It needed to be said and was said, and has always been the case in our history. It is sad in this context that Obama stated a truth that should not have to be said. These soldiers at Fort Hood, died, not for Jesus, or the republican party. They served and were the unfortunate target of a nutcase. But be it overseas or at home, they defend OUR Constitution and there is no religious litmus test to serve in our military. They served to protect OUR freedom, not a theocracy.

I am literally crying right now out of pain and joy. Pain that it took this to state the obvious, but joy that it is finally coming to light.

I thank anyone, left or right, believer or not, who does what I cannot do. But it takes all kinds to serve and those who serve defend us all and our country is not monochromatic, nor should our military be.

I couldn't be more proud than I am right now, I am just sorry it took this event to state the obvious.

http://www.opposingviews.com/articles/news-atheists-applaud-obama-for-including-them-in-fort-hood-speech-r-1257667673

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/crucifix-out-warming-in/article1354734/

The EU has ruled that crosses in public schools violate the freedom of religion of others. Dipshit crybaby Christians cry foul not understanding the importance of keeping religion out of government. They, like many right wingers in America claim it violates their freedom of religion and MISS THE POINT.

I doubt anywhere that the EU said that Christian churches should be burned to the ground. I doubt they said the Chrisitian religion should be outlawed. WHAT THEY SAID, and were taking a page out of Jefferson's wall, is that it should not be the role of government to tell, ESPECIALLY CHILDREN, what god they should believe in. This protects the rights of the parents of other sects of Christianity, being that Italy is a majority Catholic, but it also protects other religions such as Jews, Muslims and atheists who sit besides these Catholics in public schools. The rights of the majority do not trump the rights of the minority.

Freedom of religion IS NOT an entitlement to a monopoly of power. If people want to live in a country that plays favorites to religion Iran and Saudi Arabia do that. No Christian, or atheist would want to live in those countries.

Is that what they want to be like? They want Christian indoctrination camps like Islamic countries do with their government sponsorship of religion?

Hello there, everyone, I'm new.

I'm sorry, I'm sure this has already been discussed here, but I find that when diving into a new, already very active forum, it's usually just easier to start a new thread and get on with the ranting.

I'm an atheist through and through, and when agnostic people say to me "how can you be an atheist, we don't really know, do we?" my answer is always the same: even if, then why? Explanation to follow:

Even if we suppose there is a god ... hell, let's even presume it's a god of the old school abrahamic type ... then why worship the old psychotic bastard? That's the part I don't get. I'm fully aware of the fact that the human brain is quite capable of believing the most outrageous crap (the evidence of that is unfortunately all around us), but going from belief, or faith if you will, to worship is simply a non sequitur. A perfect being would not demand worship, that's the domain of demons and the like.

Considering what the world looks like and what happens in it daily (the ichneumonoid wasp is the classic example) , the only rational explanation is of course provided by science, but if you insist on believing in a higher power, why grovel before it? It's a conundrum. People who believe there's a deity controlling all of this should shake their fists at the sky, shouting "bastard!" at the top of their lungs rather than waste time, money and effort praising the old sociopath and trying to convert others into doing the same.

I worked with a guy for a year who one day told me about his brother who was a genius scientist who wroked for various governments and agencies working on new technologies .  He said he worked on anti-gravity propulsion for 8 years or  something.  He was a decent  guy, head on straight smart no reason to think he would lie.  One day he described an experiment his brother conducted one day (i believe he said it was recorded/televised,) thats pretty crazy to me.  Forgive my ignorance with terminology as i try to explain what he did which is way above my head, im no scientist.  So he  took a brick size piece of solid metal (no idea what kind) and hooked it up to his "machine" (whatever that was).  This machine somehow de-densified the molecules  in the metal.  He then manually inserted a standard canadian loonie into the brick.  He then re-densified the metal  and  it solidified around the loonie.  He then cut the brick open on a precise metal saw to reveal the loonie intact,  completely surrounded by solid metal all around it.  Is this possible?  Or wast this guy just broother crazy and just made it all up. 

 UPDATE 13 dead.

I love Rook and I hope there is no bad blood between the "camps" as media has been pointing out lately.

However, Rook is wrong in that atheists should be polite all the time. I think what politically correct people in general miss, be they believers or atheists is TIME PLACE AND CONTEXT.

As humans, we do not expect to walk out of our houses and be punched in the face, or at least we don't want that to happen. I GET THAT, but that doesn't mean that people who take opposite positions are incapable of verbally duking it out without taking it personally.

Rook has the same concern we do about absurd claims being made. But just like there is more than one way to slice bread, people have different comfort levels on how they discuss things. I myself don't mind the blasphemy even when my believing friends aim it at me. I want to know where they stand, without censorship, so that I can make a solid argument in opposition. I refuse to demand that they don't hurt my feelings or name call. WHY? because what one person calls being "offended" another person merely may see as an observation.

The slippery slope of taboos is that we could, BOTH SIDES, end up being silenced.

If atheists demand that believers not equate us to Hitler, then they could use the same "dont offend me" tactic to silence us from merely saing "Jesus did not preform magic tricks".

I suppose it is no secret, per my ramblings on this site, that I am a critic some of the thing that atheists throw at theism. This is not because I like theism and hate atheism, rather that I have a distaste for ear-tickling arguments that get accepted without any rational discretion. One in particular that is often thrown around is the idea that god-talk is meaningless, and it is on this idea that I witch to camp out for a moment.

The root of these assertions can be traced back to a school of thought known as logical positivism which got started in the early 20th century in Europe with a group called the Vienna Circle. Influenced by the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, logical positivism asserted that anything meaningful should be empirical verified. Anything else then was categorically meaningless. This sort of principle seemed to be the doom of theism because gods, at least in the sense of classical theism, are transcendental, thereby not empirically verifiable. Gods were then placed into the placed in the meaningless category.

Positivism was not met with the optimism one might hope, as philosophers here and there began to point out that the verificationist principle was self refuting, asking how one would empirically verify the positivist's assertion that statements must be empirically verifiable. Wittgenstein grappled with this idea and felt that event his own work was in danger of falling into the nonsense category. Wittgenstein later backed off his bolder claims and took a weaker approach to it.

One thing that has particularly aggravated me about atheism and theism is the lack of specificity when one begins to discuss the existence or nonexistence of a god. When one says, "I'm an atheists" or "I'm a theist" I usually am like "okay, so is my pet orangutan...and....?" Of course I'm not serious about this, but it is a way to let one know that what they are saying needs to be clarified. While it is certainly true that a theist who claims that a particular deity exists bears the burden of proof for that particular deities existence, at the same time I do not think it is right for atheists to make categorical statements about being atheism without reason, because atheism seems to be more of a category of positions than any single position about god.

Here is an example of two polar opposites GETTING ALONG. And of all networks to display this FOX! Yes, the world is coming to an end.

http://rawstory.com/2009/10/hitchens-christianity-fraud/

If I am blunt and blasphemous with you, it is not because I hate you the person, it is because YOU have no evidence for the claims you make. THATS IT.

In all our verbal battles against each other we are ALL still human. We are all capable of the same range of human emotion and actions. The only difference between an atheist and a theist is that we don't buy claims of magic. BUT we are all part of the same planet and we cannot isolate ourselves from each other.

Just because I think you are full of shit on a claim(ANY CLAIM) not just that of religion, does not mean I think you are a bad person. It just means my position is that you got it wrong.

 Hi,

If a similar thread has already been started, my apologies in advance.  I'm happy to have my post moved there.  I couldn't find one dedicated to this topic in my search, so here goes...