Koockaburra101

That organism was slightly different from its parents and its offspring was very slightly different from it. Do that for a shitload of generations and the end result will be immensely different than what you started with. Evolution isn't a "ladder" with clearly defined boundaries between each step. Its a continuum that is in constant transition. Nature doesn't recognize the concept of species. That is something we've invented for classification purposes. As was just said, everything is a "transitional form" because everything is in between other things, there is no boundary where something suddenly stops being one thing and starts being another.

Osama was rich. He would have been able to put up a good case, and would have drawn out his trial for years. I'm sure they put a bullet in his head to make sure we don't deal with that. What you say may very well be true, but I'm not convinced that inconvenience is a good reason to kill someone without a proper trial.

That's just silly. Don't start a topic if you don't want people to reply.

It's a shame they didn't get him alive

That isn't the definition I've commonly seen used, but alright. I think the most important distinction to make is that Atheism doesn't carry with it anything other than the rejection of a god or deity. It's even possible to accept supernatural things and still be an Atheist (though it may not be that common).

I'd rather see it gone completely. There are so many different reasons one would increase/decrease someones reputation that it becomes completely meaningless. Seeing someone with a very low reputation only tells me that people disagree with that person a lot, which as has been pointed out doesn't say anything about the quality or validity of that persons posts.

So Buddhism isn't a religion?

A slight modification: atheism is only the rejection of gods/deities. It is possible to still be part of a religion, since not all religions have gods.

While I'm not at all a "believer" in that idea of capitalism I feel tempted to play devils advocate here. I think the most common reply to arguments of that kind are that since every company will want to take advantage of this cheap labor they'll all move there and the competition for workers will start "driving up" salaries which will eventually make the difference between the two countries much smaller (or non-existent). Again, not my conviction but I've heard arguments of this kind a lot from people who call themselves capitalists

That's when someone like me will suggest Pascal's Wager without knowing all of the repercussions that may ensue. The problem with Pascal's wager is that there are more than 2 options. There are thousands of different religions and views of the afterlife and only one can be right, which means that a both christians and atheists have an equal chance of not getting into heaven (or whatever other afterlife it may be). It also assumes a very cynical view of god, since he (if he exists) would know the motives of why one choses to believe in him which means that for Pascal's wager to be a good idea god would have to accept people into heaven even if they only professed to believe in him to avoid eternal damnation. Maybe it's just me but if I were religious that's not the kind of attitude I'd want to ascribe to my deity of choice. Also atheism isn't any kind of belief system. All it means is the rejection of any kind of god. The only reason it exsists as a term is that for a long time everyone was assumed to be (and the majority was) religious, so those who weren't needed to be distinguished. It doesn't carry with it anything else than the rejection of deities. One can believe in thousands of different things and still be an atheist, Buddhism is a commonly cited example. Buddhism, materialism and (most kinds of) satanism are all equally atheistic views of the universe. So to answer the original question. "Atheism" doesn't have much "philosophical" content at all so it's a rather pointless thing to ask It is however argued by many that the word is linguistically redundant since we live in a time where it can no longer be assumed of people that they are theists/deists which makes is silly to have a special word for those who aren't, in the same way we don't have special words for people who aren't ambulance drivers or who don't believe that the moon is made of cheese

By what right does the state claim objectivity? The example of murder is a bad one in this case since the entire point of the original question was to suppose a situation in which the solution isn't clear-cut. In real life there is often a lot of gray area and as long as the representatives of the state are people the judgments they hand out will have an element of subjectivity to them in cases where it isn't clear where exactly the line was crossed. The claim to objectivity is a dubious one since we can never have perfect information about the reality on which you claim we should judge everything.

A question about the poll options. Which definition of "Anarchy" are we going by here? And also what is meant by "Communism? Is it the ideal final stage of society as described by Marx or is it simply defined as what happened in the Soviet union? Because if it's the latter you should probably call it Stalinism just to avoid confusion. I'm not necessarily in support of either btw.

Went pro-choice on this one. Unless it has consciousness and can survive outside the womans body it isn't a human being. If we're talking about the more legal aspects of it there's also a pragmatic argument about keeping it legal so people aren't tempted to do it illegally under less than ideal circumstances, which tends to be much worse for everyone involved.

If the only "proof" you are willing to accept are along the lines of video footage of earths formation I'm afraid I can't help you.

