"US law can only restrict the US congress, but it cannot restrict the legislative powers of other countries."
That loud "woosh" you heard moments ago was the entire point of my post going directly over my head.
The Constitution doesn't restrict the powers of other countries. It doesn't give people rights, neither in the US nor in any other part of the world. It does nothing but restrict the rights of the US government. Does the US Constitution apply to the whole world? Yes, in the sense that its restrictions apply to the US federal government no matter where they happen to be.
Alright, so I'm nit-picking and will get modded as flamebait...
"That is your (and probably a lot of other people's) view, but that is not a fact."
The concepts that all people are created equal and have certain intrinsic rights are more than just some concept some 18th-century land-owner thought up for the heck of it. It is a reasoned, logical conclusion after looking at the world around us. If you care to try to argue against the idea, please do. Just remember that you'll then also have to figure out why we all shouldn't go back to the ol' "divine right of kings" idea because of it.
"It's all about culture and history... "
Cultures change. If it didn't, European countries would be seeking to enshrine hate speech, not ban it.
History recycles. Government abuses come about when the government has too much control over the people. Will this new law be abused by government? Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but assuming it won't ever be abused is foolish.
"so they made the carrying of guns a fundamental right"
You missed the whole "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights" concept again. The US Constitution doesn't grant rights to the people. It can't. Popular rights are nothing less than a birthright. By shear virtue of being human, we have free will and the ability to exercise it. For example, the US Constitution doesn't "grant" us the right to free speech, self-awareness and our language instinct give us that right. The US Constitution doesn't give me the right to own a gun, my ability to pick up a gun, operate it and understand its operations gives me that right. The only thing that government can do is prohibit the exercise of rights granted us by biology/divinity/whatever.
If you take the position of government granting rights to people, you're going to have to explain how humans as a species don't have inherent free will, but government (a human creation) does.
"In Europe, people didn't want such horrible things as the holocaust to happen ever again, so to help prevent that they banned all sorts of hate speech,"
Like I said, history recycles. Did it ever occur to you that the freedom of speech is one of the first things a totalitarian regime eliminates? Or am I imagining all those book-burnings in Nazi Germany?
Are you trying to say the ends (real or imagined) justify the means?
"This wasn't about curbing the rights of the people regarding what they could say, but to try to stop speech that promotes the limitation of freedom of other people"
So promoting action is the same as the act itself? How deep does that go? Should I be jailed for promoting the ability to promote?
Better yet, "curbing the rights of the people regarding what they could say" and "stopping speech" sounds like two ways of saying the same thing. How are they not?
"Well, the holocaust wasn't that bad after all, who cares if a couple of people start again with spreading such crap and other hate speech".
Only if you can argue that the ends justify the means. For better or for worse, anti-speech laws only treat a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself. That flu will run its course no matter how many decongestants you take.
"Are americans really that arrogant as to assume the US constitution applies to every country in the world?"
Hrm...
Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech
Nothing in there saying that Congress can do that if they happen to be meeting inside the EU at the time.
I know what you meant. Did you?
You were assuming that the US Constitution, like so many others, is written from the angle of "giving rights to the people" (a flawed concept if there ever was one) instead of restricting the rights of the government.
A little over 200 years ago, a group of people finally realized that "granting popular rights" is just as much an oxymoron as "military intelligence." But even now, centuries later, so few people have figured out that fundamental truth. Instead, they just sit around making laws that do things like "restricting the right to free speech" as if such a thing were possible.
Don't mince words: This European law punishes the exercise of their peoples' right. Period.
"I'm sorry, but racists, sexists, and homophobes are outright scum!"
So are lawyers and used car salesmen. But there aren't any laws inhibiting their speech.
"If someone actively goes out of their way to tell people that 90% of the world's population should be enslaved or that the best thing they can do is kill someone because of their skin color, religion, ethnic background, immigration status, sexual orientation, disability, etc., they have forfeited their rights to free speech."
