I agree that we have to keep 1984 at bay, but the situation is not quite as bad as some people would like us to believe.

I half-agre with some of their views, but not with their radical solutions which will thankfully never go through.

To explain my previous post so I don't look like a total jerk:

I was trying to reduce to absurdity the notion that we should allow abortions so as not to kill the mother. If the mother is in fact murdering the child, then by no means should we protect the murderor on the grounds that the murderer may die. On the other hand, if abortion isn't murder, then clearly there isn't a problem. So it all comes down to whether aborition is murder and questions about the survival of the mother are a smokescreen around that issue.

Now, this is rather completely off-topic but I felt I should explain myself.

I'm a witch ( No I can't fly on a broomstick ) but "Jesus loves you" is not offensive to me. nor would "Buddha loves you" be offensive.

Keep in mind that religions are different ways of looking at the same world

"I'd say up to the end of the first trimester"

Is that high-school? or should they get a chance of college before they are weeded out

If I had the cash, I'd donate to the ACLU. But I'm a poor student hardly able to pay my own rent.

As for the Pirate Party... they are getting my vote.

Some pagan ideas and practices were absorbed by the early chuch anyway IIRC.

A long time ago, almost everyone was either polytheistic or pantheistic. So for a Jew/Christian/Muslim to call someone pagan, it surely meant you were worshiping other gods / spirits / nature. With the rise of atheism, it's no longer the case. So while technically speaking, a pagan is traditionally just a non-Jew/Christian/Muslim, it does carry with it the connotation that you are actively worshiping something else.

A heathen is closer to being someone who is not religious, but even that carries the connotation that you are somewhat barbaric.

For "XYZ Loves You" to be insulting, you must first believe that XYZ exists and that he is against you. If you don't believe in him and you find it insulting, you are mentally unstable and probably take offense to statements such as "good morning". And of course, the "love" doesn't have anything to do with romantic love, in case anyone is confused.

That's a good one. But according to Jesus you are supposed to "love your enemies," so one shouldn't really be offended if Satan is obeying Jesus.

heheh well fair comment though I havn't read The Da Vinci Code (I also avoided the movie, though i did see a doco about it), a friend told me all about it though! I have read other books about the whole Priory of Scion thing. Actually most of my interest in this sort of thing came from playing Rome Total War! and growing up in England and learning about the Romans and thier huge impact on Britain. I remember being blown away that there are still remnants of Roman roads left and I visited Bath as a kid that has the remains of a Roman bathhouse there if fading memeory serves! Also there's Hadrian's wall, not to mention all the amazing feats of engineering in ancient Rome itself.

As I understand it Constantine did set in motion the wheels that led to the Catholic Church being founded, the Inquisition was much later, and it did kill off alot of women who otherwise practised pagan methods. I didn't mean that all that happened immediately.

yea I heard that that had something to do with the Catholic Church revering Mother Mary as much is Jesus himself, and that made the religion more palatable to pagans at the time, but i don't know for sure of course!

Well maybe! who knows for sure?, if the sacrifice in question was outside that Druids MonkeySphere who knows! I mean the Stone Henges wern't just made for a good place to party you know!

I disagree. If you don't believe XYZ exists, then someone saying "XYZ Loves You" is implying "XYZ exists," and it's pretty normal to get upset with people who contradict beliefs you hold strongly. People tend to have a lot of emotional investment in questions like "is there a god?" ... regardless of their conclusion.

But we might strongly believe that he isn't, and therefore believe that the person stating "Satan loves you" is lying to us, possibly intending to lead us to some nefariously misguided conclusion!

I don't agree with that. People who answer 'yes' to this question, maybe. But people who answer 'no' to this question tend to be indifferent in religious debates and generally aren't emotionally bound to that answer, and don't really care if somebody claims there is a god and He/She is XXX.

And definitely, it shouldn't be illegal anywhere even if some people feel it's insulting. If displaying any beliefs (not only religious) that would insult someone would be illegal, we wouldn't be allowed to speak at all.

Stonehenge is built on a concentration of "energy" as where the first churches

Well, maybe not rationally, but -- upset, offended, insulted -- these emotions are all pretty close to each other. People easily get offended when they hear, even indirectly, "You are wrong."

People can start flamewars over a programming language, or an operating system choice, or their favorite IDE ... should we really be surprised if they feel insulted by a T-Shirt that tells them their whole life's philosophy is wrong?

Well, I suppose it depends how confident one is in that answer, and their history -- if they have a chip on their shoulder with respect to religion or not. I can't really make broad statements about what tendency is more common than the other, but I'd think an atheist or agnostic has at much at stake in the argument as a 'religious' man -- after all, if the religious guy is right, the atheist is probably supposed to end up burning for eternity or as a cockroach or something painful like that.

Personally I'd say I'm pretty confident in my beliefs, but I still don't like to be told I'm going to burn in hell.

But yes, if they have no emotional involvement in the issue, then they probably should care about the T-Shirt.