Nobody is saying science is religion or religion is science, just that they do not have to be at odds. Nobody is saying that when they profess a religious belief that they are doing science, just that they think they know something before it has been definitively proven to be true or false.

And no, creationism (even "strict" creationism) has not been proven false. The Bible does not say that the Earth is only a few thousand years old, and indeed it is not; it's obviously much older. The Bible does not say that the Earth was created in six days. Rather, the actual Hebrew word used in Genesis is much more vague, indicating merely some expanse of time. The Bible does say that Adam was the first human and that a woman was created from his rib, but that doesn't mean that humans did not evolve from another species which also also had some measure of intelligence.

As long as we don't know why anything exists or who or what started the universe, it's not anti-science for someone to choose to believe that God did it. On the contrary, the scientific method allows us to hypothesize before we experiment or before we even know how to perform an experiment. That's what faith is, a choice to believe, or a hypothesis.

Sanderson doesn't seem like a good fit to finish A Song of Ice And Fire. I haven't read all of Sanderson's books, but my impression is that GRRM's series is far too risque for Sanderson to handle well. I haven't read any Wheel of Time either, though, so my impression could be way off base.

Your concern is wasted on the people who actually choose to live in those places. Those who really care so much about how connected they are to the rest of the world can just as easily choose to relocate nearer to a city. The rest will continue to live happy lives as they always have. The only ones who think these people's lack of fast internet or mobile data is such a travesty are people like you who already have a fast connection and think that everyone else should want the same thing.

But don't worry. Our brilliant politicians in Washington agree with you, so they will spend millions of taxpayer dollars in order to bring 3G speeds to people that couldn't care less. Really smart. The only tunnel vision is that of those who stubbornly refuse to acknowledge that the free market is responsible for much of the good that they take for granted every day.

You're missing the point. It was said that atheism has no belief system when in fact it does; there is even an active choice what (and what not) to believe in. Those who are self-declared atheists choose to believe that life, the universe, and everything came into existence by unintelligent means. That is a belief system, and it is shared by people who identify with atheism.

Furthermore, some atheists also congregate with other atheists, and it is inevitable that culture sharing will occur and that they will come to also share a set of common moral values (even if they deny absolute truth or the eternal nature of these values). There doesn't need to be 100% agreement (or anything approaching that), in the same way that there does not exist a complete consensus among religious non-atheists on morality, but there is, without a doubt, moral sharing among a significant portion of atheists.

So, to sum up: Shared belief system, shared culture, shared moral values... atheism is definitely a religion. Even if an atheist does not congregate or explicitly share these things, it would be like a christian who only believes in his heart and doesn't associate with any organized church. Both are practicing unorganized religion, and it makes no sense to call one religious and the other not.

I understand that a lot of atheists like to think that they are enlightened and above religion (that dirty word), but logic and reason, ironically, are not on their side in this. Ironic because logic and reason (since they deny revelation) are usually important facets of the doctrine of Atheism.

You can try to trivialize it, but the truth is many of us who sympathize with Tea Party principles (i.e. small, non-intrusive government) saw PIPA and SOPA for what they obviously were (or are): another power grab by a government out of control. This should have been an issue we all could have agreed on, except it's now painfully obvious (if it wasn't before) that too many elected Democrats are in bed with Hollywood and Big Media.

I don't really share that concern. The GPL has been the major obstacle in most open source license incompatibilities long before GPLv3 came out. Most people need to look at this fairly complicated reference table in order to figure out the compatibility issues the GPL has with itself, saying nothing of the issues it has with other open source licenses. If GNU really likes the GPLv3, I say let them have it. After all, look what it's given us in just this one case: LLVM! I've appreciated GCC for a long time, but maybe competition within the open source universe isn't so bad.

Seeing as how the next primary is in Florida, it seems like being for a lunar base and other NASA projects would more likely be pandering.

But you put it in a list of advantages PC-BSD has over a Linux-based operating system, and it's not one.

It's cute that you think the US government needs handset manufacturers to include backdoors in order to wiretap. It's much easier to just control the networks. \tinfoil

I didn't say that rape and murder define Occupiers (the opposite, actually), but you seem to be saying that a couple wackos with guns and inappropriate signs should define the Tea Party. Your bias is showing.

You either don't know the popular ideals of the Tea Party, or you're intentionally trying to distort them. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. I can't really call myself a Tea Partier, so I'm not that best person to educate you, but I'll just say that a bloody revolution is actually not a prominent theme among their ranks and leave it at that.

I get what you're saying, but I guess I just disagree that the presence of guns automatically makes a situation more dangerous. As they say, guns don't kill people; people kill people. A civil person with a gun will cause less harm than a person without a gun who is intent on causing harm. That said, an uncivil person with a gun can cause considerably more damage than an uncivil person without a gun, but that's irrelevant if the group is entirely civil (which the Tea Party seems to be, or at least those actually bearing the firearms).

As to why bring a gun to a rally, I think it mostly has to do with the large overlap of 2nd-amendment advocates (NRA types) and the Tea Party. It may be a lot less common in some states versus others, but some people choose to carry firearms (either concealed or "open") everywhere they are legally allowed, if only to exercise their right to do so. Other people have real concerns over their own self-defense in general, so perhaps they carried at rallies, even though they may not have felt any explicit threat by attending the rally versus any other place where they live. I bet that some of the guns at rallies (especially rifles) were unloaded and used only as props to go with the colonial garb of some Tea Partiers. I can't say for sure. I've never actually been to any of these rallies, but I have come across the types of people that I just described around where I live, so I only have that limited insight into the minds of these people.

Sure. In America, it is still legal to own guns and carry them in most public places (usually requiring a permit if the weapon is concealed). It may be important to note that of all the Tea Party rallies, no weapons were ever fired, or at least nobody was killed. Going out on a limb here, but I think terrorists usually use their guns to kill as many people as they can, so maybe the term "terrorist" is misapplied to Tea Party people. There were actually a few cases of rape and even murder among the Occupiers, but it's just as ridiculous to call them terrorists.

Yeah, except a company which decides to use and modify open source software without giving back does not revoke anyone else' right to the code... so, in other words, it's not like that at all.