Maybe its because i cant punch you in the face if you flipped me the bird?

This is just silly. If you get violent because someone makes a gesture, no matter how rude, you have some serious emotional problems.

Depends on your viewpoint. Riches aren't wealth

I used the word "wealth" in the materialistic sense, the ideas common today that free means worthless, and a person's worth is determined by his wealth.

That isn't my viewpoint, but most seem to hold it these days.

You might find it hillariously stupid...but then, you probably haven't a clue how the people before him gained their wealth to have him born into it.

Actually, I do My late uncle became very wealthy after being raised in poverty.

The fact is...any can acheive wealth if they figure these things I allude to out and execute the plan they arrive at from that knowlege and do it well.

My uncle would likely not have become rich were it not for several coincidences. Had his ship not been bombed and he injured (WWII) or if he hadn't been sent to the same hospital as his future partner there's no telling what would have happened. Also, if intelligence, creativity, and eye-hand coordination didn't run in the family he'd never been rich.

A kid from the ghetto whose mom is a crack whore and who has no dad doesn't stand a chance.

FDA continues to admit it's useless and just likes to thrash its arms about in a non threatening manner.

Yeah? The guy that owned this peanut processing facility went to prison. Useless and non-threatening? Hardly.

I'm offended at Google's immaturity. Minors aren't allowed to have a G+ account, right? Then what's the problem with someone flipping the bird?

Jesus, Google, grow the fuck up.

I tend to think that if we do find an intelligent ET, it will be so alien to us that we won't even realize it's intelligent and may not even realise it's alive at all. It's only recently that they discovered that birds can use tools, and that dolphins and whales are remarkably intelligent.

Considering the vast distance betwen even the closest stars, and the incredibly vast distances between galaxies, that the probably that earth is the only place with life is incredibly tiny, and that we're the only intelligence ever, anywhere is also unlikely. But I doubt we'll ever find them, especially in our lifetimes.

Now, if they somehow create an einstein-busting warp drive (or find a loophole in Einstein's equations), then it's a different story.

I tend to agree with you, especially in the light of the old saying (the one that discounts Excel and MS Mice) "the day Microsoft makes a product that doesn't suck is the day they start manufacturing vaccuum cleaners".

the Xbox360 controllers even work on PCs

I didn't know that, thanks! What kind of connectors do they use? I may have Patty pick one or two up for me.

their inexplicable phobia of Bluetooth

That I've seen first hand. I bought a bluetooth dongle to get pictures from the phone to the computer, and was disheartened to see that the install disk had drivers for Apple and Windows, but not Linux. I figured it would only work on the notebook. But it turned out that Linux supports it out of the box -- as soon as I plugged the dongle into that computer, it just worked, and what's more worked better than in the Windows computer.

There are plenty of companies out there killing people indirectly through massive environmental destruction or more directly through slave labor and stirring up wars.

I couldn't agree with you more. Purina murdered my grandfather, who went four stories down an elevator shaft carrying 200 pounds of feed because Purina was too damned cheap to put doors on the elevator. And when the conservitives scream "DEREGULATE!" I point them to this.

Your comment assumed by its wording that poor people are unemployed. The vast majority are not.

Bacon, eggs, butter, and lard are all high in cholesterol, which is what her doctors were warning her about.

Similarly, if you say "wolf" when referring to "pulpits", there isn't much communication.

The "wolf" comes from a parable in the bible. Christ said he was the good shepherd who laid down his life for his flock, and warned of "wolves in sheep's clothing." If we're discussing a book you obviously haven't read, there can be little communication as well.

The eyeball just happened? Illogical!
The moon happened; then the dog/cat/eyeball did. All, very logical

The moon is logical; it's just a big pile of boulders that gravity pulled together. Any three year old can make a snowball. But an eyeball just happening by chance? Pretty unbelievable.

As they say in wikipedia, "Citation needed".

As of the early 21st century, Christianity has around 2.2 billion adherents.[1][2][3] The faith represents nearly one-third of the world's population

Another third are Muslim.

I overestimated the number of Jews; 13 million is a drop in the bucket compared to the seven billion people alive today. But Muslims, Jews, and Christians share the old testament and worship the same God. A quick google shows that only about a third of the world's population are athiests, agnostics, Hindus, Wiccans, Bhuddists, Confucionists, etc. combined.

