What is Digg?179 Comments
- Buddhist, on 10/12/2007, -9/+96Or we'll just end up fighting over the name of our atheist group.
"ALLIED ATHEIST ALLIANCE"
"No, United Atheist Alliance"
"NO, UNIFIED ATHEIST LEAGUE" - baxtermaddux, on 10/12/2007, -14/+83....hopefully it will also end intolerance, bigotry, hate, poverty, and maybe help us get a better understanding of each other and care about the world we are destroying and animals we are driving to extinction. yes the internet can do all that and still deliver porn, which is what it was originally created for
- rationalist, on 10/12/2007, -0/+24@rooster:
"for most of his professional life, Einstein was considered a genius. However, in later years, when he said that there was indeed god, and that existence of said god could be proven, he was shunned out of the scientific community and called crazy?"
Both your assertions are simply, factually untrue. Unlike a debate about the nature of a god, there are historical records here that disprove your claims.
First of all, Einstein published his initial significant papers in 1905, but they were not recognized as significant at the time, and he continued to toil in obscurity in the Swiss Patent Office, and then as an assistant and then associate professor in Zurich, eventually becoming a full professor in Berlin. He did not publish his theory of general relativity until a decade later, and his papers were not available outside Germany for several years because of WWI.
In fact, it wasn't until 1919 that he achieved some measure of public fame, at a time his theories were still quite controversial among the scientific community. Initial attempts to empirically verify his field equation, which replaced Newton's theory of gravity, by observing "gravitational lensing", the curvature of light around massive objects such as the Sun, failed, and it wasn't until 1919 that Arthur Eddington's measurements of stars visible during eclipses confirmed Einstein's predictions and demonstrated the curvature of space-time. Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1921, when he was already in his 40's - but not for general relativity, which was still quite controversial among scientists, but for one of those early papers he had written back at the Patent Office more than 15 years earlier.
Later in his life, Einstein refused to accept the explanatory merits of quantum mechanics - a battle in which he has been proven in error. But he was certainly not shunned by the scientific community - on the contrary, he received more honors, awards and official recognition in the last ten years of his life than in his entire career prior to that.
Second, Einstein most definitely did *not* state that "there was indeed god, and that existence of said god could be proven".
In fact, Einstein was quite irritated at persistent and willful misrepresentation by religionists of his views.
Less than a year before his death, in 1954, he wrote:
"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it." ("Albert Einstein: The Human Side", edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman, Princeton University Press)
In fact, in his own Autobiographical Notes, Which Einstein wrote at age 67, nine years before his death, he stated that his only flirtation with religion ended at age twelve:
"I came - though the child of entirely irreligious (Jewish) parents - to a deep religiousness, which, however, reached an abrupt end at the age of twelve."
Further sourced quotes from Einstein:
"The idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I am unable to take seriously." (Letter to Hoffman and Dukas, 1946)
"I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it." (Albert Einstein, The Human Side)
"A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death." ("Religion and Science", New York Times Magazine, 9 November 1930)
In 1936, he responded to a child who wrote him and asked if scientists pray:
"Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of nature, and therefore this holds for the action of people. For this reason, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, i.e. by a wish addressed to a Supernatural Being."
In fact, in Einstein's obituary in the New York Times on April 19, 1955, his unambiguous opinion on the subject is quoted thusly:
"I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms."
From 1934 until his death, Einstein was an Honorary Associate of the Rationalist Press Association, an atheist organization. He also served on the advisory board of the First Humanist Society of New York.
Of course, Einstein was just a man, and his belief or disbelief in a god would not weigh either way in terms of the reality of a god - as a scientist, Einstein would be the first to explain to you that reality is not subject to popularity contests nor arguments from authority; reality merely is, and is subject to our observation, analysis and logical conclusion - it depends neither upon individual nor majority belief.
You, rooster, are now faced with the irrefutable fact that your sources are false; given that what I posted above is a matter of public record, it is reasonable to conclude that your sources are not just innocently mistaken, but rather deliberately lying.
