SteveInCO

It seems to have worked.

I’d scratch my head, but that probably contributes to hair loss, and I’ve had enough of that. 😛

For some reason in the preview it shows backslashes in front of all apostrophes, but they *usually* don’t get into the post that way. You were just “special” I guess.

It wasn’t intended as a criticism of you but rather of the forum software.

Let me try an experiment, right here and now: ‘Because there IS no freaking doG!’ he said.…[Read more]

@Regthefronkeyfarmer that is the best collection of religious jokes I have ever seen, and I’m barely a quarter of the way through.

I am not a twitter user (I am both a twitter and faceborg refusenik), but I wish you-all (Standard English *really* needs a plural second person pronoun, or maybe we should bring “thou” back and restore “you” to that role) the best of luck in resolving this. This individual sounds like a real piece of work. (And for you non-native speakers,…[Read more]

As a side note, looking @David McNights’s response, it’s probably a really bad idea to use single quotes on this board… every single one of them shows up as escaped with a backslash. I don’t know why that doesn’t happen to me when I use them as apostrophes.

Having read the replies, it seems like we need a new word.

I use “spiritual” for this sort of thing, very, very, guardedly, amongst people who will either understand what I mean in the first place, or who will give me time to explain what I mean without going “whoop! whoop! whoop! He really believes in God deep down!!! He just said so!!!…[Read more]

One unfortunate (and totally unavoidable) aspect of this mission is that about half of both Pluto and Charon remain unmapped in any detail.

Conceivably, another mission could be sent, timed so the other side of both bodies is facing the spacecraft near the time of closest approach. (If memory serves, the entire tidally locked Pluto Charon system…[Read more]

Atheism is a world view like not having a radiator is a car.

It may be that not having a belief is one characteristic of your worldview, but it cannot be the whole thing.

The vast majority of cars do have that radiator, but some do not. [I point out, in case you are scratching your head, that the original VW Beetle was air cooled, with no…[Read more]

I hope you weren’t suffering from the misapprehension that I disagree with you! But when I saw how…emphatic your first response was I couldn’t resist a bit of humor.

I agree, “Humanist” is more specific. fits a large majority of atheists, and should be used where appropriate, to describe things that Humanists agree on that aren’t logically…[Read more]

@Davis: For doG’s sake, I wish you’d quit your fence-sitting on this issue and pick a side, already. 😛

OK, with that tongue-in-cheek upbraiding out of the way…

The phrase “world view” to me implies a much more detailed view of how the world works, a lot more than just “doesn’t have a god in it,” and even more so with respect to “doesn’t…[Read more]

Simon Mathews wrote:As others have stated I think “phobic” is the wrong term. Phobic is an irrational fear[…]

Oddly, no one makes this complaint about the term homophobia, which one would think (by inspection) means “fear of homo[sexuals]” rather than “hatred of homo[sexuals]”. I first heard this term in the early 1980s (it may have first bee…[Read more]

I do know people who just hate anything Islamic. But by the same token, it’s NOT “phobic” to be concerned about the fact that the most homicidal nutjobs on earth overwhelmingly profess one particular religion and it happens to start with an I. It’s not bigotry to be concerned about actual bad behavior.

It’s also important to try to squelch any…[Read more]

Christianity, through it’s various flavours, has kind of reformed itself inch by excruciating inch as society has changed which is what allows Christians (fundamentalists notwithstanding) to pick and choose from the Bible these days. Islam seems to be having more trouble.

Actually fundamentalists pick and choose as well, it’s just that the s…[Read more]

@Thereisnogod (pretty straightforward)

@Godfreezone

@godlesszone (Ok, those both have “zone” in them…)

As a side note, a lot of people seem to be trying to get to T|A after a long absence, and not realizing they need a NEW account here. I wonder how many tried their old account and password, and just gave up? Perhaps a note on the login…[Read more]

Deism to me is purely a philosophic position. Whether or not there was a “prime mover” is a philosophical question, that honestly really makes no difference.

Where the trouble starts is when people start asserting said Prime Mover wants ME to do something, and that they know what it is and are willing to ram their conclusions down my throat.

I…[Read more]

Well, I just can’t resist saying Pluto is really, really cool.