I used to have a beard and bushy hair and my password was "test123". After I neatened my hair and shaved, I had this overwhelming compulsion to change my password, and now it's UjuW8LxttbsWKqMbDaA4SqSJVST783ty

{"composition":"iron","melting_temp_celcius":,"1538","will_disintegrate":"false"}

Is it the server operator? Or is the OS provider liable for producing a defective product? And if the OS is open-source, who do you go after?

I understand where Spamhaus is coming from... I'd also love to penalize idiots who make the Internet a worse place. But I don't think it's a practical option and trying to implement it opens up a huge can of worms.

but anything that speaks against religion is also a violation of seperation of church and state.

How so? From what I understand about the USA, the principle of separation of church and state merely says that the government shall not promote any particular religion nor establish an official state religion. There's nothing that says it's not allowed to speak out against any and all religions. I think a healthy dose of criticism of religion is sorely needed in the United States.

Who said "everything must have a creator"

Umm.... isn't that a basic premise of the Creationists?

So the answer is: "You are not allowed to ask that question."

And so I dismiss Creationists as nutjobs.

It will just take a very long time to test climate scientist predictions. Science's predictions are not always easily testable, but they are always testable and falsifiable in principle.

What Paul supposedly said is not evidence. It's called "deluded rambling", my friend.

given you will be incapable of producing proof that a creator *doesn't* exist, logically you must allow for it to be possible

Oh, sure. The Flying Spaghetti Monster, Invisible Pink Unicorn, and Teapot Orbiting Mars are all "logically possible". That doesn't mean anyone in his or her right mind will take them seriously for more than a nanosecond.

No scientific explanation of anything thus far has demanded the existence of a creator; therefore, it's up to those who assert such a thing exists to offer proof. It's not up to scientists to offer a disproof.

Creationism does benefit in a way by providing a logical end to the series of questions.

Not at all. Who created the Creator? After all, everything must have a creator.

On the other, you have the undeniable fact that most science is ... essentially no different than assuming the existence of gods

When I get on a comfortable modern airplane to visit my family across the continent, I'm happy in the knowledge that science and technology will get me there in one piece. Now you strap a couple of two-by-fours to a firecracker and leap off a cliff happy in the knowledge that your god will save your life. Go on, try it.

Science makes falsifiable, testable predictions. After a scientific theory has survived thousands of such falsifiable predictions, I'm willing to trust it with my life by getting into an airplane.

Religion can spout whatever unprovable nonsense it wants with no justification whatsoever. See the difference? That is "essentially different" from the scientific method, contrary to your claim.

There is evidence for the existence of a creator

Go on, then. I'll bite. Present the "evidence".

I run Asterisk at home. If a call comes in from outside my area code, and it's not one of a handful of whitelisted long-distance numbers belonging to friends and family, the dialplan directs the called to press 1 in order to ring my phones. Since most telemarketers and scammers use automatic dialling machines, the 1 is never pressed and my Asterisk box hangs up after about 10 seconds. My phones never ring.

I've gone from 3-6 telemarketing calls a week getting through to maybe one a month or so.

Beef is cheap in the US because they feed cattle corn instead of grass. Cattle are not designed to eat corn, so they get bloated and sick. They're also kept confined in small areas in conditions that promote the spread of disease, so they need antibiotics.

The environmental and humanitarian catastrophe of large-scale factory-farming is a major culprit in the abuse of antibiotics and the rise of antibiotic-resistant organisms. Sometime down the line, we're going to pay the true cost of the "cheap" food.

corn fields are cheap to operate

They also promote monoculture farming and depletion of soil, which in turn requires huge inputs of chemical fertilizers and pesticides and also makes GMO attractive.

The US corn policy is exceedingly damaging to the economy, the environment, and public health.