Now, you must ask yourself if a religious ethical system that justifies lies and deception and the rewriting of history in order to promote itself is truly ethical at all; and to contemplate whether your religion itself, if it so easily hijacked by liars and charlatans, is as useful as simple reason, based on actual evidence, contructed based on common sense logic, which works for everyone independent of their beliefs.
In short, your religion seems to need lies to support itself. Science requires no such subterfuge. Think on that - and think, finally, about why you so eagerly and unquestioningly swallow patent lies; think about a belief system that trains you not to question, not to independently research, and to discard inconvenient truths. Ask yourself if humankind is better off being conditioned not to think, or whether we'd be better off free from the shackles and deceptions of religion.
And, next time, do your own homework before you come here spouting lies and expect to get away with it. - Kahnza, on 10/12/2007, -1/+22Sorry, but the internet has already changed the world. A lot.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -13/+31@ Cooperjones
Okay Cooperjones lets take a little quiz
WHO IS THIS GOD?
-was born on December 25th.
-was considered a great traveling teacher and master.
-had 12 companions or disciples.
-performed miracles.
-was buried in a tomb.
-after three days he rose again.
-his resurrection was celebrated every year.
-was called "the Good Shepherd."
-was considered "the Way, the Truth and the Light, the Redeemer, the Savior, the Messiah."
-was identified with both the Lion and the Lamb.
-his sacred day was Sunday, "the Lord's Day,".
-he had his principal festival on what was later to become Easter, at which time he was resurrected.
-his religion had a Eucharist or "Lord's Supper."
If you guessed Jesus Christ, well, YOU'D BE WRONG!! HE WAS... MITHRA, a Roman-Persian God who existed hundreds of years before Christ.
Ignore it all you want but Mithra loved you and died for your "sins" before Jesus did.
("He who will not eat of my body and drink of my blood, so that he will be made on with me and I with him, the same shall not know salvation." This inscription to Mithras, which parallels John 6:53-54, is inside the Vatican in the tomb of Saint Peter.)
http://www.vetssweatshop.net/dogma.htm - jellyroll713, on 10/12/2007, -6/+23Honestly, I used to be an evangelical Christian, and though I'm not too sure anymore of the existence of the God of the bible, I can't bring myself to believe that man is basically good inside. I know what my instincts are, and they are not good.
- JamesWilson, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13Wikipedia keeps it in balance.
- avasol, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13@Cooperjones
Actually, you got it right.
"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, *no matter if I have said it*, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense." - Buddha - asauterChicago, on 10/12/2007, -3/+15@jellyroll713
I'm sorry, I usually stay out of this debate, but I get so ***** sick of the argument that without religion we would be barbarians. Just because deep down inside you want to kill, cheat, steal and you don't because your afraid of God, doesn't mean the rest of us want to kill, cheat, steal, etc. Most of us just don't do those things because it's wrong and it hurts other people, I don't need a book and a mythical parent figure in the sky to tell me to treat people right. - Kahnza, on 10/12/2007, -11/+22I think the world would be a better place without religion. We as humans should focus more on the sciences. Believing in something that you can't prove does or does not exist is ridiculous. Provable facts will prevail over giant imaginary friends eventually. At least I hope so.
- avasol, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it. - Buddha
- blaze03, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12Science H. Logic!
- Mudbeast, on 10/12/2007, -5/+15@cooperjones
What?! What "eye witness" accounts?! The gospels were written decades after the actual events! There are let's see here NO Roman records of Jesus. Circumstantial huh? Where? There's no outside evidence for any of the ***** in the Bible. Jehovah doesn't exist and never did and neither does his kid or his ghost. Jesus may have been a real person but he was not a supernatural being. If people applied their MINDS to what's really happening in reality instead of blindy trusting a bunch of old desert myths we'd all be better off. The topic is interesting but this thread is full of people who can't be responsible for themselves whining about how Jesus needs to be real because they just can't take responsibility for their own existence. - Peebert, on 10/12/2007, -5/+142007 is going to be the year of the atheists. Wait and see.