Your deity seems to worship death; at least, as is evidenced by the idolatry (crosses and thorn tiaras).

The death of that one man, God's own son, resulted in the life of all men. And note that the one man who was executed to save you also healed the sick who would otherwise die, and raised ones who were already dead. And what's more, he didn't stay dead! Also note that death comes to all of us, although people today seem to think they're somehow immune.

Very much similar; they all reject each other.

On the contrary, the Muslims consider Jesus to be a prophet, and he is revered in their religion. The Jews consider him "a Jewish boy who did well" (no citation, a Jew told me that). It isn't the religions that reject each other, it's the people practicing those religions. And even non-Abrahamic religions, such as Bhuddism, hold the same moral values that say stealing, killing, slandering, adultery, are wrong.

I can formulate predictions

So can a computer, but a computer isn't sentient. And note that computer predictions are often better than human predictions. Note that the computer in the linked story was a 1952 Univac, and as the text notes, "a musical Hallmark greeting card has more computing power."

Pick up a history book and you will find plenty of examples of people using religion to coerce and control a subject population.

That's true, but religion isn't the culprit here, any more than a chain saw is the culprit in a murder. That's not what a chain saw is designed to do, but it can be used for it.

You might as well blame state-sanctioned athiesm for the horrors of Stalin or Pol Pot. Of course, it wasn't athiesm that caused those atrocities, any more than it was religion that caused the atrocities you listed.

Surely the majority of the law abiding and true Islamic believers can whip up the same amount of public opposition they use to attack Isreal,the US, and even their own native populations. Why do they not do this against those distorting and using their religion to justify violence?

Cowardice. It takes a brave soul to face torture and death.

The behavior and actions of the Islamic extremists are daily front page news and that negatively effects the entire Islamic religion in other peoples eyes.

True, and disgusting.

The leadership of all religious orders can be just as corrupt and controlling as the leadership of any government in a secular system.

Also true. Humans are corrupt by their very nature, but it isn't religion that made Bin Laden corrupt, and it wasn't athiesm that made Pol Pot corrrupt.

I am not against any religion but when a religion starts trying to control or manipulate those who believe differently or those who do not believe at all they should be exposed and the charge of blasphemy should not be an acceptable excuse for their behavior.

I agree wholeheartedly. And BTW, blasphemy was the crime Jesus of Nazareth was executed for.

Really? Is it?

Yes, it is. You don't have to have faith that your wife exists, but you must be faithful to her.

Luke 16: 10 -- He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much.

  11If therefore ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches?

  12And if ye have not been faithful in that which is another man's, who shall give you that which is your own?

Since when is money a "god"?

You've never heard od the Almighty Dollar? Mammon is worshiped by most Americans; it is what they love and depend on, and they are faithful to their little green god.

Luke 16:13 -- No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

Mammon, of course, is the archaic word for money.

Why would "God" be so worried about all these lesser false gods, such as "mother nature"?

If you wrote a complex program, or a large, well written book, or painted a masterpiece, how would you like someone else taking credit for it? If you're married, how would you like walking in on her as she's sucking another guy's dick?

Is it possible omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence are not attributes after all?

Can you not put a breakpoint in your code? Can you not examine every byte of your program? Can you not delete, add, or rewrite parts of it? How could the creator of the universe not be omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent?

Arguments for sentience would require an agreed upon definition of sentience.

How about Webster's dictionary?

Definition of SENTIENCE
1: a sentient quality or state [useless, self referential definition]
2: feeling or sensation as distinguished from perception and thought
First Known Use of SENTIENCE
1839

I could easily program a computer to scream in pain when you presses the "A" key, but the computer would not actually feel anything; computers are incapable of thought, feeling or emotion. Actors in movies convincingly pretend to feel pain when it's just a movie. So prove to me that you have emotions and feel pleasure and pain.

No real reason that robotic missions are impossible.

Voyager has been travelling for forty years and is just now at the edge of the solar system. If it were headed to Proxima Centuri it wouldn't arrive for millinea. It takes ten to twenty minutes, depending on where the respective planets are in their orbits, for a radio signal to reach the Mars rovers.