When has $500 caused a billion in losses? Again, you're just making things up.

They still have safe havens in a number of other nations. Invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq have not deprived America's enemies of safe havens. Again, you're just making things up.

How are soldiers' deaths saving 100 civilians each? 9/11 was conducted with legal visas and civilian pilot training. How have our foreign invasions prevented these things from reoccurring? You're literally making up everything you say.

You have no basis for claims that soldiers' deaths are saving civilian lives. You have absolutely no basis whatsoever for that statement or any others you've made here.

What do foreign invasions have to do with Chinese gun smuggling? Are you alright?

So you're alleging that Afhanistan was going to obtain nuclear weapons, and that's why it was a threat. I admit, that's a strong argument in favor of invading them. And most other nations on earth.

They attacked us on 9/11 with visas and civilian pilot training. Afghanistan was instrumental to absolutely none of it.

"1) When talking of Republicans and Democrats he lumps them together without pause, without second thoughts. Only his party is 'pure'."

Both parties support massive deficits. Both parties support our corrupt tax system. Both parties support wars of foreign aggression. Both parties support the robbery of America's poor and middle class via the inflationary policies of the fed, which enrich only government and bankers.

No Libertarian on this forum or anywhere else that I've seen has employed the fallacious logic of labeling Liberals/Conservatives nor Democrats/Republicans as "impure" or anything remotely like it.

The rest of your statements are similarly dishonest, juvenile, and idiotic. If you're ready for a real exchange, perhaps try responding to the actual thoughts of those you disagree with. Your collection of straw-men here is worthless and insulting, not just to Libertarians, but to every honest reader and poster of this forum.

I'm not going to press the report button. Trolling is better combated via community awareness. This is trolling. It's not honest. Einstein knows very well that literally every idea he ascribes here to Libertarians is not what they believe. I could explain factually why Libertarians don't believe a single thing Einstein here claims they believe and states his disagreement with, but that would just be rewarding a troll with attention.

"Boehner lost the tax hike not cause of Libertarian votes in the House of Representatives but because of Conservative votes in the House of Representatives."

None of the Tea Party representatives newly elected into the House was elected because of his views on abortion or homosexuals. In fact, many were elected because these issues were not given attention and their views on them didn't matter. Their views which had them vote down a tax hike are in line with Libertarian views.

Additionally, so what? People like you support the Fed's robbery of America, the bedroom police, and the body police. Your view is that the federal government should waste money and lives failing an attempt to police what people put in their bodies. Your view is that the federal government has a role in our bedrooms (IMHO, that's creepy, btw). Your view is that the Fed should keep robbing the poor and middle class, because you don't understand what it does anyway so who cares?

The fact that tens of millions of people are willfully ignorant and, frankly, not very bright says absolutely nothing about Libertarian ideology, thought, practice, or governance. Libertarian representation in our federal government is an indication of votes and voters, not the merits of their thoughts. This is a textbook appeal-to-a-majority fallacy and not logical argumentation. The fact that there aren't Libertarians in the House, let alone enough to vote down this garbage, is the fault of voters, not Libertarian ideas.

The relevant fact here is that Libertarians would have voted against tax hikes just as the Conservatives you loud did. Another relevant fact is that Conservatives, who supposedly have much better representation in federal government, haven't done anything about our horrible tax system or the Fed's robbery of the American people. By pointing out Conservatives' superior representation to Libertarians' in federal government, you're highlighting the fact that much of our debt is their fault, they condone the robbery of the Fed, and they support our corrupt tax system in which the poor and middle class are squeezed for every dime while the wealthy avoid things like the estate tax.

Please stop trolling. Aren't you better than that? Answer's up to you.

GreatnessIncarnate,

What US recovery? By most measures this is the slowest recovery in US history. By some measures we've not recovered at all. The dollar is worth less. More people are unemployed (not the unemployment rate: it's an intentionally inaccurate misrepresentation of unemployment). The average salary has gone down. (Combine this with inflation for a double-whammy).

[TI] ARFeh zee Frenchie,

Care to dispute anything I said? Or just spam?