- Xageroth, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8"There is nothing inherent in the internet that makes what it communicates better or right."
I think the point is more that it'll be easier to hear criticism of your beliefs. Devout followers have a tendency to shelter themselves away from criticism. It'll be a little harder to do that and have, say, a digg account. - NanoStuff, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Be sure to see the entire index:
http://edge.org/q2007/q07_index.html
A lot of interesting insight from a lot of big names. - lcohiomatty86, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10@jellyroll.... in the useual day to day the instincts might not be very good, but deep down inside they are.. look at what happened on 9/11... or the blackouts in NYC, people coming together for the common good, firefighters sacrificing their lives to save others. Can you say theres no good human nature in that?
- Cooperjones, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8So, I shouldn't take Buddha''s word for it, either.
- Cooperjones, on 10/12/2007, -31/+38@ Xageroth
You are right. "Religion" does teach us to hate ourselves etc. However, Jesus did not teach condemnation or self hate -- He taught us that the greatest thing is love. And then He gave us a way to go about loving others more than ourselves -- by following Him. And unlike the very dead Buddha, Confucious, Marx, Lenin, etc., Jesus proved He had the power to show us how to love by dying in our place on the cross and resurrecting from the dead.
(Funny how an intellectual Christian gets dugg down here, BTW. Wonder what they'd have done to Tolkien or C.S. Lewis on Digg?)
Again, knowledge does not best wisdom. And there is no known cure for sinful human nature outside of the Cross. All outward signs of religion -- wearing burkas, nun's habits, priestly vestments, escaping to ashrams, convents, monasteries, Tibetan temples, Communist enclaves, intellectual seats of knowledge, UN power conferences -- none of that is a cure for our sinful hearts. And of course, Mohammed's answer of cutting off people's heads does not cleanse their hearts of selfishness or sin.
The circulation of knowledge on the Internet will not cure the world's evils. Knowing lotsa facts does not affect my own personal selfishness. But knowing I am loved by a Creator God who loves me despite my grossness actually makes the difference. "Jesus loves me" is old-school, but classic. And true. - panicofficer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8The god of Americans is comfort. Of course, Americans are not the only country that is true for. Everyone is too busy worshipping their Lazy-Boy, Plasma HD-TV, and Tivo to give a care to anything else.
- blackjack75, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6@panicofficer
In case you hadn't noticed the lack of religion isn't exactly the reason why china is so bad for human rights. - RazielX, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7@Cooperjones
You don't have to follow the cross to be a good person. Take for example, Gandhi.
You offer no support that following the cross makes you a good person. You're just coming off as preachy. - mashw, on 10/12/2007, -4/+10The words atheist and intelligent are not always synonymous, religion has it's faults but if we seek tolerance in the world then we shouldn't be trying to marginalise people for believing something different to ourselves. A lot of atheists I feel do not see the hypocrisy in their staunch and vocal damning of religion.
(Agnostic) - sbrickner, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Sure - but remember that the single most accurate indicator of someone's religion is... their parents' religion. Relatively few people pick a religion as a result of a careful examination of its merits, they simply don't know any better. More information makes it more likely people will see that the religion they grew up with has no special claims on "truth" - information rarely benefits religion.
- zeiben, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Right, cause there's no way to use the internet to spread doctrine and zealotry. It's foolproof.
- andrewlinn, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6.. blah blah .. end of religion ... blah blah ... future blah, people have predicting that for ages. Look guys; its not going to happen.
- yukevster, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6How could that statement not strike the heart of any, even semi-intelligent, person. He is talking about truth. Find the truth for you - and take up no beliefs.
And, "Do not seek great enlightenment. Simply cease to cherish opinions."
All very hard to do, but the only way if you're serious about reality and truth. - lhnz, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6lol.
*Falls off chair*
Do you have any idea how much these sort of people earn?!
