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Both are open, AFAIK.

"Who deserves more credit?"
Why does everything have to be a competition? Can't we accept that both groups have done a great job?

Many of the data published by Wikileaks have since also been published by various newspapers and other news organisations. I don't see anyone calling for _their_ heads! Double-standards?

Exactly. How long until Apple bans $MAGAZINE for $UNACCEPTABLE_POLITICAL_LEANING?

I'm not a Republican, but I don't think Palin is as stupid as she's portrayed. I think it's part of a shrewd campaign to make Democrats and their supporters look snobbish and elitist when they come out laughing at the stupid things she says. Palin is trying to make herself look ordinary and human so that people will identify with her (actually, I think GWB did the same thing, do an extent). Seems to be working for her...

You're joking right? Are you really saying that climate scientists are "greenie scam artists"? If not, then please elaborate - who exactly are these "greenie scam artists" to whom you refer?

"We need to lose about 3 billion people" -- is that really your suggestion? How do you suggest we "humanely" achieve this over the kind of time-scales necessary (say, 20 years)?

I totally agree with you. Renewable energy sources are great, but they can't compete with better efficiency (which is essentially energy for free) and simple consumption reduction. If we used energy more wisely, we could probably reduce consumption by 40% without many (if any) significant lifestyle changes.

I think you are wrong. I believe there is no god. But that is merely on the basis of lack of evidence for a god's existence, and I concede that I could be wrong. I also believe that even if a god did exist, it still would be unlikely to resemble the Judeo-Christian god. This makes me an atheist.

I could be convinced in the existence of a god if there was evidence.

I agree that some of Jesus' teachings are excellent. The problem is that churches are a human institution and are hence vulnerable to corruption - which is exactly what has happened over the centuries. Unfortunately, people are quick to form tribes, and difference religions are an excellent way to facilitate this. Partly, I think this is because many people have only a vague understanding of the religion in which they profess to believe. Churches also exploit their status as 'good' and 'holy'. While lots of religious charities do good work, there are also lots of secular charities that do equally good work. I agree that it is possible to have terrorists and atrocities without religion, but I think you get more of them with religion. Let's look at the worst conflicts in the last 30 years: Northern Ireland (catholics vs protestants), Iraq (christians vs shia muslims vs sunni muslims), Afghanistan (christians vs muslims), Somalia (muslims vs everyone else). In fact, I challenge you to name a significant terrorist attack in the last 30 years that has not involved some form of religious conflict!. I guess the Korean war (though it's older) is an example of a war that was driven by secular ideology, but I still think that religious conflict is the most common. conventionality is to convention as morality is to moral. Also, wrt your sig. Wanting to believe you're special doesn't make you special - the universe doesn't work that way. If you're just matter, but believe you're god's creation, it doesn't matter - you still don't matter!

the reason is that some religious people are trying to undermine logic and science in the vain hope that this will bolster both their arguments and their followers. For simplicity, let's say there are two positions here. One relies on evidence and experiment to draw conclusions about the world. The other, in the absence of evidence, relies on faith to believe in an invisible being while simultaneously trying to undermine the ideas of reason, logic and experimentation _in_general_. Who deserves our support? While I agree that religion doesn't make people evil, I do think that the conviction that one has the support of a deity, that one's friends are _good_ and one's enemies _evil_ is a very good way to get people to do terrible things. This is (in my opinion, incontrovertibly) one of the consequences of religious belief in some people, and the reason why I think the world would be better off without religion. In summary, religion encourages one more "them and us" style of thinking. One of my favourite quotes is by Charlotte Bronte: "conventionality is not morality".

...so he was a clone of god?

That's not an original argument, and it's common for believers to trot out the "atheists believe in no god, hence atheism is a religion" meme. It doesn't hold water because there are a plethora of gods that most people don't believe in (eg Thor, Neptune, etc) for the good reason that there's no evidence of their existence. Does that make them subscribers to the church of anti-Thor, or anti-Neptune, etc? Atheists believe that the lack of evidence for gods makes it reasonable to disbelieve, in the same way as most people would disbelieve in Burtrand Russel's teapot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot). If atheists are religious in their atheism, then all people are religious in their disbelief of the teapot, the FSM, Thor, .... Now, you may argue that one can have 'faith' in the absence of evidence. That's fine. But please don't argue that disbelieving in something because there is no evidence of its existence is an unreasonable position.

New Orleans would def be on my must-see-list if I visited the US. Many of the more famous big cities I could take or leave, but anyone who knows anything about blues or jazz, or American culture generally in the early/mid 20th century knows the importance of what came out of New Orleans.

As other posters have pointed out, it's legal to use whatever force you need to defend yourself, but you'd be crazy to do so if you can run away instead.

"we can rehabilitate him with your tax dollars"
Rehab is a heck of a lot cheaper than jail. Get over this biblical eye-for-an-eye thing, and start thinking about harm-minimisation. Do you know how many tax dollars are spent keeping people behind bars?

I shave with a double-edged razor. Blades are $25 for 100. Just so you know.