In an ideal world, human beings could be motivated by appeals to great ideals. Some people are: I have to admire the 'red martyrs' of communism who accept death for their beliefs with no hope of resurrection, unlike the 'black martyrs' of the Church. However in reality most people will rapidly drift back to being selfish. Therefore the prospect of eternal reward and punishment provide an external goad that, within the religious worldview, is a reality that will encourage people to stay on the strait and narrow. Of course it may not be true - but if it is, it is a reality for the believers.

Atheism offers no such goad. It has to construct a vision for the future, and depend on politicians to evangelise for it. This has not gone well...

Given my need to live cooperatively, then it makes rational sense to live by these standards. However this doesn't offer any insight into the role or otherwise of Atheism in this debate.

Quite possibly true, but to do so requires an additional presupposition that 'rational systems' or evolution should provide a basis for morality. Why should they?

What I said did not claim that there was an atheist perspective, what I said claimed that it provides no basis for a value system. You argue there is no atheist perspective. We therefore agree that it provides no basis for a value system! However I guess I might have expressed the point more tightly...

"Are you trying to say that without a belif in some God, that it is not possible to understand what is good for a society, or an individual, or a collection of individuals?"

Did I say that? No. ALL I said was that atheism offers no basis for the choice, which is a completely different statement.

Your points about Sodom are interesting. Lot's attempt to offer his daughters instead of his guests reflects the high value that their culture put on hospitality, something which our society doesn't. In that context the offer does make sense. The rule about stoning non-virgin brides emphasises that the wayward women are being harlots. Given that the story of the incident would have been known, I suspect that their status would have been accepted as they wouldn't be doing so. However I admit I've never heard the point discussed before.

Lot's wife being turned into a pillar of salt is, of course, a demonstration of the need to OBEY GOD. This is not fashionable today; the churches talk endlessly about the love of God, but actually the bible gives us 'the FEAR of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom'. If we disobey God, we deserve to die ('the wages of sin is death'). Any fate short of that is pure grace - undeserved favour - by God. At some point we all die and then comes judgement; at that point the offer of grace has run out.

In practice the term 'agnostic' has come to mean 'doesn't have a belief about God', not what it means strictly. However, to confuse the point further, it can be argued that the person who claims not to have a belief about God proves by how he lives that he doesn't believe in God, at least on some definitions of God.

And that's the problem; it's impossible to justify a value system purely from an atheist perspective; you've got to add some value such as 'the good of society', 'the utility of the individual', 'the success of the species'. In practice atheists tend to absorb the dominant values of their society; thus often 'love your neighbour', usually defining 'neighbour' in the extensive way that Jesus offers in the Parable of the Good Samaritan. But actually there's not a terribly good reason for doing so, and it's been a minority view down the centuries.

And of course the excesses of the church pale into insignificance compared with the horrors of Stalin and Mao - which is not to argue we Christians haven't committed some appalling crimes, but that all need to be given the right to condemn some of those flying the same flag.

[Full disclosure - I'm a traditional Christian from a Christian background. I have one particular friend who had ended up a Christian from an atheist background, not least because it offers no value system]

Or perhaps one of the others - the CIA would no doubt appreciate it.

Given that permission is given is to ' own only so much of the airspace above their property as they may reasonably use in connection with their enjoyment of the underlying land.', taking steps to prevent noise on your property to ensure your enjoyment of it seems a reasonable use...

"This generally applies to operations in remotely populated areas" So who's doing this populating remotely? We have a right to know...

It's always been a more open question than the failure to find them reflects; the fact that Assad's Syria proved to have chemical weapons after denying it raises the prospect they inherited them from Saddam. There are claims wandering round the internet that IS now has some - the proof of that will be when they use them of course. The jury is out - let's wait and see!

FUD works because people don't think things through; we are very bad at proper risk assessment. The question remains whether we should trust our government to do better - or suspect it of abusing the opportunity this allegation makes. Recent history encourages the latter!

I remain conflicted; as a moderately competent STEM educated person, I am aware of any number of ways of reducing Western cities to chaos without a lot of effort and no risk. Yet our jihadi brethren never succeed in pulling it off. 7/7 in London and the Boston bombing seem to have been independent efforts, not carried out by people in the jihadi chain of command. Which leads me to suspect a lot of the hype is FUD by our government, or at least its security agencies, to milk the situation for as much as possible. OTOH it is totally clear that IS and HAMAS are committed to doing very nasty things to anyone who gets in their way. Something weird is going on; I look forward to discovering the truth, but I have nasty suspicion we won't.