Marinus

^ that....

Well, I can see how you can split science into left wing and right wing fields, but it's kinda hard if you're in the political centre. You would need to believe that in birds the right wing was created, and the left wing evolved, I think.

I do, I also see the connection between the two. Shall we exchange more rather meaningless phrases, or shall we call it a day?

You forgot to mention that Dutch weather tends to be liberally biased. As for my views: I'm no climatologist, but I know the basics of GW, and AFAICS the data points in the direction of GW. My anecdotal experiences that indeed don't prove a thing, happen to point in the same direction, that's all.

The WMD didn't exist either? Edit: In the mean time plants and trees in my garden are budding out and I even got some plants flowering. Well, that's of course just the local weather faking climate change resulting in spring-like weather in December.

No, I don't think that. But they were very convincing I reckon.

The whole concept of light beer is kinda hard to believe....

If you put it like that, I largely agree with you. I think religion and religious differences play a bigger role, but it's (almost) never religion alone. Even with things like the witch-burnings, there were often non-religious reasons behind it. It was, for example, a rather effective way to resolve personal conflicts or (quite literally) eliminate competition by accusing people of witchcraft.

Because my agnosticism doesn't say anything about me, but my stance towards the existence of Gods, I hardly care wether it's ripped to pieces or not. And there's plenty of justification to kill in the bible, the torah, and the quran. Luckily most people go for the more friendly texts most of the time. You can't be serious. I won't claim that the purpose of the SC is to piss of people, but it's one of the favourite pass-times here it seems. The problem with anti-religion is that it's very hard (let's say impossible) to proof whether religion/spirituality is an disadvantage to the species or not. I tend to think it's advantageous in some way or another. Well, religion/spirituality in general, not necessarily cults that sacrifice babies etc. Another point is that I don't believe people have a real choice. I never chose to be a non-believer, and I can accept-jesus-as-my-lord-and-saviour as often as I want, but I won't actually believe he's my lord and saviour. I suspect it works the other way around too. Of course you can change one's mind by brainwashing, torture, electroshocks or a combination there-off, the inquisition wasn't all that stupid, that stuff really works, but there's of course moral implications when you do that. I don't remember I claimed it was Black and white, probably because I didn't.

did you type this with a straight face? Maybe conflicts are escalating for, I don't know, the last 14 centuries or so, because there are, in fact, different Gods in Abrahamism?

Yes, they're very compatible. You might reconcile Jaweh and Allah, but Jaweh and God is going to be hard, because Christians and Jews have a different, and rather essential, messiah. Jesus who's also God vs. one that has yet to be born. It gets really interesting when you try to make Allah = God work. Because the absolute biggest sin in Islam, Shirk, is claiming there's entities equal to God (like, say, Jesus and the Holy Spirit). The absolute biggest sin in Christianity is of course to deny the H. Spirit but you won't be saved without Jesus anyway. Anyway, God = Allah is probably the fastest way to go to the deepest hell, for a meet and greet with, and a spit-roast by Satan & Shaytan But of course this is theology, and I'm sure there a way to get around this. If you can make the trinity work, it should be no problem to make Allah=God=Jaweh work.

I never denied that, I only claimed that some religions are more violent than others. But don't worry, I also acknowledge that the violence is (almost?) always perpetrated by a minority, and that the majority rejects it. I just refuse to conform to that PC crap that claims that all religions are equally violent, which is obviously not true. Also, while religion is seldom the only motivation for violence, there's giant differences between the usefulness of the different religions to condone the violence. In case of Jainism: it rejects violence, including violence against animals and sometimes even violence against plants.

So that's how it works, huh, every crime that isn't religiously motivated is an atheistic crime? But anyway, I don't think their motivations were atheistic either. "There is no (reason to believe there is a) God" doesn't give people a lot of motivation to kill others. But anyway, I was thinking of Jainism as an example of a peaceful religion, not necessarily atheism, which isn't a religion to begin with. It isn't even a moral system, it's just an (ir)religious stance. Even if I was an atheist, which I am not, I have a different ethical system than Stalin, so well, why would I care that he also didn't believe in God? Do you feel responsible because the Mayans ripped the still beating hearts out of living people on top of there pyramids? They were theists just like you, (I presume.) So while atheist, just like theists, consist of a varied group with different, often conflicting ethical systems, you have to look for something else: all those mass murderers were anti-religious communists for example. I'm more of a secular humanist. So if you want to piss me of, slam me over the head with a secular humanist megalomanic mass-murderer.

Personally I think that's an easy cop out. The ratio of violent nut jobs and extremists varies wildly between the different religions.

Is that some, many, most or every last one of 'em? And you might want to back up this claim with specific examples.

http://www.motifake.com/image/demotivational-poster/1011/the-right-to-bear-arms-demotivational-poster-1288917337.jpg

Google made me understand it. But I was geek enough to figure out "there's 10 kinds of people; those who understand binary and those who don't" by my own.

They're similar, not the same. Whether you like it or not, the three gods differ from each other. Not that much, just enough to produce centuries of hatred between the three groups of followers. That depends on the religion. In case of the Abrahamic religions: the different holy books aren't very compatible with science. So in order to avoid conflict, you've to scrap some details, like the resurrection of Jesus in case of Christianity. Spontaneous resurrection of a human being after 24+ hours is scientifically impossible. This resurrection wasn't really needed anyway, because there wouldn't have been an original sin in the first place. Evolution sort of disproves imperfection coming into the world due to people starting to sin. So yeah, science pretty much blows Christianity out of the water Edit: Which doesn't mean one can't be both religious and rational. But religious usually need some suspension of disbelief with things considering their religion.

I'm not sure if that's always the case. When same-sex marriage was legalized here, the emancipation of gays was complete, but there was no whiny PC-nonsense afterwards. But this might be due to the rather slow rate of the LTGB emancipation (or due to the fact that we, as a society raped, murdered and ditched Political Correctness somewhere in the last century.)

The kiss isn't special, the fact that they can kiss in public is special. They're no different than others, and now for the first time they can kiss openly just like straight couples. They're celebrating equality, not difference.

And if they don't focus on the different treatment they get, they will never be treated equally. It was society that decided gays were special (inferior) and now gays have to make a fuss to become equal to the rest. That's what all minority groups did to achieve equality. Once equality is achieved, us homers usually don't feel the need to lay the focus on our sexual orientation any more.

Homosexuality was illegal in Texas until 2003, In a lot of European countries it was decriminalized around 1800. I think you need a decade (or two to be safe) of gay prides to settle things. When you get it you're usually fast with social progress, but at the moment you're still rather homophobic for a Western people. Come back when official relationships between two people of the same sex are allowed in most US states. Oh and merry Christmass

I love you too, bitch dear.

I love you too dear bitch.

The best way to commit political suicide in the US of A is admitting you don't believe in God. Or so I heard. So it's not that much of a stretch, I think.