Your disagreement alone isn't justification to revoke their "inalienable rights." They're not yours to take away.
"They deserve no rights..."
You seem to be confusing the concept of "right" to "privilege." There is no deserving involvled when it comes to rights.
"There is no positive aspect to hate speech, and many of its defenders are closet racists themselves."
Let me see if I can't replace a few words in that sentence and see if you still agree with your own philosophy:
There is no positive aspect to copying music, and many of its defenders are closet pirates themselves.
"Those who would claim the supremeacy of "free speech" obviously believe that James Byrd or Matthew Shepard deserve no legal protection against racists and homophobes, and such vile hatemongers should be tolerated."
I fail to see how "saying mean and nasty things about someone" falls under the same classification as murder, assult, etc.
"Hate speech is an abuse of free speech"
The only way you can "abuse" a right is to use it to disenfranchise the rights of others. Demonstrate that "hate speech" infringes on their target's own right to say what they want and I'll reconsider your position.
"people's lives are more important than the right of someone to publicly encourage others to target certain groups for a campaign of murder, rape, assault and terror."
I tend to give "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" equal weight. If all they're doing is bitching and moaning about things they don't like, if there isn't a clear and present threat against somebody's life, I see no reason to prevent them from saying what they want. After all, words only have as much weight as the listener decides to give them.
" but when people begin acting on the words of hate speech spreading like cancer on the internet, then the damage is done."
And there is the root of your problem. You don't accept the concept of free will. You don't believe that people can make a conscious decision on their own to act or not act on something they've heard.
While you may not believe you have a will of your own and need a government to spoon-feed you only "good" information, I refuse to let you force your opinions on me through law. That's something not even the "hate speech" folks can do to me.
"Free speech shouldn't endanger people's lives. One can't yell "Fire!" in a crowded theatre, because people will probably get hurt trying to get out."
In case you missed it, you can't do that in the US, either. But people don't go scurrying around trampling themselves to death by saying (for example) "Homosexuals are evil!" With statements like that, people first decide for themselves whether or not to agree with the statement and whether or not to act upon it.
"Hate speech acts in the same way - by trying to make certain kinds of people seem less than human and by glorifying violent acts against them"
About the only difference between how you describe hate speech proponents and your own words is the way you're not (quite) supporting violence against them. Of course, depriving them of life, liberty and property isn't exactly all fun and games, either.
"it's just a matter of time before a follower or supporter of a hate group puts words into action"
A speaker is not directly responsible for the follower's lack of judgement or free will. You are not responsible for me, and I refuse to be responsible for you.
"Apparently, though, the US is just fine with (even welcoming and asking for more of) the kind of government that would pass USAPATRIOT."
The post made reference to the elections two days ago, and the poster assumed that we all agreed with the new policies because of the way we voted. Drawing things along party lines is the only way he could have made that assumption, since that's really the only thing the newly-elected congresscritters have in common with the president and each other.
Are you going to argue that the poster may have been implying that we all agreed with the policies because all the new members of Congress are men? Are they all from Texas? Did they all go to the same college, perhaps?
"While I agree with basic sentiment, the problem is that action is required now."
Um... no. If you do nothing but demand "action," you get nothing but silly knee-jerk bills like the USA PATRIOT Act. You get what you ask for.
What really needs to be done is better enforcement of existing laws. The 9/11 terrorists got into the county with what are shining examples of faulty visa applications. They shouldn't have been in the country to begin with!
They attack, thousands die, thousands more just like you scream for "action," and all sorts of new laws get passed to make us "safer."
Less than a month after the creation of our "new, safer America," a homicidal Jamaican teenager gets in on an equally lousy visa application (faulty by the old standards as well as the "newer, better" ones) and participates in a shooting spree throughout the DC metropolitan area.
How much more "action" are you going to demand until you start demanding the correct action?
