Is this actually something which would fall under the do-not-call provisions? It's not commercial, not exactly politics...

Yes, I'm sure most everyone of 350 million people can't think.

Are you for real? Whenever I read shit like this it usually mean 'they don't hold my worldview, therefore they're drooling morons'.

I'm not arguing that you shouldn't point out this. If I am, I got carried away and I apologize. But I have read too many comments in just this thread that treat people of faith as morons, and I find that wrong, too. Faith and belief have managed to inspire men to great things, as well as to atrocities, and I like to remember the great things, since I have to suffer knowing about the atrocities.

About the last point, I misread your post. Sorry.

There are all kinds of idiots. Those who read the whole bible as literal truth (or the ones that assume that Jesus was a caucasian who rocked a wild blond hair and beard) are not that different from the ones who read The Da Vinci Code as if it was the Gospel (oops).

Rather than trying to 'disprove' a book the truth of which even the Pope points out is more allegorical than literal, I'd say the problem is with the people who read it literally. You could make a similar argument about guns:
"Guns have been killing people in the past. Guns are killing people right now. Therefore, the best thing to do is ban them".

I love it, guns are the new Hitler :) I'm only missing a car analogy here.

If there were no rational counterbalance to the Bible, how would you tell the difference? Are you advocating that everyone should accept or believe only what they themselves can prove? That way lies madness, too. I've talked to people who believe that gravity exists but evolution doesn't exactly because of this.

Or they were selfish jerks who couldn't say 'I don't really want to answer a survey, thanks' and hang up or leave, but had to skew results to have some fun.

That would be insightful, except for the fact that treating a collection of books written by many different authors, encompassing centuries between the first and the last, treating a vast array of topics (psalms, proverbs, hystorical accounts, laws, legends, erotic poetry, biographies, moral diatribes, acid trips, etc), is a fucking idiotic thing to do.

I always get a chuckle out of people who manage to 'disprove or refute the bible'. So you refuted a collection of books? What's next, you'll disprove the Encyclopaedia Britannica?

You have a deeply skewed view of what a religious person actually believes in today. Try talking to someone, see what they really think, instead of chewing on preconceived notions. You might find that many of them turn to religion as a help to mitigate the discomfort of this world, to find peace, and perhaps to get together with like-minded people who want to help others in need. True, there are other solutions (I myself am faithless), but dismissing them as crazy is just as silly as you think they are.

That said, America does have more than its fair share of religious nuts. I once read that the proliferation of different churches was partly due to the American sense of freedom and individuality that encourages everyone to think for themselves. True, you get a lot of crud, but that's because a lot of everything is crud.

While overgeneralising, tarring many good people with the same brush as some fanatics, and defining perfectly reasonable people as stupid, is completely reasonable. I'm as atheist as they come, but I do understand that many people are moved to faith while being able to keep a rational mind for practical purposes. Perhaps you should get your head out of the sand and try understanding why people go to church. Hint: it's generally not to plot the deaths of homos with the help of the creepy father figure in the sky.

The church (any church) has many things to answer for, true.

To be fair, they usually ask for your permission and tell you the approximate time the process will take. If you can't be arsed through it, simply don't start. Reminds me of the pirate's reasoning "This game has drm, therefore I'll pirate it".

You have no idea what religion actually is. You are tarring every people of a faith with the wacko brush. My wife is a religious catholic biochemist, involved in nervous system basic research. She doesn't doublethink. What you are confused about is that she doesn't treat the bible as a literal history, but as a book to be inspired by. She looks for love and comfort in Jesus, not astronomy. Why can you read a sci-fi history and enjoy its message, but she can't read her book and do the same?

I think the AC meant that in other countries it's just the same. Argentina and Chile, just to give examples I'm acquainted with, require photographic ID and fingerprints for many things. In Argentina, you have to give your ID number to travel to other regions, in Chile, a quick fingerprint is used to legalize contracts. Neither country has yet descended into orwellian conditions because of this (we have descended into orwellian conditions for many other reasons. You could point out that it's all part of a whole.)

India doesn't matter globally? Try googling for the meaning of BRIC.

I've used both, and other distros, and other Unixes. I don't keep on using Ubuntu just because their leaflets and CDs are shinier. I keep using it because it has less hassles, less fanbois and is more usable.

Not wasting a weekend configuring shit because it already works is a freedom.

Not finding fanbois ready to discuss that "apt is better than rpm, therefore your not debian distro sucks" for hours is a freedom.

Downloading an iso with easy instructions from a polished website, or actually having a CD come to my address for free is a freedom.

Having the system work with most of what I need in a usable configuration in half an hour is a freedom.

Do you need any more freedoms that explain why do I use Ubuntu over Debian?

Apparently, to promote your own distro with your money is a grave misdeed. Fuck me, no, it is not. Sorry you feel suckered into having been their PR, but hey, at least someone started using Linux.
Oh, and responding with 'but all Ubuntu adds over Debian is polish' will get an eye roll. Yes, it might be 'all' it adds. It's still something that Debian hasn't managed to add in years. And it's quite a lot.

So the developers left the project for better money and it's his fault for offering them jobs? Fascinating!

You're not helping your case. Is it so hard to point out what the evil was in offering money for jobs? Was the SABDFL all evil like and cackling when he said "Help me DOOM Debian and you'll get 30 silver coins each! BWAHAAHAHA"?

"He"'s killed Debian? Sorry, but he didn't point guns at anybody to get users and developers. Build a better Debian, don't give us the "it's all Shuttleworth's fault, waaaa!" crap.