We'll give the NSA expedient access to our encrypted data...

When they'll confess to all possible breaches of our Constitution, and submit to the death penalty for any actual breaches.

Have we got a deal, NSA? Oh, why not? You fucking traitors.

should be required to cease algorithmic trading until they can prove that their trading algorithms are logically equivalent to a particular reference algorithm provided by the FTC!

Coding is NOT Computer Science

I'd like to understand you, but could you please restate that in untyped lambda calculus?

... not replenishing their Hot Pockets supply in the break-room freezer.

Because (1) news analysts aren't juries, and (2) we try to be careful when considering whether or not to hold a man culpable for mass-murder.

So as long as my boss tells me it's okay to torture people and routinely violate the Consittution, it's okay?

Fuck you, cowardly anti-democratic traitor.

So our government betrays us and the Constitution, and the person who lets us know is a traitor? Odd reasoning.

Good call. The eigth circle was for fraudsters (Wall Street), but the ninth circle was for traitors (NSA, CIA, Congress, POTUS).

Wall Street is peopled with thieves, but the NSA is peopled with traitors. A person of marginal morality could work in Wall Street while turning down the NSA on moral grounds.

I'm very sympathetic to your point (I'm actually agnostic, so I tend to look at these issue through several lenses at the same time.) My take on the certainty of theism is that there's often better support for it than some will admit, but most of us don't see a slam-dunk case for it.

I do think you're missing one of my main points here, though. I agree that a certain form of harm is done to gay persons who are unable to get equivalent business accommodation for their weddings as do straight couples.

But my point was that Christians, and perhaps some other religious persons, also suffer a kind of harm: having to choose between committing acts that may be prohibited by their faith, and not being able to make their living.

I'm not arguing about a particular manner in which those two notions of harm should be balanced in public policy. I'm simply raising the point that it's not a simply matter of "harm A" vs. "no harm". To Christians, it's a matter of "harm A" vs. "harm B". Atheists, on the other hand, see it as "harm A" vs. "no harm". Or at last I think they do.

BTW, thanks for the civil discussion. You're raising good points in a friendly manner, which doesn't always happen. I really appreciate it.

I think you've got a good point. It's interesting to read through your post and see which of your conclusions are supported without the presumption of the falsity of the religious beliefs in question.

We at least agree on one point: whichever beliefs are actually correct ought to triumph. But the problem, to which I think you alluded, is that we're looking for a form of governance which is workable even when we cannot come to an agreement about whose world view is actually correct.

It's a frustrating problem to be sure. Each world view entails some notions of what's a just government. And while we'd like to be considerate of people holding views different than our own, we can't get around the need to have some particular form of governance. And that's guaranteed to violate someone's conscience, unless we all happen to be on the same page, which just isn't going to happen.

"Genders that pay the best in I.T."

At the risk of sounding cruel, this reminds me of an unpopular kid who's walking all around school, casually mentioning to everyone that lots of people are going to hang out at his house that night.

I don't think you're calm enough to have this discussion at the moment.

I see most of your point.

But by this ruling, no Christian cake baker anywhere in the country (or in that district? I forget the scope of the court) has the freedom to avoid this act of compelled religious speech and still make their living.

This was my original point: there's an argument over what constitutes harm. I think irreligious people are inclined to not see this as a matter of forced blashphemy, or to not care. Some religious people, depending on their theology, are inclined to see it as such, and to have a big problem with it. I.e., the two sides see the debate as being very differently framed.