"Apparently, though, the US is just fine with (even welcoming and asking for more of) the kind of government that would pass USAPATRIOT."
Yeah, as we all know not a single Democrat voted for the USA PATRIOT Act. That's why it never got past the Senate and never became law.
Of course, when the major parties rely on nothing but FUD to get votes, we're bound to see die-hard party reactionaries like you chanting "{Democrats|Republicans} good! {Republicans|Democrats} bad!"
"The NSA is probably the most secretive organization in the world, after the Freemasons and the Elks."
Why not throw in the Illuminati while you're at it? Or what about their connections to Kevin Bacon?
Hell, at least they're not Scientology...
"these people are not elected,"
Just because you didn't elect them directly doesn't mean:
1.) They weren't elected at all 2.) That you don't have indirect control over them
While you don't see NSA employees on your ballot, you do vote for the people that democratically select their higher-ups (not to mention their funding). If you have problems with the NSA, you need go no further than your local Congresscritter.
If the fact that Congress was able to "convince" the CIA to stop overturning foreign governments every other week in the 50's and 60's isn't enough to convince you of the chain of command, I don't know what will. Hell, I'm more comfortable with Congress deciding the NSA higher-ups than the members of the Electoral College deciding the president. At least members of Congress try to pretend there are things more important to them than political parties...
"so they have no incentive to protect your rights."
"Creationists (including the "intelligent design" crowd) belong in exactly the same camp as the "moon landing was a hoax" people, Holocaust-deniers, flat-Earthers, etc."
We can demonstrate people have landed on the moon. There are footprints and LEMs and laser experiments and flags and all that good stuff. And, while people where there, we had radio communications coming to us from the moon.
We can demonstrate that the Holocaust happened. We have all sorts of corpses and the instruments that would seem to have made those people dead.
We can demonstrate the Earth is not flat. Try line-of-sight communications with someone over the horizon. Try walking in one direction and seeing if you end up in the same place.
But you simply cannot disprove (or prove) the "intelligent design" hypothesis. The only way you can prove intelligent design is to find something that is not of intelligent design and comparing the two (like "We know this rock was made into a tool because it's so different from what the rock looks like naturally.")
However, if you can't find anything that fits into the "other" category, you're left with two conclusions:
1.) There is no intelligent design 2.) Everything is of intelligent design.
Anybody who believes in one more than the other is exercising a leap of faith and nothing more. This is true whether you call yourself a creationist or an atheist.
A true scientist would say that both conclusions are true until an outside observer resolves one of them away (Schroedinger's Cat and all). And that will never happen because an observer cannot be external to the universe by definition.
"Vatican has been lying to people for hundreds of years. The concept of God as the sole creator was invented to enforce morality in society through fear !!!!"
Then what's the excuse of the Orthodox churches?
"Universe has been in existence from infinite amount of time in the past and will exist for infinite amount of time."
Is time infinite? If so, infinite in what sense? A circle can be said to be infinite in some ways and finite in others.
"We have 6 substances present"
Up, down, top, bottom, charmed, and strange quarks? No, that leaves out a lot of stuff...
"(3) Time (4) Medium of rest (that facilitates the resting state of 2 substances - matter and soul (5)Medium of motion (that facilitates the motion of 2 substances - matter and soul (6) Universe (comprised of universe where above 5 type of substances exist."
Hate to break it to you, but all those are the same thing. It can be called space-time or the vacuum, depending on what kind of mood you're in.
"This is of finite but huge dimensions"
So where did that "infinite time" comment come from?
"NO ONE CREATED THE UNIVERSE. IT HAS BEEN EVER PRESENT. ONLY MATTER CHANGES ITS FORMS."
How do you know? How old are you? Have you been able to view the evolution of the universe in its entirety? You have? Then maybe you can explain how come we seem to have more matter than antimatter...
"THERE IS NO GOD JUDGING ZILLIONS OF THOUGHTS AND ACTIONS OF ALL THE LIVING BEINGS PRESENT IN THE UNIVERSE AND MAKING A DECISION ON THE BASIS OF THAT."
