The short story "To Serve Man", and the ensuing Twilight Zone episode, comes to mind :-)

We like stories with a twist because they ARE entertaining. They make us think, tickle our fancy, etc. There are SO many sci-fi stories dealing with how to interact with aliens who have their own religious beliefs, and the dangers of mis-steps and applying human assumptions to something that is, basically, alien.

Features randomly appearing, disappearing, and reappearing? Who knew that these scientists were running slashdot BETA on the Cassini probe?

The original poster made the claim:

I find that offensive - and I'm an atheist. In the past we've had people claim that whites are smarter than blacks, men are smarter than women, democrats are smarter than republicans and vice versa.

I suspect that the people making such claims are the stupid ones. Not in the sense of IQ, but in the sense of being dumb-asses looking to affirm their "I'm better than someone else" beliefs, same as some religious people have internalized a "holier-than-thou" attitude and look down on other religions and the "unwashed heathen".

Depends. If they got here on a solar sail, they may not have much in terms of "space blasters" and such. Then again, just what CAN religion throw at them? Pamphlets? Tracts? Bibles?

The aliens will be anxious to talk with all religious groups, because this will give them insights into our thinking (and any Achilles heels we may have should we prove to be rabidly xenophobic).

That is, if they want to talk to us at all. They may be more interested in what other residents of this planet have to say. Or they may be machine life instead of organic-based life, and the whole concept of organic life is so far in their past that it's become lost, or is considered as a fable.

Or they may just be doing some survey work before blowing up the planet to make way for a new interstellar highway.

[citation needed].

So what happens when a believer converts to atheism? Did their IQ suddenly go up? The opposite argument can be made. If, as a believer, they were smart enough to drop their religious beliefs, seems that IQ and religious belief are not tightly correlated.

Religion has more to do with cultural influences than inherent intelligence.

Wikipedia

Glad to be of service :-)

I agree on the need for competition to keep everyone on the up-and-up. Too bad that Opera, which was doing great things at the time, has pretty much vanished from most people's radar.

You forgot one - they can easily put it into developer mode and load stuff via usb from a laptop, etc. :-)

I doubt Eminem, Green Day, Jay-Z and Madonna gave them permission to freely distribute their music. You can follow the link to read the rest, or just google for other stories.

It's available from both the Apple App Store and Google Play. People downloading it from either source already have given them an email addy.

All this means is that the Chinese government will try harder to break into Google's nd Apple's servers.