They have a much larger earning potential than your redneck father. And are far from being "losers".
The internet has changed a lot already.
Only a moron would disagree with that. Go on? - TarryTops, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5For human race to survive, humans need to be physically distanced from each other. And internet has just provided that!
- NanoStuff, on 10/12/2007, -4/+9"Sorry, little kids, the Internet will not change the world."
I just dugg you down, which presumably will make you cry. In some small way, me triggering tears over a very long wire is good indication that the internet does indeed have impact on the world. - Cooperjones, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7@Barnolde
Man-made rules and religiosity is wrong, but Jesus equals Love.
That is the equation. - rationalist, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I guess there is no hope to end slavery or agree that the Earth ain't flat, then.
- CiXeL, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6im christian and i believe you may be right but only as a backlash against bush's spectacular failure and wide public profile as a christian. ill have you know that not all christians are as blood thirsty.
all i want to see is the world at peace. war creates more war. its like a feud where if i kill your relative you come back to kill one of mine and it feeds on itself like a chain reaction. someone has to be the bigger man and stop.
what i fear is that this is just one more sign in our society of the decadence and that we wont be able to turn it around before collapse.
we're rushing very quickly towards a financial cliff. i hope and pray the american public learns humility and the value of human life again in the collapse. - simpleblob, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5@baxtermaddux
Actually, we cannot possibly end poverty because it is such a relative term.
people with income lower than 15% of the population are generally considered "poor" even if they lived better than rich people from 500 years ago.
There are always some people who end up on the smaller side of the pie. - JFitzpatrick, on 10/12/2007, -5/+9While I do believe that the increased information does lead to a decrease in religious zealotry... I don't believe that mere information will be the catalyst.
The increased spread of Capitalism will be the ultimate downfall of religious fanaticism. We can certainly argue that here in the US we have our share of religious fundamentalists... but unlike in most other hot bed areas of fanaticism in the world our home grown zealots are relatively passive and non violent. Why? Because we live an astoundingly posh and cushy existance in the United States due to the superiority of Capitalism over other economic/social structures. Once the middle east has a solid economic structure in place where the average person can generate wealth in a capitalist system allowing them to link work and idea generation to the creation of wealth and comfort for their families they'll have little to be zealots over. Who wants to get blown up when there is a world of creature comforts at your finger tips?
I've been reading Digg long enough now to know a bunch of college age anti-capitalist whiners will start grinding their milk teeth and arguing with me :) So unleash the Che-T-Shirt wearing hordes of anti-neo-cons and their dated manifestos! Woo! - rationalist, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4@widman:
"IMHO Atheism is as dogmatic as religion. How can you be sure there's no superior "thing" beyond your limited human knowledge. The moment that is proved I'll become atheist, meanwhile I'm agnostic."
I take it then that you are agnostic about the existence of leprechauns, invisible pink unicorns, and the farting meatball of doom that whispers in my ear that there is nothing more sinful than agnosticism. I take it you are also agnostic about phrenology and astrology - after all, it can never be proven that it *never* works. And the tooth fairy - can you prove its non-existence?
"BTW: I deny the existence of the Holy Spirit, what a ***** ridiculous con."
Oops - you just contradicted yourself. How "dogmatic" of you to deny something for which there is no proof of its nonexistence :-) - jsd8cc, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6@FoxifiedNutjob
http://tektonics.org/copycat/mithra.html - lhnz, on 10/12/2007, -6/+10I agree.
Far too many atheists think themselves intelligent for attacking religon.
It's a ridiculous waste of time and is not beneficial to anybody (other than their own ego). - rationalist, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4@panicofficer:
"China is officially an atheistic country... is China a model of decency and human compassion?"
Saudi Arabia is officially a religious country... is Saudi Arabia a model of decency and human compassion?
Ethiopia is officially a religious country.. is Ethiopia a model of decency and human compassion?
Your logic is flawed. Correlation does not equal causation.