Got proof?
Something that amuses me to no end is the way atheists fail to realize that believing that there is no God is a leap of faith just as much as believing in His/Her/Its existence. While both atheists and creationists alike go on and on about "scientific proof," the fact is that science can only prove or disprove things in the observable universe external to the observer. If God is external to the universe, science can't touch Him/Her/It. If God is a seamless superset to the universe, you're still up a creek (you'd have to find a particular "absence of God" in some part of the universe to work with).
"Remember, your senses have only been designed"
"Designed," you say? D'OH!
"hard to understand (with our limited senses)"
Or simply cannot be understood by physical definition. Ask Heisenberg.
" If you start with, say, 20 lbs of supersonic projectile, and then you zap it with a laser, you still have 20 lbs of something moving with about the same average velocity as before."
But it would be spreading out rather quickly as the shell was spinning pretty durned fast before it got hit by the laser. We've been using rifled artillery for a little over a century, donchaknow.
"And it's unfortunate that the nutters will see this as validation of their ridiculous claims ('if our charges weren't true, NASA wouldn't bother answering them' they'll snivel.)"
They're doing it because those "nutters" have a nasty habit of voting and are probably demanding their congresscritters to investigate. They may not listen to reason, they may not have two braincells to rub together, but they have a habit of making a whole lot of noise.
"the fundamental flaws of the voting procedure itself."
How about the fundamental flaw of the article itself, in which it (and most people) assumes that "democracy" means nothing more than voting every few years? Where does it say that being a concerned citizen is limited to voting regularly? How can a politician "represent" someone they only hear a "yes" or "no" out of once every two years?
If democracy is nothing more than voting, then the rest of the world has no right at all to turn its nose up at the elections in Iraq last month.
Bah. Two more days until I get off this soapbox of mine.
"The huge glaring flow in the US system is the fact that it is done in one single turn."
And the glaring flaw in the French system is that they have one "system" (ie. republic) instead of 50+ and end up making the assumption that everybody else only has one system as well.
For example, in my current race against Congressman Billy Tauzin in southeast Louisiana, there are a total of three people on the ballot. If none of us get a majority vote (ie. > 50%) this November, there's a run-off between the two top vote-grabbers in December. This is how we conduct pretty much all of our elections in Louisiana, federal, state and local.
Not that this is the norm for the nation, however. Different states do things in different ways, and there's little the national (federal) government is allowed to do about it.
As for the presidency, you don't win by getting the most electoral votes, you win by getting a majority of the electoral votes (note the difference). If nobody comes out with a majority, the "round two" you mention takes place in the House of Representatives (where, again, a true majority is required).
"This system has one big default, however: it is so efficient that people tend to rely too much on it."
What you just went into wasn't a flaw in the electoral system, it was a flaw in the candidates. When you're just deciding upon two people that just say the same thing, most voters say "why bother?" Now if only politicians on both sides of the Atlantic could figure that one out...
Slashdot Mirror
"US law can only restrict the US congress, but it cannot restrict the legislative powers of other countries."
That loud "woosh" you heard moments ago was the entire point of my post going directly over my head.
The Constitution doesn't restrict the powers of other countries. It doesn't give people rights, neither in the US nor in any other part of the world. It does nothing but restrict the rights of the US government. Does the US Constitution apply to the whole world? Yes, in the sense that its restrictions apply to the US federal government no matter where they happen to be.
"What if GOD is proven not to exist?"
First off, God can neither be proven nor disproven to exist. Belief one way or the other is nothing but an exercise in faith.
Secondly, they just said "Creator." If you want to look at it that way, we have rights granted to us by biology.
Can you think for yourself? Can you communicate with other people? Then you obviously have the right to free speech.
Alright, so I'm nit-picking and will get modded as flamebait...
