Churches should pay for the services they use. No more, no less.

You miss the whole point.
Just leave us godless folks alone and get raptured up when the time comes.

Go pray in a closet so only your big guy in the sky can see. The rest of us have no desire to see your prideful piety.

You miss the whole point.
Just leave us godless folks alone and get raptured up when the time comes.

Go pray in a closet so only your big guy in the sky can see. The rest of us have no desire to see your prideful piety.

Mikey,
this is hilarious. Good to see you have not changed one bit in a year.

Extremely funny how a person who does not believe in God, is quick to BLAME Him for everything that is wrong with the world. Sounds like you are always willing to look for a scape-goat (which BTW, is religious in nature).

Mikey, when you start thanking God for the ability to wake in a free country and take another breath... THEN you can 'blame' Him when bad things happen.

On the other hand, you would make a great 'christian', you've already got experience in blaming others rather than admitting your own faults!

If you godless folks believe life is just fine, then why do you spend so much time trying to rid the rest of the world of religion?

"If only we were the majority...."

then what? You would outlaw religion altogether after you had re-written the Constitution?

you 'godless' folks are no different than those you are fighting against.

Take the bible away and it's like their batteries go dead.

Good day to you.

Can't tell.

Where are the deaths of entire cultures caused by baby jesus missionaries and explorers over the centuries?

I suspect that the documentation of these past centuries is like the biblical documentation - much faith in the numbers.

But, it does not make your religious cause look too divinely inspired if you just want to show that religious wars have less dead heads on their ledgers than non-religious wars.

Once again, I rather focus on the here and now and it is obvious to me that in the 21st Century young American soldiers are dying in a relgious conflict between W's god and Osama's.

Both of these cowards should just go see their respective makers soon and save others from dying.

Iraq has more to do with a conflict of religious cultures than 9/11.

And what religion or persuasion does the government of Communist China represent? Atheism.

And what you've just described in China is one group of religionists killing another group. This has been the history of religious persecution for years. The Puritans fled England to avoid religious persecution only to enact their own version of it here.

I ask again, who has actually been killed in the name of atheism? When you respond try to avoid the knee jerk responses.

There's one name. But it's common knowledge that those who worship outside the state-controlled church in Red China are subject to persecution including a death sentence. Same thing happened routinely in the Soviet Union. All because the insisted on worshipping God, not being atheist.

Haywood, are you really as ignorant of world events as you sound?

Yes I have. Atheistic totalitarian regimes murdered 169,000,000 people during the 20th century. Religous conflicts, including some in the total that were not entirely religous such as the conquests of the Ottoman Turks, accounted for 12,000,000 across all of recorded history. If you want to say the atheistic regimes committed their atrocities because their victims were religous, you're assigning religous motives to atheists, essentially calling atheism a religion ... something I don't think you'll want to do.

" If you want to compare numbers then compare how many people have been killed in the name of religion versus how many of been killed in the name of atheism."

See the note above.

Your bible babble ain't even the start of a grade school discussion.

Go get some evidence that adults with reason can discuss.

I am not quibbling about your statistics but how you are interpreting them.

You have not shown that murders for relgious motives are less than those from non-religious motives.

We can only stop the deaths happening now and we are not doing that because of a clash between religious beliefs.

Osama has his god and W has his.

I prefer that they both see their maker soon so that others don't die.

Mike, I just read your bio. You're an analyst for a large insurance company. When analyzing the safety of a particular vehicle or the risk involved with a particular hobby, do you want only the data from the last week? Or from as much history as is available? By your "logic" (and I know you're smarter than you're acting) walking on the beach is hundreds of times more deadly than fighting in the Middle East, skydiving, driving drunk, or even playing Russian Roulette.

Then you blame emperor-worship for Mao's murders. The bulk of Mao's murders were after he was in power, not while he was fighting Generalissimo Chaing Kai Chek. And it was the Generalissimo, not the emperor whom he overthrew!

You asked for statistics. You got them. But don't let facts get in the way of your secularist jihad.

Looking at these estimates I am not sure how you distinguish religious from the non-religious.

For example, China fatalities are number one on the fatality hit parade.

Were they caused by religious motives or not?

The emperor is considered god or godlike as you may know.

Mao could not compete with the fatalities of china past.

And, Mao had hospitals for his country and universal healthcare as best as he could do it.

We have had Americans with no healthcare who are dead because of a lack of it.

But, you are avoiding my main point - the killing of people now due to relgious motives.

Being practical, I am more concerned with the present than the past.

Let me know when one of the 44,000 dead people apparently killed by the Tsunami-maker (or are you somehow blaming the devil?) return with their "beginning" story.

Or, do I have to wait for the rapture?

All this sounds very similar to the 40 virgin promise.

Do faith folks have a choice of 40 virgins or just heavenly bliss? Both?

Tell me more...

Most in this second box are not religion-driven. Certainly the top 5 are not. At most, 12,000,000 murders listed here are attributable to religion. That's 12,000,000 too many, but the mostly atheistic totalitarian regimes of the 20th Century have this figure beaten by more than 10 times.

Some of those who claim to follow a deity have done some evil things. But those who reject God completely have done so much more evil!

But think of this. Who does a lot good in the world? Who has helped more people? The American Red Cross? Or the Freedom from Religion Foundation? When did you last visit someone in Chairman Mao hospital? Or see a charitable work started by atheists? Aren't half the hospitals around St. somebody or Baptist this or Lutheran that? Who does the red kettle drive? The ACLU? Or the Salvation Army? And yes, "salvation" in "Salvation Army" was for eternal salvation. The founder was a devout Christian.

You cannot judge a movement or a belief by the abberations within it. You can judge it by the overwhelming majority of its adherents.

Death in this world is the ultimate tragedy for those of you for whom it is the end, rather than the beginning.

You, Stalin, and Mao should get along well.

More people were murdered by atheist regimes in the last century alone than by all religous wars of all religions throughout all recorded history.

I thought you christian folk are trying to make North Koreans Tsunami-maker worshippers.

Not true?

Don't kid yourself or anyone else that you don't have a blind faith. You are one of the most fundametalist people on this board, pretty much in line with the fundamentalism practiced in North Korea.

You'd fit in just fine there.