Stating your opinion isn't a point. You sought to show that atheists do not elevate law, but your example was not the sort of law anyone accused atheists of elevating. If you were being ironic, you were implying you agreed with The Yell that atheists do elevate law to the position of absolute authority in this world. Being ironic, pointing out that atheists do not support sharia would be a clever, humorous way of ducking the issue and pretending you didn't elevate man's laws to sacred authority, but asserting that you accept what The Yell said as true. (because your 'we don't support sharia!' comment was a reference to an obvious and undisputed fact which makes absolutely no case against his statement--which you responded to in no way at any point)

If you were being ironic, you were agreeing with The Yell's statement that "atheist societies make human laws sacred." If you did not intend to do so, you are very confused. In any event, your statement certainly didn't voice disagreement, let alone provide any point to that end.

" but my remark was still specifically targeted at religion not faith."

This thread is about faith. Religion is faith. You can equivocate all you want, but you're not disagreeing with a word I said in doing so.

"This kind of emotion is developed differently amongst people and mostly dependent on DNA. "

Have studies shown evidence of this? Do they discriminate between genetic material predisposed to result more broadly between emotionalism and "spirituality," as you claim here? From your following statements, it appears that you're just referencing the fact that some people are more emotional than others, and you're claiming that evidence has shown significant correlations between emotionalism and certain genes.

So, some people are more emotional than others. Do you have evidence that it is/can be genetic? Do you have evidence that these people are more likely to be religious? Now that'd be an interesting finding/point. If you had any evidence that it's true.

"Many libertarians are atheists. How does that fit in? I'm an atheist and take offense in being put in one large basket with communists. Its a generalization no more. Stats say what you want them to say."

I cited a statistic (I'm sorry I couldn't find better ones quickly at my leisure. I have seen them. I have read about them.). You have cited nothing. I'm confident that I could find more and better sources, had I any reason to. But you have no sources. You have absolutely no basis whatsoever for your claim. In fact, you're even going so far as to pretend that statistics aren't real math and mean nothing because you don't understand them. That's just bizarre.

It's not a generalization, it's a mathematical fact as measured scientifically. Good statistics say the truth about what's measured. I'd find actual statistics, except that you have none at all which dispute my claim and the reference on that page. You've already openly stated that you wouldn't accept even academic and peer-reviewed statistics anyway, so I'm not going to bother looking more. I've seen various surveys correlating religion/party affiliation, and all have shown the faithless leaning heavily toward big-government parties. I've recently seen an academic study correlating faithlessness and big-government ideology, finding a strong positive correlation.

Call it whatever you want; it's the truth, you just don't like it.

Edit: I have no faith in anything, by the way. The notion that I called all atheists communists is ridiculous. I'm not trying to defend any belief as rational or irrational or demonize anyone. But I have a mild interest in this stuff and have read about various surveys and one particular academic study which I found fascinating. If you can't do better than "well I don't like those numbers--in fact, I reject the meaning of all numbers!" you're not disputing anything I've said, just voicing discontent with it.

That's why the Estate tax exists. That's why the Federal Reserve exists. That's why our tax code is structured as it is.

They keep the working working as long as possible, as much as possible, and tax that work (and subsequent purchases with earnings) as much as possible. They tax the estates of the working (not the wealthy) so very high to keep them poor and working.

You're slaves. We're slaves. And everyone who votes Republican or Democrat is a willful one at that. The system is designed to keep you working--and working largely for government. The system is also designed to collapse, which will be used to justify expansion of government power farther beyond the Constitution than is already gotten away with. It will also be used as an excuse to explain why people have the lower standard of living which will inevitably follow their decreased freedoms.

They intend to crash our markets and economy by completely messing up our once freer markets, then blame the crash on free markets. They already did this with the "financial" crisis and the rhetoric continues to this day. You can watch exactly what I'm talking about because it's happening right now and will continue to. We know that the federal government was the source of the systematic failures which resulted in the crisis, but they all blame freedom and greed. And enough people are ignorant that it works and they gain more power through their crashing markets, harming the middle class, and dishonest rhetoric.