"That is your (and probably a lot of other people's) view, but that is not a fact."
The concepts that all people are created equal and have certain intrinsic rights are more than just some concept some 18th-century land-owner thought up for the heck of it. It is a reasoned, logical conclusion after looking at the world around us. If you care to try to argue against the idea, please do. Just remember that you'll then also have to figure out why we all shouldn't go back to the ol' "divine right of kings" idea because of it.
"It's all about culture and history... "
Cultures change. If it didn't, European countries would be seeking to enshrine hate speech, not ban it.
History recycles. Government abuses come about when the government has too much control over the people. Will this new law be abused by government? Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but assuming it won't ever be abused is foolish.
"so they made the carrying of guns a fundamental right"
You missed the whole "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights" concept again. The US Constitution doesn't grant rights to the people. It can't. Popular rights are nothing less than a birthright. By shear virtue of being human, we have free will and the ability to exercise it. For example, the US Constitution doesn't "grant" us the right to free speech, self-awareness and our language instinct give us that right. The US Constitution doesn't give me the right to own a gun, my ability to pick up a gun, operate it and understand its operations gives me that right. The only thing that government can do is prohibit the exercise of rights granted us by biology/divinity/whatever.
If you take the position of government granting rights to people, you're going to have to explain how humans as a species don't have inherent free will, but government (a human creation) does.
"In Europe, people didn't want such horrible things as the holocaust to happen ever again, so to help prevent that they banned all sorts of hate speech,"
Like I said, history recycles. Did it ever occur to you that the freedom of speech is one of the first things a totalitarian regime eliminates? Or am I imagining all those book-burnings in Nazi Germany?
Are you trying to say the ends (real or imagined) justify the means?
"This wasn't about curbing the rights of the people regarding what they could say, but to try to stop speech that promotes the limitation of freedom of other people"
So promoting action is the same as the act itself? How deep does that go? Should I be jailed for promoting the ability to promote?
Better yet, "curbing the rights of the people regarding what they could say" and "stopping speech" sounds like two ways of saying the same thing. How are they not?
"Well, the holocaust wasn't that bad after all, who cares if a couple of people start again with spreading such crap and other hate speech".
Only if you can argue that the ends justify the means. For better or for worse, anti-speech laws only treat a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself. That flu will run its course no matter how many decongestants you take.
What does the Content of Evil have to do with any of this? Or have I been looking at freesites too much?
Hrm... Nothing in there saying that Congress can do that if they happen to be meeting inside the EU at the time.
I know what you meant. Did you?
You were assuming that the US Constitution, like so many others, is written from the angle of "giving rights to the people" (a flawed concept if there ever was one) instead of restricting the rights of the government.
A little over 200 years ago, a group of people finally realized that "granting popular rights" is just as much an oxymoron as "military intelligence." But even now, centuries later, so few people have figured out that fundamental truth. Instead, they just sit around making laws that do things like "restricting the right to free speech" as if such a thing were possible.
Don't mince words: This European law punishes the exercise of their peoples' right. Period.
So are lawyers and used car salesmen. But there aren't any laws inhibiting their speech.
"If someone actively goes out of their way to tell people that 90% of the world's population should be enslaved or that the best thing they can do is kill someone because of their skin color, religion, ethnic background, immigration status, sexual orientation, disability, etc., they have forfeited their rights to free speech."
Your disagreement alone isn't justification to revoke their "inalienable rights." They're not yours to take away.
"They deserve no rights..."
You seem to be confusing the concept of "right" to "privilege." There is no deserving involvled when it comes to rights.
"There is no positive aspect to hate speech, and many of its defenders are closet racists themselves."
Let me see if I can't replace a few words in that sentence and see if you still agree with your own philosophy: "Those who would claim the supremeacy of "free speech" obviously believe that James Byrd or Matthew Shepard deserve no legal protection against racists and homophobes, and such vile hatemongers should be tolerated."
