> Khaz Modan wrote:

> A constitution based upon the moral guidance of those who believed in said Boogeyman.

what's your point? I have been known to watch porn, but that doesn't mean I treat women as sluts by definition

If you look at e.g. the ten commandments you will find that not even half are relevant for issues our modern legal systems are concerned about (namely murder, theft, perjury and to some extent honoring your mother and father). And just because some dudes said that their god(s) frown upon e.g. killing people that doesn't mean everyone who says it is doing so because of moral guidance from the teachings of the boogeyman.

"I think you would be hard pressed to find an intelligent theist who would argue that you need to be religious to know murder is wrong, that is not really the point, otherwise in the eyes of God that believer would merely be a bad person too cowardly to act for fear of punishment."

That reasoning is actually precisely the underlying connotation between religion and morality many people make, that people who don't believe in a divine basis for e.g. the right to live and in a corresponding divine punishment ultimately have no incentive to be good people.

also obviously there are many good scientists who are/have been religious throughout the ages. It is only problematic when religion gets in the way of proper scientific method, like e.g. religious figures espousing that to claim the earth revolves around the sun is contrary to their religion and a sin. I also do fear that e.g. Einstein was a bit unproperly biased in some respects, such as his saying that "god does not play dice". This was an intuition which was rightly countered by "Einstein, stop telling god what to do". Fortunatly he was not a fundamentalist thinker and was willing to recant positions which he felt were properly disproven.

Also Stephen Hawking's position is not relevant. Obviously the existence of a divine being can be neither proven nor disproven. It would be unscientific to claim that god doesn't exist. We can only say for sure that we haven't seen any conclusive evidence of him existing. What we do know is that many claims of religions are either false or inconclusive when you apply scientific methods to them.

> Chris_Balsz wrote:

> Reason tells me I can rob Noir of everything if I put the resources of a govt into getting away with it

Sense tells me thats a dandy reason to run a govt

reason is always a construct of the human mind, you really don't need a supreme being to tell you that you can't go around looting and raping everyone

in a civilised society a constitution is much more valuable than stories about the boogeyman

I would have no problem voting for an atheist even though I'm a lifetime member of a conservative christian party

the claim that only religion has something meaningful to say about morals and that only religious people can be moral people is one of the greatest hoaxes perpetrated on man...

jukalee 2 minutes ago Report Abuse
"I don't know why human being like Hasselbeck and others should support gay marriage and abortion. Please permit me to ask these questions, if Hasselbeck had been aborted during conception would she had being alive today? If gay marriage had been instituted before she was given birth to, and her mother got married to another woman and the father got married to another man, how would she had come into this world?"

> Chris_Balsz wrote:

> >>Canada and America have far more in common with each other then England and France. Canada and Mexico believe it or not have more in common then Ukraine and Spain.<<

oh I dunno, all four would like the US to go to the dark side of the moon and pop the helmet

not to mention quit hogging all the easy women and hard drugs...

> Douglas Reynholm wrote:

> No, I use the academical historic definition of theocracy

"If you look at e.g. Saudi Arabia you will see that they use sharia as a legal code and the qur'an is part of their constitution. That makes them pretty theocratic in my book."

A lot of Western consitutions based themselves on the Bible, does that make us theocratic? Anyhoo, it's irrelevant to my point: Islam in itself leaves little room for a religious class.

Oh there's a big difference between constitutions being drafted by somewhat religiously inspired people and making the actual text part of your constitution.

"And little room for a religious class? come on, in sunni islam there is no international monolithic top down structure with one guy at the top but there is most definatly a religious class everywhere you look in islam."

An Imam in the strict sens only leads the prayers and is according to tradition not a fulltime religious person. I believe (I should check that though) that Imams are according to tradition chosen by the people too..

So, to conclude: Islam itself does leave very little room for a religious class.

the entirety of shi'a islam would beg to differ ; not to mention the countless religious figures whether they are named imam, ulama, mufti, mullah, faqih,... that effect their influence on the community in sunni islam, just because you don't have a single leader doesn't mean you can't have a class. What you seem to be doing is substituting "formal priesthood" with class, and this is not just semantics.

yeah by all means help them, but honestly there's been USAID logo's stamped on everything throughout the years and then dropped in crappy places with horrible problems and it didn't really do much, people seem to consider it's normal for the US to do this and the only emotion involved is getting pissed that it's not enough/too late and whatnot

> Douglas Reynholm wrote:

> "I have bought some land next to the largest Mosque in a major Islamic city, can I now build a Church to Christ, of the Christian following there, with a name which symbolizes a major Christian victory over Islam?"

There's no name that implies a Islamic victory over Christianity. If you honestly think that Cordoba stands for that, it merely shows you know next to nothing about the whole Cordoban Kaliphate.

it's a trick question, the name would be irrelevant since AFAIK there would be no possibility to erect a new church in islamic countries, at best they allow you to keep existing churches around but even so called westernized islamic nations like Turkey that allow this in theory have in practice erected administrative barriers that make it impossible in reality (such as requiring administrative permits that are in practice never granted)

also I think you will find that most muslims, while abiding the laws of the land they are in, would in fact support the implementation of sharia (not necessarily in the most harshest of its interpretations, but definatly some version of it), they just don't have the critical mass to do it because for now they still live in mostly non muslim societies; it's kinda hard not to support "shariasation" of the legal system as a muslim since in an islamic society there is no real distinction between church and state, whereas in christianity the bible says "render unto caesar what is ceasar's and unto god what is god's", the stated goal of islam is always to create a theocracy and this is what historically has always happened whenever they got critical mass in a society, although turkey did a reasonable job at reintroducing a secular facade

real men spell it jenever X(

> V.Kemp wrote:

Building damaged by landing gear = too close. 2 miles away = who cares. How close is the closest mosque anyway? I wouldn't be surprised if it was 2 miles away or closer.

this map correlates islamic religious facilities (used for prayer, but not necessarily official mosques) in manhattan (not all of NYC) to ground zero:

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&source=embed&oe=UTF8&msa=0&msid=106520383149777542574.00048d68139eb6072d4c2

"You have been banned for the following reason:
Point Accumulation"

I can't even see what finally tipped them over the edge, this is not due process I should get the right to find out what part of my obnoxiousness is too obnoxiouss