to the Stars"). They guy was a dude trying to make a good living in cheap entertainment! When he did the original Trek, he was not even able to do it on the "big screen" yet people treat him like a religious figure. Star Trek is just entertainment! - Just the modern version of guys on stage in tights yelling "To be, or not to be..." just people doing for a living what all the rest of us did when we were between 5 and 9 years old: dressing-up, playing make-believe, and telling stories. You would do just as well to glom onto Lucas, or Spielberg, or dramas like "Law and Order" or sitcoms like "Friends" for your life lessons.

Were there some good Trek stories? Yes. Were there some good performers and sets and props? Sure. Many other TV shows and movies have had better. Get over it and leave the spock ears and toy phasers on the shelf.

As for the rest of your post, all of today's morality is based on primitive superstitions (especially if you consider religion a superstition).

Morality is independent of religion, someone once said that it was hijacked.

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.

At least subjugation of woman, slavery and genocide (read the Old Testament) were also practiced by not-so-godless societies.

Moral codes that put an end to those all stemmed from societies that believed there was a greater purpose, outside of themselves.

Some of those things ended with Enlightenment, which was one of the most godless periods in our history.

It's right that organized religion did some good things, but it's a stretch to say that all morality comes from religion

That is your opinion,

There are a number of things I said in the posting to which you're replying. Presumably you're referring to me stating that I'm not OK with somebody finding enjoyment/fulfillment in murdering as many people as possible and calling it their purpose in life.

and of course you are entitled to it, but what makes you think your opinion is better than anybody else's or should be binding on any other person?

Well, most people don't like to be murdered, and most societies, no matter how godless, have managed to have laws against murder. Now, what counts as a murder differs from society to society, even between non-godless societies....

If there is no God, then we are only left with each other's opinion. The one that has the biggest weapon, will ultimately enforce his/her opinion on the rest.

And if there is a God, but either not everybody believes in him or those who do don't agree on what he said or on what his sayings mean, then we are only left with each other's opinion of what God said and what he meant, and the one that has the biggest weapon will ultimately enforce his/her opinion on the rest.

Anybody who's actually paid attention to history will realize that it's rather likely that people who all claim to believe in the same God won't necessarily agree on what he said or on what his sayings mean, so I'm not that convinced that the presence or absence of God is going to make a big enough difference unless God directly wields the biggest weapon (without the aid of humans) to enforce his opinion. Not having seen a lot of cases of, say, mass murderers struck down by lightning from above, I'm not sure that's happened.

Yes.

Yes you do.

You do deserve better ebooks. Because the current quality of ebooks is destroying the Internet, and, dare I say it, destroying the fabric of America itself. And as every red-blooded American knows, the Internet and the United States of America ARE EXACTLY THE SAME THING.

Every night I weep, weep bitter tears, at the terrible, terrible, quality of ebooks infesting our world. Me, I blame socialists. Or fascists. Or communists. Or atheists. Or Christians. It's the socio-fascist-communo-godless-theocratic industrial complex destroying the world one lousy ebook at a time.

... which is why you should immediately run out and buy a copy of Pay Me, Bug!, available on Amazon.com (Kindle), Barnes and Noble (Nook), Smashwords (epub, Kobe, PDF, LRF, PalmDoc), and iTunes. It is the only chance we all have to ensure a better tomorrow.

I'm an atheist and I don't feel that way about multiverse hypotheses (which is what they are at this stage). Maybe the problem here is that some religious folks, feeling picked on, try to make proclamations about this mathematical models and how atheists feel about them as if to say "You see, you silly atheists, you have your gods too, haha."

There are plenty of reasons to get a little hot around the collar about the way some people (mainly Greene and the other string theorists) sometimes push what are ultimately mathematical models that may or may not have anything at all to do with reality, but you're idea of an atheist version god is ludicrous, first of all because it supposes that multiverse theories were concocted for a godless-god, and secondly because it presupposes that atheists in general would buy into it.

Like the idea of creating your own nuclear deterrent to prop up a theocracy that operates under the guise of a democratic country?

Indeed, see USA vs. USSR (no, you don't need an anthropomorphic god to worship, there are many godless-and-still-religious dogmas around for you to follow).

Just like Resident Evil 1-3 was anti-American and how 4 was racist against Spaniards. That's why there's no Resident Evil taking place in Japan - it's made by greasy-nerdy-short-foureyed-inconsiderate-godless-racist Nips. Has anyone considered that, from the developer's perspective, all the zombies are not only foreigners, but of a race other than their own? Any controversy about RE5's trailers just shows how ignorant and self-absorbed Americans are. We assume that our taboos - such as shooting up hordes of black people, but not including hordes of Asians or white people - have some universal application as if our culture is the world culture.

Does everything on /. always need to be a political debate?

* (feel free to substitute your own choice of labels here)

If we never did anyting until there was zero risk, we'd still be living in caves.

What I really love is the young-Earther's defense of their position. In the end, you can always boil down their "arguments" to a common set of themes, with the last resort being the argument of choice:

1. "There is scientific evidence for our position! Look at these facts we cherry-picked! The jury's clearly still out!"
2. "The scientific community has a grudge against us! Of course they'd never agree!"
3. "We're entitled to our own truth, you're entitled to yours (even if yours is wrong)!"
4. "Of course God misled us with bogus "evidence". It's a test of faith!"
5. The best one: "It's all part of a larger conspiracy of commie-liberal-Nazi-gay-foreign-secular humanist-godless culture warriors who are out to subvert our way of life!!!! Sux0rs!!!"

