Fionn the Mutt

I'm wondering if anyone can help me find the earliest copy of Jewish Antiquities known to us in the here and now.

Before you answer, consider whether you believe atheism to be. Is it

a, A lack of Creator God/gods in the Universe

b, Scientific evidence of anything being the only kind of evidence that can be used to verify anything

c, A total lack of any supernatural entities/occurrences.

A Brief summary if you can would be AWESOME!

With the debate regarding "Intelligent Design" going on, it seems a little odd that in order for ID to be accepted as science, it must get rid of any reference whatsoever to an actual deity.

Although this can theoretically be done, my question revolves around the fact that it is the Christians that are pushing ID to sidestep the religion versus science battle. By denying that the reason for them pushing ID is to garner recognition of their particular deity creating the universe, aren't they lying?

It is common knowledge that ID is just creationism repackaged, as proven by Barbera Forrest, when she compared two manuscripts of the textbook Pandas and People and found sloppy rewriting that pointed directly to ID being creationism.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/programs/ht/qt/3416_1...

While I am a Wiccan, I am rather skeptical of a lot of claims made by a lot of people and am always fascinated by the way that many debunkers go about their work. The one thing that bothers me are people like James Randi. There are many cases where Randi has lied to his teeth about events, as well as misquoting many people and misrepresenting himself and counless others. My question is this:

Knowing that James Randi is as big a liar and a fraud as the people that he debunks, who else can you recommend? Are Penn and Teller any good?

For who really knows how long, Christians the world over have been rallying to put the Christ back into Christmas. The thing is, nobody is trying to remove Christ.

There are non-Christians that celebrate Christmas, not as a religious holiday, but as a recognition of the importance of family and community goodwill. Some of them were never Christians, so the holiday will never have religious importance. Some left Christianity, but aren't trying to take anything out of Christmas, as it was given up, not lost.

In regard to the commercialisation of Christmas, that's what happens when you use sales techniques and "keeping up with the Joneses" logic to try and sell your faith. People lose their heads trying to behave like good Christians and end up losing sight of what being Christian is really about.

Yet, despite the fact that nobody is demanding that Christ be taken out of Christmas, Christians are demanding that he be put back in. I, for one, am sick of it. Here is my idea for a counterstrike:

Since they want to put in something that never left, I want to insert a character that was never there but is kind of awesome anyway.

Professor Xavier, founder of the X-Men. He has rallied for many years for equality between all peoples with a passion rarely seen outside of religious texts. As a icon for human rights, he is an excellent example, his cause is pure and best of all, nobody cares if you say that he's not real, because he sodding well isn't!

So who's with me?

'I was already Bishop of Hippo, when I went into Ethiopia with some servants of Christ there to preach the Gospel. In this country we saw many men and women without heads, who had two great eyes in their breasts; and in countries still more southly, we saw people who had but one eye in their foreheads.'

St Augustine

(Sermon 37; quoted in Taylor, Syntagma, 52; Diegesis, 271; Doane, Bible Myths, 437.)

Bear in mind that if your answer is "no" then you are effectively accusing St Augustine of being a liar, as NOBODY would make a mistake about headless people, or being mentally ill, which would also make his writings suspect...