I fail to see how "saying mean and nasty things about someone" falls under the same classification as murder, assult, etc.
"Hate speech is an abuse of free speech"
The only way you can "abuse" a right is to use it to disenfranchise the rights of others. Demonstrate that "hate speech" infringes on their target's own right to say what they want and I'll reconsider your position.
"people's lives are more important than the right of someone to publicly encourage others to target certain groups for a campaign of murder, rape, assault and terror."
I tend to give "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" equal weight. If all they're doing is bitching and moaning about things they don't like, if there isn't a clear and present threat against somebody's life, I see no reason to prevent them from saying what they want. After all, words only have as much weight as the listener decides to give them.
" but when people begin acting on the words of hate speech spreading like cancer on the internet, then the damage is done."
And there is the root of your problem. You don't accept the concept of free will. You don't believe that people can make a conscious decision on their own to act or not act on something they've heard.
While you may not believe you have a will of your own and need a government to spoon-feed you only "good" information, I refuse to let you force your opinions on me through law. That's something not even the "hate speech" folks can do to me.
"Free speech shouldn't endanger people's lives. One can't yell "Fire!" in a crowded theatre, because people will probably get hurt trying to get out."
In case you missed it, you can't do that in the US, either. But people don't go scurrying around trampling themselves to death by saying (for example) "Homosexuals are evil!" With statements like that, people first decide for themselves whether or not to agree with the statement and whether or not to act upon it.
"Hate speech acts in the same way - by trying to make certain kinds of people seem less than human and by glorifying violent acts against them"
About the only difference between how you describe hate speech proponents and your own words is the way you're not (quite) supporting violence against them. Of course, depriving them of life, liberty and property isn't exactly all fun and games, either.
"it's just a matter of time before a follower or supporter of a hate group puts words into action"
A speaker is not directly responsible for the follower's lack of judgement or free will. You are not responsible for me, and I refuse to be responsible for you.
Could be worse. If the ESA did that, not only would they have egg on their face but they'd likely face stiff EU fines for using non-metric units.
"The US doesn't have any faked landing of Venus that we're covering up, I hope. If that's the case, Venus express will never make it."
All the footage from the Venera "spacecraft," on the other hand, was filmed outside Novosibirsk.
Um... Einstein... that's what I just said...
Maybe I shouldn't even bother responding...
"Yeah Right a Temp measure like the Federal Income Tax was supposed to be when it passed"
What the Hell gave you the idea that the US Constitution was so easy to modify that part of it could just be a "temp measure?"
From the original post:
"Apparently, though, the US is just fine with (even welcoming and asking for more of) the kind of government that would pass USAPATRIOT."
The post made reference to the elections two days ago, and the poster assumed that we all agreed with the new policies because of the way we voted. Drawing things along party lines is the only way he could have made that assumption, since that's really the only thing the newly-elected congresscritters have in common with the president and each other.
Are you going to argue that the poster may have been implying that we all agreed with the policies because all the new members of Congress are men? Are they all from Texas? Did they all go to the same college, perhaps?
"While I agree with basic sentiment, the problem is that action is required now."
Um... no. If you do nothing but demand "action," you get nothing but silly knee-jerk bills like the USA PATRIOT Act. You get what you ask for.
What really needs to be done is better enforcement of existing laws. The 9/11 terrorists got into the county with what are shining examples of faulty visa applications. They shouldn't have been in the country to begin with!
They attack, thousands die, thousands more just like you scream for "action," and all sorts of new laws get passed to make us "safer."
Less than a month after the creation of our "new, safer America," a homicidal Jamaican teenager gets in on an equally lousy visa application (faulty by the old standards as well as the "newer, better" ones) and participates in a shooting spree throughout the DC metropolitan area.
How much more "action" are you going to demand until you start demanding the correct action?
"Apparently, though, the US is just fine with (even welcoming and asking for more of) the kind of government that would pass USAPATRIOT."
