Yeah, I don't see this project moving forward. For one, Russia is broke. Their economy is in tatters. For two, I don't see the Japanese or Europeans siding with the Russians on much of anything; there's too much bad blood there. The Russians have burned just about every diplomatic bridge they have right now - they're stuck being buddies with thugs and failed states because nobody else will return Putin's phone call.

Habitable does not necessarily mean earthlike. Just getting it to the point of having floating colonies, actively working on fixing the planet - of putting up sun shields over the planet to even start cooling, getting cheap, efficient interplanetary transportation - all of that will take hundreds of years. Turning it into a place we can walk around on the ground would take a lot longer.

Problem is, that will take hundreds of years to get habitable. By that time, this planet will have too many problems.

Plus, Venus's problems aren't the same as Earth's. They're similar, but far more severe, and different chemistry is involved.

That requires a level of sophistication among the general populace that simply doesn't exist.

Short answer: Political ambitions, greed, and corruption - all things the Christian religion condemns. These things happened because Christendom wasn't following the teachings of its own religion. You can't blame the religion itself for the misdeeds of its followers. You must blame the followers themselves for not living according to their stated values.

A feather and a stone can call each other hard; only one will be correct.

Again, not true.

Protestants - as in Main Line Protestants (Baptists, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Methodists, etc) all have governing bodies of some sort who determine the theologies of those particular churches.

"Non-denominational" churches are those who reject even those Protestant churches' theologies. Those are the dangerous ones, many can't even be considered Christian, as they do things like disbelieve the divinity of Jesus, of the Trinity, etc.

In the current era, there are many who, when confronted with their own behaviors being out of sync with the Church, decide that instead of changing their behavior, they simply change their Church. It's more convenient that way.

http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

We used to call those people "Heretics". Now, we just call them idiots who don't know their own faith.

100% of the examples you provide are not driven by religious ideals, but political ones. Evil people merely twist and use religion to whip up the support of the masses for their political agenda. In the case of the IRA, it was used to create an "us vs. them" mentality to rally people to the cause. Same with the KKK, which was NEVER a mainline protestant church unlike how you state. The Gunpowder Plot was less about religion and more about politics - the Protestants were persecuting the Catholics, the Catholics tried to turn the tables - again, more about the politics of "us vs. them" rather than religion. If you honestly think the only reason why the African militias are killing people is because of religion, you're out of your mind. That nut in Oslo was mentally ill.

I can't speak to Islam, but what I do know is that Christians who use violence to spread their views can not be considered Christians. According to the Christian religion, the suffering and death of Jesus in the New Testament by its very act is intended to teach that violence and persecution against you by someone is no reason to retaliate violently. Jesus was God Incarnate, perfectly able to take himself down from the cross, call an army of angels to his side, and lay waste to the Roman legions and Jewish religious. He did not.

> I am all about being correct. And in this case, Islam is no more or less violent than Christianity is, if you judge it according to the respective holy book.

That's not true at all.

The Bible is written such that the violence of the old testament is the back story for the mission of peace in the gospels. It's basically saying, "This is how it used to be - now all that ends, and the Kingdom of Heaven begins with Jesus Christ." The New Testament is all about "turning the other cheek", about martyrdom of peaceful saints, of loving thy neighbor. Pray for those who persecute you. The scourging and crucifixion itself shows that suffering at the hands of another is no reason to retaliate with violence.

Are there those who twist that message? Absolutely. Just don't call them Christians.

> Libertarianism is the philosophy of the sociopath.

Only in its extreme. The problem is, there are a lot of extreme libertarians.

Just got back from China. Most of them use QQ mail, not Gmail.

Who published this "study" and how was it peer reviewed?

Actually, no. Their GDP per capita is still very low. Their GDP hasn't eclipsed ours despite some funky figures produced by marketwatch.org.

Thinking they can really hurt us with economic measures belies the damage they'd do to their own economy with said measures. They need us more than we need them.