A valid and fair comparison would be between free nations of the world - and a comparison on a variety of quality of life measures of 35 free nations found an inverse relationship between the level of religiosity and the quality of life - whether the measure is crime, child and spousal abuse, suicide, divorce, life-expectancy, quality of health-care, care for the indigent, etc. The more religious a free nation, the lower it scored. The US ranked very low on QoL measures and had the highest level of religiosity.
http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.html
You should be more careful before thoughtlessly parroting talking points you cut and paste from propaganda sites. - rlh1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"""The Quran and religion of Islam shall be the final victor."""
A religion that thinks it's a sin to see a woman in a bikini...that you can't enjoy a beer and a brautwurst. .no thanks, - rationalist, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"New wave Atheism is no different from old wave Christianity. "
Please explain how "I don't believe in things for which there is no evidence" is no different than "I believe whatever my priest/pastor/minister/guy in fancy garb tells me, even if I have seen evidence to the contrary - even including all the fantastical stories in the Bible".
Please also explain how the latter stance is not dangerous to democracy, while the former is not helpful to it.
In fact, I would love you to present some single way in which the two are not diametrically opposed. - nonchai, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"Religion will always be with us because people have a need for it. People have talked about the death of it forever and it will never happen. What we need to hope for is an end to religious fundamentalism. That is the only thing hurting the world right now."
It is not enough. The religious liberals and moderates are by their "inaction" effectively supporting the fundamentalist position. They are the equivalent of the
"neville chamberlains" of religion. They fail to understand that by supporting irrationality - albeit in their supposedly intellectualised and "rationalised down " version of their faith - that they are both despised by the fundamentalists for being doctrinally weak ( even heretical ) and at the same time giving those same fundamentalists intellectual "traction".
It is said that for "evil to be done, all that is necessary is for good people to do nothing". If fundamentalists are the "evil" of religion - then the moderates and liberals are the "good people". - rationalist, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4cmiz, you are simply redefining atheism in a way that suits your negative spin. In fact, the atheist position is that, absent any evidence of the existence of a god or a leprechaun or an invisible pink unicorn or astrological influence, it is unreasonable to assert said existence.
What you ignore is that atheism does not hold god-belief in any special, privileged position vs all other unsubstantiated extraordinary claims; nor does atheism hold the particular god you believe in to be any more or less substantial than all the gods you disbelieve in.
Atheism is not an arbitrary choice between two equally likely outcomes; atheism is the default reasonable position - given a lack of *any* evidence, it is reasonable not to believe in an extraordinary claim that violates known physicals laws. Whether that claim happens to be in a "god" or a "farting meatball of doom" is irrelevant.
As for gojeda, the continued dishonesty of dismissing the scientific method as a basic for understanding the world, on the one hand, and (incorrectlyl) invoking the scientific method to "disprove" the logic of atheism makes you an unworthy intellectual opponent. Your repeated assertions about what science can and cannot do and how it does and does not work are not only ignorant, they are hypocritical.
It would indeed be hypocritical for an atheist to say, "there is no God merely because I believe it is so"; just as it is hypocritical for you to claim that your belief in God is not utterly groundless and irrational.
The truth is that you fear engaging in honest intellectual debate about matters of faith, because you know deep down inside that faith cannot withstand rational scrutiny. So, rather than examine faith, you seek to deflect attention by making spurious, disingenuous attacks on "science". - nonchai, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Sadly - even as an atheist and someone enthusiastic about science I think they are wrong.
Alvin Toffler predicted in "Future Shock" in the 70s that as soon as the masses have a medium where they can choose from an huge number of information "channels", Tv or otherwise - that people will start limiting their viewing to those channels that support their viewpoints and world views. This is indeed what has happened. Before the days of cable TV and internet, here in the UK and rest of the western world, everyone sat down to watch the same 2 or 3 channels, and in the case of the UK this meant everyone tended to get a good sense of all sides of any argument and we could be at least relatively informed.