The "Fiscal Cliff" is just a bonus to our overlords. Large tax increases and spending "cuts" (largely military, which they don't care about) which have already been more than made up for (and will continue to be) with recent increases in spending. It's more of what they've been working at for decades sooner.

None of this should surprise anyone.

Well with that extensive explanation and argument, who could disagree? You're not even going to name any of the other reasons for faulty death pronouncements? "Not by far," you say, yet without a hint of an example or suggestion of what you might be referring to.

I didn't propose forcing anyone to donate organs. I just suggested that you have absolutely no factual basis for your aversion to organ donation. Your constant refusal to respond to anything I've said and attacks on straw-men just shows that you know this.

Gun control advocates don't care about facts.

Their overlords want a disarmed populace that cannot defend itself, from crime or government. Crime is used as a justification for a more invasive government--it's best to keep the public vulnerable to crime in order to expand government power. And, obviously, an armed populace is a serious impediment to tyrants. Every one in modern history has disarmed his population long before he made his true intentions clear.

The common man buys into the emotional argument that guns are just too dangerous. This is why the statistics don't matter. Guns are scary, and these wusses wouldn't dare contemplate defending themselves or their loved ones anyway, so why not support banning guns? They're screwed in the event of a crime anyway because they'd sooner watch family members be molested and murdered than dare confront somebody. They can at least take solace in the fact that, in a society with guns banned, criminals are more likely to use knives! What a wonderful comfort indeed.

Many non-Americans are completely ignoring the check-on-government function of the second amendment to the US Constitution. They've never had freedom and see no value in defending it. Again, the emotional argument wins. Obviously banning guns cause they're scary is more important than defending freedom--freedom's not worth anything anyway.

Granted, the US hasn't been free since 1913, but second amendment violations just make that worse, not better.

I never suggested requiring organ donations. Wow. Having trouble responding to what's been said much?

He's not a US citizen, is he? The Constitution defines the rights of citizens, not blow-hards from foreign nations whom we do not like. This is oft forgotten of late, along with the rest of our laws.

Einstein,

It's still a horribly flawed measure for the other reasons I pointed out. Nice job completely ignoring this. Understandable, because the flaws are so huge and obvious. What's not understandable is why you post this nonsense and stand behind it when you obviously know it's garbage, so much so you don't even try to defend it.

Little Paul,

"I said nothing about philosophy."

A lot of moral philosophy cannot be empirically or logically based, so it's a matter of faith. A lot of faith is moral philosophy. In the context I was speaking, you said a lot about philosophy.

Thanks for stating the obvious, that many "believers" don't really put much stock in their belief. So what? The point's been made. Without any statistics we cannot show how prevalent this phenomenon is (I don't disagree it's common). Rambling about DNA is similarly pointless. DNA doesn't make anyone cling to religion or science as if it obliterates all forms of faith and/or moral philosophy.

"It was ment ironic. As in: "this is an example of a religious law system..." "...the generalization isn't correct cause many atheists do not glorify a law system.""

Yet it was no example of atheists not raising law to the highest authority imaginable. You failed to comprehend or respond to his point that atheists raise law to the highest moral authority void of any moral philosophy or other code of conduct. How clever of you to point out that atheists reject Sharia, as just about every other sane person does. This, however, makes no point in regard to the argument that atheism inherently raises law to a higher authority than it is viewed by many of faith.

People of faith tend to temper law with limits based on their moral philosophy and the value they give freedom.

The more faithless (atheistic) someone is, the more likely they are to vote Democrat/Socialist/Communist. This is in line with the argument that atheists raise laws to a higher authority than those of faith; Democrats/Socialists/Communists all raise laws to a higher status and seek to empower government to regulate and run all things on earth, from providing jobs, determining wages, running/providing healthcare, regulating what you eat and otherwise put in your body, etc.

These are not the sort of things lovers of freedom endorse, and these are things atheists disproportionately support. It's evidence to The Yell's argument that atheists make human laws sacred. Statistically, they are more likely than average to do so. Random Sharia references which miss the point do not change this, or even address it.