Yeah, as we all know not a single Democrat voted for the USA PATRIOT Act. That's why it never got past the Senate and never became law.
Of course, when the major parties rely on nothing but FUD to get votes, we're bound to see die-hard party reactionaries like you chanting "{Democrats|Republicans} good! {Republicans|Democrats} bad!"
"The NSA is probably the most secretive organization in the world, after the Freemasons and the Elks."
Why not throw in the Illuminati while you're at it? Or what about their connections to Kevin Bacon?
Hell, at least they're not Scientology...
"these people are not elected,"
Just because you didn't elect them directly doesn't mean:
1.) They weren't elected at all
2.) That you don't have indirect control over them
While you don't see NSA employees on your ballot, you do vote for the people that democratically select their higher-ups (not to mention their funding). If you have problems with the NSA, you need go no further than your local Congresscritter.
If the fact that Congress was able to "convince" the CIA to stop overturning foreign governments every other week in the 50's and 60's isn't enough to convince you of the chain of command, I don't know what will. Hell, I'm more comfortable with Congress deciding the NSA higher-ups than the members of the Electoral College deciding the president. At least members of Congress try to pretend there are things more important to them than political parties...
"so they have no incentive to protect your rights."
They do if they expect to see their paychecks.
"Creationists (including the "intelligent design" crowd) belong in exactly the same camp as the "moon landing was a hoax" people, Holocaust-deniers, flat-Earthers, etc."
We can demonstrate people have landed on the moon. There are footprints and LEMs and laser experiments and flags and all that good stuff. And, while people where there, we had radio communications coming to us from the moon.
We can demonstrate that the Holocaust happened. We have all sorts of corpses and the instruments that would seem to have made those people dead.
We can demonstrate the Earth is not flat. Try line-of-sight communications with someone over the horizon. Try walking in one direction and seeing if you end up in the same place.
But you simply cannot disprove (or prove) the "intelligent design" hypothesis. The only way you can prove intelligent design is to find something that is not of intelligent design and comparing the two (like "We know this rock was made into a tool because it's so different from what the rock looks like naturally.")
However, if you can't find anything that fits into the "other" category, you're left with two conclusions:
1.) There is no intelligent design
2.) Everything is of intelligent design.
Anybody who believes in one more than the other is exercising a leap of faith and nothing more. This is true whether you call yourself a creationist or an atheist.
A true scientist would say that both conclusions are true until an outside observer resolves one of them away (Schroedinger's Cat and all). And that will never happen because an observer cannot be external to the universe by definition.
"Vatican has been lying to people for hundreds of years. The concept of God as the sole creator was invented to enforce morality in society through fear !!!!"
Then what's the excuse of the Orthodox churches?
"Universe has been in existence from infinite amount of time in the past and will exist for infinite amount of time."
Is time infinite? If so, infinite in what sense? A circle can be said to be infinite in some ways and finite in others.
"We have 6 substances present"
Up, down, top, bottom, charmed, and strange quarks? No, that leaves out a lot of stuff...
"(3) Time (4) Medium of rest (that facilitates the resting state of 2 substances - matter and soul (5)Medium of motion (that facilitates the motion of 2 substances - matter and soul (6) Universe (comprised of universe where above 5 type of substances exist."
Hate to break it to you, but all those are the same thing. It can be called space-time or the vacuum, depending on what kind of mood you're in.
"This is of finite but huge dimensions"
So where did that "infinite time" comment come from?
"NO ONE CREATED THE UNIVERSE. IT HAS BEEN EVER PRESENT. ONLY MATTER CHANGES ITS FORMS."
How do you know? How old are you? Have you been able to view the evolution of the universe in its entirety? You have? Then maybe you can explain how come we seem to have more matter than antimatter...
"THERE IS NO GOD JUDGING ZILLIONS OF THOUGHTS AND ACTIONS OF ALL THE LIVING BEINGS PRESENT IN THE UNIVERSE AND MAKING A DECISION ON THE BASIS OF THAT."
