They are on a journey to find the last remaining kakapo, a fat, flightless parrot which, when threatened with attack, adopts a strategy of standing very still indeed.
It seems like "standing still when threatened" isn't the only reason why there's only one of them left...
You're making the common error that atheism is some positivistic belief. It's not, at least for me. It's simply the absence of a belief in a supernatural being. Show me any evidence, and I'll be happy to consider changing my position. But I don't go around believing in things that aren't required to explain the world around me, like the Easter Bunny, Zeus, Jahweh, or Christ dying to save me from a variety of behaviors.
As the saying goes, atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
Look at it a different way. You're asserting that a proposition for which there is no evidence should be treated as equally likely as the null hypothesis, that your proposition is false. If this is truly your position, then you should believe in all gods, because they are equally as likely, and cumulatively perhaps more likely than the null hypothesis.
1. Egyption, Greek, and Roman religions also had people believing in them for long periods of time. There have been many religions (and still are) that have lasted for long periods time. The length of time a religion has been around is not a real good metric.
2. Also not a good metric, especially since it's only been around for a relatively short period of. Religions don't appear with people already divided.
3. And that's different from other religions because...?
The simple fact is a religion is whatever you believe it to be. One person's pink unicorn worship is no sillier than a million people worshiping invisible sky fairies. Religion is in the eye of the beholder.
All religions are abusive and used like any tool for power, wealth, etc. . The only real difference is that Scientology is basically coming right out and screaming it's scam unlike most other main stream religions who do it far more subtly.
~X~
Yeah, that'll teach the establishment a lesson, you little rebel!
Fuck the system, man!
Oh, and I nearly forgot: "Arise, chicken! Chicken, arise!"
(for the uninitiated: ATHF)
This is slashdot.. there are no girls
Uhm, yes, we all understood what he meant, thank you.
(1) Large feature set (2) Compact/optimized (3) Fast to market Pick any two...
...and you'll get one. If you're lucky. And it won't be (3). And sometimes it won't be one of the two that you picked.
The truth is that most people work in office buildings that are not that busy, and they only spend a tiny fraction of their day in a busy and distracting environment.
An office environment is not distracting? Have you ever heard of e-mail, youtube or slashdot?
Note that many organisms survive very nicely with no brain at all.
Commence republicans/neocons jokes in 3... 2... 1...
"Help Mr. Wizard!" -- Tennessee Tuxedo