Fortunately, you can wipe out every proposition above with two small sentences: "Admit it. Maybe you're just incredibly, incredibly stupid."

"And what happens when a rational atheist, holding no irrational fantasies about any mystical nature of man's existence, is in charge of the military weapons technology instead?

I'd answer that for you, but I'd be invoking Godwin's Law."

Are you referring to the Nazis, and their exalted leader Hitler, who believed that he was fighting for God? Check this out:

"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter."

""Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord."

Hitler, and the whole Nazi program, was extremely religious. Wikipedia says this:

"Volkism was inherently hostile toward atheism: freethinkers clashed frequently with Nazis in the late 1920s and early 1930s. On taking power, Hitler banned freethought organizations and launched an "anti-godless" movement. In a 1933 speech he declared: "We have . . . undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out." This forthright hostility was far more straightforward than the Nazis' complex, often contradictory stance toward traditional Christian faith."

You might think that they were wrong, or otherwise disagree with them, but that does not make them atheist.

Greed, a/k/a the "bottom line". The U.S. government won't touch it, remember government intervention = not truly a free market = socialism, and if that happens we're all going to rot in Godless-commie hell forever. Corporations are looking at their bottom line, and altruism isn't as profitable as the high fees you can charge when you're keeping expenditures at a minimum (upgrading infrustructure as slowly as possible, look at 3G) and discouraging competition (look at the opposition to loosening up telco restrictions, and look at the hoops cable companies have to jump through to get a local dial tone in most small towns.)

Dude, relax, there's no point. As the para-phrase goes, "You're preaching to the satanists". These cattle aren't going to change their mind. Their (really suspiciously elected) president said it was an Act of War, and that it's time for America to fight back against these Terrorists(tm). They've had constant propaganda thrown at them for nigh on five years now. What makes you think a little thing like the truth stands a dog in hells chance now? Most americans (I'm saying most, since not all are swallowing it) don't know, and probably don't care about their 'liberties'. As long as they can get that feel-good factor when they hear on Fox-Propaganda that the mighty US Govt has arrested another one of those godless-terrorists that's trying to kill every american on earth because of what they stand for, they don't give a shit. I bet if you asked most average americans, they don't even know why Al-Q-Ada performed (if they did, that is) the 11/9/2001 bombings. They don't know nor care how it's all an inter-tribal squabble between two of the Arabian tribes in Saudi (House of Saud and the House of Laden, IIRC).

    I don't know how this thing has been played out over in the US, but most people here in the UK, as well as a lot of my buddies in Australia and NZ think that "Department of Homeland Security" is at best an incompetent knee-jerk reaction, and at worst represents the same sort of agency as "Ministry for Information" represents in middle-eastern nations, and the Gestapo* did in Germany 1934-45. Surely the defence of the Homeland should reside with the Department of Defence? Or am I confusing real-speak with good-speak again. Of course, these terrorists are just that; people who wish to break the laws of a country and instil terror in the hearts of it's citizenry in order to further a political or criminal aim. In this case, get US troops and involvement out of Saudi Arabia and stop the international support for the House of Saud so they can have themselves a little civil war. Their actions are criminal. The US Govt saying it is an act of war is semantics pure and simple. The only driving motivation for that one was the ability to stand up in the UN with at least some credibility and invade Afghanistan. I know for fact that a lot of that huge multi-national force that helped the US invade Afghanistan was not there because it believed that the taliban where part and parcel of Al-Q-Ada, merely that the taliban were a ruthless evil dictatorship that could do with being taken out of action, and here's as good a time as any. All the US has succeeded at doing in the last five years is pissing off a lot of otherwise friendly nations by kidnapping their citizens, stamping down on freedom-of-speech and civil liberties in he Fatherland, breaking a few international agreements (like the Law of Armed Conflict, the Geneva Convention), and destroying any credibility the UN had in claiming that all nations are equal and have equal rights. That war in Iraq was illegal. No doubt about it. As illegal as Iraq invading Kuwait in 1990. Even the (very) shaky argument that the US was doing it out of some preposterous defence in case Saddam used his NBC capability against the US is totally gone, since Saddam had no NBC capability. Even if he had of, he had no way of getting it to the US, in less he'd started putting it on passenger jets. Now the US Govt itself has admitted there were no "wmd's, nor was there any connection or involvement between Iraq and Al-Q-Ada. There is now, of course, since insurgency is rife in Iraq. Now they're going after Iran. Syria after that if I had to guess. Anyone who swallows the party line back in the USA deserves neither argument nor discussion. They're obviously too easily lead and stupid to understand the truth.

*Not trying to invoke Godwin's Law here, since the comparison is fair.

Be glad you avoided that Pentium 60Mhz math bug. I think they fixed that by the Pentium 120Mhz chip. ;) I think that Math bug helped Enron balance their accounting books. ;)

Nah, actually the first computer I ever used was a Pentium 120, let alone the occasional use of gaming systems (NES, Saturn, SNES, Atari) and that really crappy Windows 3.x box we had in grade school, that preceeded my mothers first non-monochrome, non-wordprocessor-only computer.