Got proof?
Something that amuses me to no end is the way atheists fail to realize that believing that there is no God is a leap of faith just as much as believing in His/Her/Its existence. While both atheists and creationists alike go on and on about "scientific proof," the fact is that science can only prove or disprove things in the observable universe external to the observer. If God is external to the universe, science can't touch Him/Her/It. If God is a seamless superset to the universe, you're still up a creek (you'd have to find a particular "absence of God" in some part of the universe to work with).
"Remember, your senses have only been designed"
"Designed," you say? D'OH!
"hard to understand (with our limited senses)"
Or simply cannot be understood by physical definition. Ask Heisenberg.
"I don't blame Microsoft for the failure of Newton.
I blame Leibniz.
" If you start with, say, 20 lbs of supersonic projectile, and then you zap it with a laser, you still have 20 lbs of something moving with about the same average velocity as before."
But it would be spreading out rather quickly as the shell was spinning pretty durned fast before it got hit by the laser. We've been using rifled artillery for a little over a century, donchaknow.
"It is likely that any deployed system will have a range vastly greater than artillery."
I don't know if you've heard this little bit of news yet, but this guy by the name of Magellan demonstrated that the earth is round.
Unless you've got a big-ass airborne mirror to bounce it off of, lasers can't fire over the horizon.
"There was a big Navy project to put a laser on a ship. I have no idea if that was ever put into operation."
If that isn't the dumbest idea I've ever heard...
No, seriously. How many decades has it been since naval warfare was at line-of-sight ranges? That makes about as much sense as laser "artillery."
"Plunging fire? What's that?"
"And it's unfortunate that the nutters will see this as validation of their ridiculous claims ('if our charges weren't true, NASA wouldn't bother answering them' they'll snivel.)"
They're doing it because those "nutters" have a nasty habit of voting and are probably demanding their congresscritters to investigate. They may not listen to reason, they may not have two braincells to rub together, but they have a habit of making a whole lot of noise.
Will having this AIM-sniffing software help free software projects like GAIM and Everybuddy?
"the fundamental flaws of the voting procedure itself."
How about the fundamental flaw of the article itself, in which it (and most people) assumes that "democracy" means nothing more than voting every few years? Where does it say that being a concerned citizen is limited to voting regularly? How can a politician "represent" someone they only hear a "yes" or "no" out of once every two years?
If democracy is nothing more than voting, then the rest of the world has no right at all to turn its nose up at the elections in Iraq last month.
Bah. Two more days until I get off this soapbox of mine.
"The huge glaring flow in the US system is the fact that it is done in one single turn."
And the glaring flaw in the French system is that they have one "system" (ie. republic) instead of 50+ and end up making the assumption that everybody else only has one system as well.
For example, in my current race against Congressman Billy Tauzin in southeast Louisiana, there are a total of three people on the ballot. If none of us get a majority vote (ie. > 50%) this November, there's a run-off between the two top vote-grabbers in December. This is how we conduct pretty much all of our elections in Louisiana, federal, state and local.
Not that this is the norm for the nation, however. Different states do things in different ways, and there's little the national (federal) government is allowed to do about it.
As for the presidency, you don't win by getting the most electoral votes, you win by getting a majority of the electoral votes (note the difference). If nobody comes out with a majority, the "round two" you mention takes place in the House of Representatives (where, again, a true majority is required).
"This system has one big default, however: it is so efficient that people tend to rely too much on it."
What you just went into wasn't a flaw in the electoral system, it was a flaw in the candidates. When you're just deciding upon two people that just say the same thing, most voters say "why bother?" Now if only politicians on both sides of the Atlantic could figure that one out...
"imagine a beowulf clu... err.. wait.. dammit.."
Damn, someone beat me to it. I guess I'll just have to go with:
All your computers are belong to Canada.
But that's just so last year...