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No amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party. So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin.
Correct, but getting Ron Paul's follower's support is key #1 to the Republican strategy.
One has to ask, in the light of reports, what kind of supporters these are.
Bear in mind that the theists are just as strong in their beliefs as the atheists, but neither can prove their belief either way and must rely on faith.
But atheists are not trying to prove that gods do not exist. They simply lack belief in the existence of gods. If we lay out the interesting options in doxastic logic they are:
1. p:G - a person has belief in the existence of gods
2. p:~G - a person has belief in the non-existence of gods
3. ~p:G - a person lacks belief in the existence of gods
Of these, the first probably does not exist since the majority of believers either believe only in a single or a particular panoply of gods. They are making an ontological commitment and they have a burden of proof to demonstrate the existence of the particular god or gods they believe in.
The second sentence is probably fairly rare. Again they are making an ontological commitment and must demonstrate that no god exists. Since it is impossible to prove an open-ended negative like this they are in a difficult position (what about the god that the sentient gas bags of an unnamed planet in IOK-1 worship).
The third is the majority atheist position. It doesn't make an ontological commitment, it is merely sceptical of the evidence that believers supposedly have for the existence of the particular deities they worship.
1. Slashdot has a vocal and near radical atheist group. It isn't enough to say I don't beleave here is why, but you need to go the extra step and go to people who do beleave in a god and call them mindless idiots because they didn't come up with the same conclusion. News like this actually makes you feel good that these religious people are just as flawed and twisted as the rest of us.
Ah, a report of a possible sexual abuse or at least a child pornography case with an associated cover up. So don't accept that people, especially those of us with children, might be concerned. Instead make an ad hominem attack on those who are concerned. Not only that, make sure it is a good straw man as well. Care to name this "near radical atheist group" or any of its members and to say how they have been radicalised and what acts they will commit as a result of this purported radicalisation?
2. Educated group of people. Being an educated group of people many of you went to catholic private schools.
Something called "evidence" or "justification" might be useful here, otherwise it sounds as though you are just making it up
Sex abuse doesn't know any boundaries and exist everywhere.
Ah, the "cosi fan tutte" defence. Yes, other people besides Catholics abuse children, people who are members of other organisations abuse children. But do these other organisations cover up the abuse? Or do they report it to the civil authorities?
The reason the church kept it a secret was because of their doctrine of forgiveness and a verry recent conclusion that these people who do sex crimes is actually an illness. So if the priest confessed of his sin the church gives him a clean bill of health and let's them go on. Not because of a plot but because they believe if you confess your sins god will forgive you of those sins, and the policy that the priest who does the confession will not tell anyone else, no matter what. Now you can argue this doctrine, however it isn't part of a coverup it is just following their beliefs.
Essentially what you are saying is that canon law has precedence over civil law.
As ever given the choice between reporting possible sexual abuse or attempting to safeguard the name of the church the bishop has gone for the latter. Fortunately after all the reports and convictions in the USA, Ireland, Germany and Belgium and the courage of the abused, people are no longer afraid of bringing cases forward.
So will anyone go there? If you like a drink, are female or gay, Christian or atheist is there any way you would go there unless you were forced to do so on business?
And once the oil does run out the reasons for doing so become even more remote.
Wake me when it can detect an opening in the opponent's defense and strike at it.
Or even better, when it can cope with an attack from Pozdniakov - http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1478623914238877457
Of all objects, the planets are those which appear to us under the least varied aspect. We see how we may determine their forms, their distances, their bulk, and their motions, but we can never known anything of their chemical or mineralogical structure; and, much less, that of organized beings living on their surface
Said by Comte in 1842. There is a difference between unknown and unknowable.
The issue is that evolution isn't controversial. Hell, even the Catholic Church recognizes it.
Not quite, the Catholic church promotes "theistic evolution" or "evolution with added god". This isn't compatible with the TofE in that it isn't naturalistic and it is teleological. Catholics are forbidden to believe in "atheistic evolution".
hmm... then how did anything increase into a more complex structure? Survival does not imply progression.
Neither does the theory of evolution.
Evolution is a theory which has yet to be proven.
You really have no idea how science works. FFS go read a book on the subject. Firstly, evolution has been observed both in the laboratory and in nature. Look up Lenski's work on Cit+ E. Coli, polyploidy in Spartina Anglica (and look at what that does to the size of the genome) and the Red Vizcacha Rat. Secondly, the theory of evolution attempts to describe how this works. Note that it is a theory, which means that it has been critically tested, has not been falsified and has a high degree of evidential backing. Note also that theories are both contingent and corrigible.
From a non-religious point-of-view, there is absolutely no reason that evolution should be granted any merit beyond intelligent design.
Unfortunately it seems that all the proponents of "Intelligent Design" in the States just happen to be fundamentalist Christians and their "designer" seems to bear an uncanny resemblance to the god of the bible. If, one day, a computer program gains self-awareness, would it be correct in arguing that it simply 'came to be', and it did not have an intelligent designer? And this ridiculous argument was debunked before it was made by one of the great British philosophers, David Hume. Here's may take on it using your example. A computer program runs on a computer, the program will have at least one designer who will probably be different to the person who writes the code. The computer itself will have multiple designers and multiple manufacturers, so your supposed "intelligent designer" looks like a large team already. You will note the team live in the same universe as the software and the computer is made out of material in that universe. Given the number of bugs in virtually all software it would look like these designers and implementers are neither omnipotent or omniscient. Further you will not that the likes of Grace Hopper, Edsgar Djikstra and Alan Turing are all dead, so it doesn't look as though your designers are immortal either. If you are going to use an argument from analogy then you might find it useful to choose an example that has more similarities than dissimilarities to thing you are going to compare it with.
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