Now we have right wing chanels left wing channels, web sites supporting every possible point of view. People have buried themselves in their own idealogical trenches, even though all the information supposedly necessary to form a truly informed opinion is "out there".
Ask yourselves, if people can even in the internet age happily believe that the world is only 6000 years old what hope do we have?.
Sadly - i think those 150 are wrong, even if i side with them in their world view. - carljwinslow, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3That's one problem with the words "Atheist" and "Agnostic." It just leads to semantic squabbling. The fact is, the Atheist is not religious and the Agnostic is not religious. Neither supposition requires a dogma--it requires skepticism. The Atheist simply requires a little more proof than the Agnostic, but that should not cause such a distinction. The term Atheist is redundant and suggests that there is something it can be in opposition to when there is actually nothing (at least, nothing even semi-satisfactorily proven.)
- SWCarson, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Paul Johnson in Modern Times, his history of the 20th century:
"The outstanding event of modern times was the failure of religious belief to disappear. For many millions, especially in the advanced nations, religion ceased to play much or any part in their lives, and the ways in which the vacuum thus lost was filled, by fascism, Nazism, Communism, by attempts at humanist utopianism, by eugenics or health politics, by the ideologies of sexual liberation, race politics and environmental politics, forms much of the substance of the history of the century. But for many more millions - for the overwhelming majority of the human race, in fact - religion continued to be a huge dimension in their lives... What looked antiquated, even risible, in the 1990s was not religious belief but the confident prediction of its demise once provided by Feuerbach and Marx, Durkheim and Frazer, Lenin, Wells, Shaw, Gide, Sartre and many others... The secularist movement, that is militant atheism, appears to have peaked in the West in the 1880s... Throughout the world, while spiritual bewilderment, neatly classified as ‘agnosticism’, was widespread, it is likely that there were fewer real atheists in 1990 than in 1890." - rationalist, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@gojeda:
I fail to see the difference in believing a guy in a lab coat saying he can turn iron into gold and watching some tele-evangelist "healing" someone with their pinky.
Um, both of those would be examples of ""I believe whatever my priest/pastor/minister/guy in fancy garb tells me, even if I have seen evidence to the contrary"
Neither has anything to do with science. You are deeply confused if you think putting on a lab coat makes someone a scientist - just as you are deeply confused if you think putting on a priest's garb makes them holy.
"There is no more powerful democratic sentiment ever expressed by men than can be found in statements like: "love thy neighbor", "thou shalt not kill", "thou shall not steal", and "thou shalt not covet".""
Oh, I can think of a few: "all people are inherently equal", "slavery is wrong", "everyone has the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" - none of which hare found in your bible. All of the sentiments you express are compatible with authoritarianism - in fact, telling people not to "covet" is attempted mind-control worthy of the greatest of dictatorships.
Try again. - blackjack75, on 10/12/2007, -5/+8@John
Sigh...
@Kahnza
I'm all for getting rid of religion. But just make sure we don't get rid of religion before we can replace it with a good education. Millions of people with no education and no religion to set their limits is just asking for trouble. I think of religion as the cheapest form of education. It's a first step to learn the basics of living with other humans, before you get to learn the real thing. - rationalist, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3digging a comment down is not "burying" it, it is a way of voting or rating a comment. In some communities, the culture is that comments should be rated only on their objective quality, not their content; in other communities, the culture is that rating is itself a short-hand comment on content.
Digg has a "thumbs-up/thumbs-down" metaphor for rating comments. That suggests, to me at least, that the intent is to express approval or disapproval of the content of a comment.
Whether or not you think that is a good or bad thing from a community-building standpoint, it is what it is. People behave in ways that a community's architecture affords. Live with it. - skywake, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3oh yay... America is a holy land and everyone will worship their Capitalist government
we all hope that we can have a "great" political and legal system just like the US /sarcasim
you think there is no religious extremism in the US?
you think hatred in the Middle east is fuelled purely by their own misfortunes?
give me a break.... your as blind as the religious extremists -
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