I mean wasteful in the sense that if earth was made specifically for us humans the way in which we came about on this planet would be a very strange way of doing things. And since you brought up "putting the definition of words" I suggest you look up what is meant by a scientific theory since I don't think it means what you think it means. When using the word "Balance" I was quoting others who use it in that way and who use it to argue that we are somehow special and that this planet was clearly perfectly made for us, which the examples I gave are attempting to disprove. You must agree that any of us can imagine a far better planet for the human species than our current one, which means that this "designer" people want to believe in is either incompetent, inexistent or not at all interested in our well-being. We know that most people didn't get as old as they do know because we have historical records to show this. The advances of modern medicine are fairly recent in our history and written records exist from before that. We have no reason to believe that it was any better before that either. Besides, we can tell from old human remains how old people were when they died. We have also seen other stars of the same size as our sun expanding in that way. But fine, let's ignore that one, even if it doesn't expand it will eventually "expire" and it'll make earth uninhabitable to our species anyway (not that we'll be around then). No one has problems understanding your point about skyscrapers building themselves, it's just that it's completely irrelevant to this argument. You seem to have a very narrow view of what counts as "proof". It is very possible to know things without directly observing them. That'd be like refusing to convict murderers unless their crime was directly observed and caught on tape.

In that they could no longer have any influence of who gets the legal benefits of "marriage" since marriage will no longer carry those benefits and would be purely ceremonial and done for religious reasons.

Care to elaborate?

Wouldn't that mean taking control away from the church tough? I don't think of it as changing the law to accommodate religious people, but more as a correction of the initial mistake to let marriage have any legal standing at all.

I agree, but for the religious people it seems that the word is really the problem. So why not give them marriage and let them do what they want with it? It'll have no legal bearing anyway so they can deny it to whoever they want. That way they're not forced to see their precious ceremony tarnished and the state won't have to deny legal rights to citizens on a religious basis (which is against the concept of a secular state). It's better to keep legal institutions clearly separate from religious ones anyway and making the term "marriage" strictly religious would seem a quick way to do that. So people who feel it important to be married "before god" can go to the church of their choice for that and just sign some papers whenever it's convenient for them, and those of us who aren't religious can just sign the papers and be free from the accusation that we're somehow damaging "the sanctity of marriage". Surely that would be better for everyone?

I've so far only been sexually attracted to girls (I'm male btw). In terms of romantic interest I haven't had much in either direction. On the topic of "gay marriage" or whatever, I just find it incredibly stupid that it's even an issue. What they should do is make marriage a strictly religious thing that is handled entirely by religious institutions. Then it would be up to each individual church who they'd want to marry. This shouldn't be recognized by the state however and should have no legal standing at all. They should then institute some new kind of agreement that can be entered by any two people which carries all the legal implications that marriage currently does (in terms of inheritance and such for example). That way those of religious inclination can have their precious marriage and every citizen has the same rights, while keeping the state nicely separate from the church.

I've always been bothered by how some people refer to the "balance of nature" as evidence for life being created by some "higher power". Where exactly is this balance? Nature is entirely dependent on things constantly killing each other, and is incredibly wasteful. Just think that the vast majority of species that have ever existed are now extinct, just think of all the suffering that is inherent in this "balance of nature". There is nothing to suggest that earth was somehow made with us in mind, even if we were to ignore the overwhelming evidence we have for how earth was formed. For example, most of earth is completely inhospitable to humans (too hot/cold etc.). Consider earthquakes, storms, volcanoes, tsunamis, floods and not to mention asteroid impacts and other disasters. Also consider that for the vast majority of human history most of our species didn't live past 40 or so. Our sun is also expending it's fuel and will eventually swell up and completely "devour" our little planet, isn't that some rather questionable "design"? As to the "miraculous" nature of life I'm afraid I don't see that either. Even if life is extremely unlikely it would have had to happen countless times already just on account of the size and age of the universe. There's also no reason to assume that life is uncommon considering that we're made of some of the most common elements in the universe (hydrogen, oxygen and carbon mostly). We haven't yet found any life on other planets but considering we only have real knowledge of about 8 planets out of several billion that isn't saying much. The fact that our existence, to ourselves, seems unlikely and "special" is irrelevant.

Looks good Är dock lite tveksam till vissa saker. Bör det inte vara att han "flög ut därifrån" istället för "flög ut ifrån". Dessutom säger han "[...] that guy was diving out of that window?" i originalet så översättningen kanske borde vara "dök". Översättningen för "turret guns" är något inkonsekvent, skulle det inte vara bättre att hålla sig till en term istället? Personligen skulle jag föredra "(automatisk) kulspruta". Jag laddar upp mitt förslag, säg gärna vad ni tycker och så. Förutom det jag nämnt gjorde jag lite andra förändringar och fixade några stavfel/särskrivningar. Hade svårt att komma på någon bra översättning till "Turret maintinence"-saken så jag lämnade den tills vidare. Har någon annan ett förslag?