Do atheists hate God?

No. Consider: Do you hate Santa Claus? Or Zeus and Poseidon? The fact is, atheists just don´t believe in "God" or gods. You can´t hate something you don't believe in.

My profile which controls the group was hacked. I still have no idea how; if anyone wants to blame me for stupidly falling for a phishing scam, I probably am guilty, but I honestly don't know how it happened.

The group was renamed jesus is love; 100s of regular users were banned (which oddly is permanent in a myspace group; cannot be undone, even by the group's moderator). All our huge threads were deleted and the hacker was systematically deleting users from the group as well.

Rejection of extremists by ordinary Muslims can only help lessen terrorism, but the real question is how to build their resolve to do so. It is understood that the great majority of Muslims are moderate and do not support terrorism, yet the extremists continue to grow their support. To understand this paradox, requires an understanding of the background of the extremist views and how to turn them on their head.

While it would be nice to believe that ordinary Muslims rejecting extremists would help bring about the end of terrorism. The reality is that it won't happen. Part of the reason is the simple fact that a number of the Muslim countries are ruled by extremists governments. For example look at Syria, Iran, Libya, and Algeria to name just a few. These countries, among others, have as one of their stated goals, the destruction of Israel and Western Civilization, particularly the United States. This in spite of the fact that the Koran mentions that the Jews and Christians are all believers in the "Book" as are the Muslims.

Carolyn Jessop was 35 when she made her escape.

She was fleeing both her home in Colorado City, Arizona, and the polygamous sect in which she had grown up, the Fundamentalist Church of the Latter Day Saints.

At the age of 18, Jessop had been assigned in marriage to a 50-year-old man. She was, at the time, his fourth wife

Legend has it that two thousand years ago President Bush's favorite philosopher dodged the treason bullet by giving a group of Pharisees his honest opinion on the separation of church and state. Appreciating the wisdom in keeping heavenly and earthly concerns separate, Jesus advised them to "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's; and to God the things that are God's."

 

Regrettably, the 2008 presidential frontrunners of both parties are ignoring Jesus' advice regarding the preferred relationship between church and state by professing-ad nauseam-their undying fidelity to the Christian Right's version of morality and its vision of our nation as their exclusive fiefdom.

 

Consider the statements of two Republican candidates. Senator John McCain said he believes the "Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation." Mike Huckabee said we should "amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards . . .." McCain is pandering. Huckabee is deadly earnest. But keep in mind, many a democratic nation has been trampled because politicians were outsmarted by those whose boots they licked.

For much of January, one might have thought that the Republican candidates for president were already competing against a single opponent. Not one called Hillary or Barack, but with a moniker even more chilling in the eyes of hard-line Republicans: Islamic fascism.

Let's Start With Sex In my last essay I outlined how sociological research is revealing that the prosperous democracies with high levels of religiosity -- especially the conservative, creationist USA -- tend to have high levels of social dysfunction, especially in terms of murder, incarceration, juvenile and adult mortality, divorce, sexually transmitted diseases, abortion, and teen pregnancy. It is one thing to know that the relentless effort by the religious community to convince their flocks that failure to adhere to traditional religious values leads to societal chaos and depravity is abjectly false. It is also important to understand why secular nations are doing better than the more religious ones, with some achieving levels of societal health never before seen in history.