Tim Cook wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> The only major problem the US has is that it absolutely ***refuses*** 
>> to treat faith, no matter which of the tens of thousands of version we 
>> are talking about, the same way as some moron babbling about white 
>> power on the street corner. Some of us are. We spent over 150 years 
>> losing by being nice, while they used every form or rhetoric and hate 
>> speech they could against us. Its our turn to present the truth in a 
>> way that is sufficiently aggressive that people will notice, over top 
>> all the loud mouth lunatics ***still*** yelling about how unfair the 
>> world is being to their 90% of the population and 99% of all the 
>> political power, because they, "wah! wah!", don't have 100% believers 
>> in the US and 100% of the political power, so must, logically, be 
>> "persecuted".
> 
> The first sentence is false--witness David Koresh.  An example of faith 
> that was sanctioned with extreme prejudice.

Yes, and 50 other like him, but who can't be proven to have broken any 
*direct* laws, are on religious channels telling most other Christians 
they are not real Christians, calling for the assassination of foreign 
leaders, advocating wars, suggesting to people that they should show 
their faith with willful intolerance of everyone and everything else, 
and even, in some cases, suggesting that someone should shoot the 
President, or everyone that doesn't own a Bible, or both. None of which 
is "illegal" per say, until someone acts on it, but then, but such 
standards, neither is what dozens of Moslem Mullahs do every day, if 
they where here, since they don't bomb, kill, murder, or stone people to 
death themselves, they merely suggest that, "Perhaps someone else 
should, if they really believed."

But that is all beside the point, which is that, in certain categories, 
like biology, and even some social matters, we have appeased, pleaded 
with, tried to explain, etc. **forever** and what we got for the trouble 
of trying to make allies was allies that stab us in the back when it 
looks like faith itself is being threatened (even when it isn't), and 
radicals that differ from the worst madmen throughout the world's 
history of religions, from Tokamata (or how ever its spelled) to Osama 
Bin Laden, only in that they can't legally kill you for disagreeing in 
the US, while in the ME, they still can, and.. in places without our 
laws, even Christians where still doing that, right up until the 
countries they ran into the ground went Moslem, and continued to be ran 
into the ground with all new implausible promises.

> Or do you mean that you 
> feel *any* tolerance of *any* faith is unacceptable?  That is just as 
> blind a view as the other way 'round.  "We spent x years losing by being 
> nice, so now we're not going to be nice any more", while pragmatic, 
> places you neatly in the same general category as 'fair-weather 
> pacifists', abandoning a basic tenet in the face of adversity (at least, 
> if 'being nice' is in any way fundamental to your belief, which if it 
> weren't, why be nice to begin with?).  When you use the enemy's methods, 
> you become the enemy.  "Our turn to present the truth in a way that is 
> sufficiently aggressive"?  That's poor form, indeed.
> 
Sigh.. No movement has "ever" worked without both assholes and middle 
grounders. The assholes keep people from becoming complacent and giving 
up things they shouldn't, or more than is rational, while trying to push 
matters the other direction. Its called the Overton Window. And poor 
form or not, the window has been pushed by the other side in the US, 
more, and more, and more, and more towards, "Of course religions is 
always useful, always positive, unless its false, and always deserves 
respect, even if its is false, because, well, at least it is still 
religion, and after all, all religion are Christian, somehow." Its 
gotten so damn bad that people will cheer idiots suggesting 
non-believers have their citizenship revoked, half of an entire bloody 
generation of children don't know US history, but have been handed a 
revisionist version, in which the founders all but sat praying over 
Bibles, until god dictated the constitution to them as holy writ, and 
almost anything is justified, as long as its "for Jesus", including 
lying (which they do all the time), inhuman and abusive legislation, 
spying on our own citizens, hiring bloody Christian Crusaders, intent on 
shooting people for being Moslem, to help the military in Iraq, etc. All 
is acceptable to "some" of the religious people in this country, and 
those people have spent the last 50 years lying, distorting, whining, 
and preaching to anyone dumb enough to listen, to get themselves elected 
into the Republican party. Even their own members have, in recent years, 
started to look around and realize their are surrounded by crazy people.

I am not saying that every person should feel like lowering themselves 
to these people's level. On the contrary, the most acidic, semi-abusive, 
and questionable rant I have ever seen against them has ***failed*** to 
fall to the level of these people, for one very important reason, it 
might have been nasty, but it didn't **lie** to get the point across. 
The other side does, all the time, and they get by with it because 
religious speech isn't just protected by the law, its protected by an 
emotional reaction from even people that *know* the wacko is lying, that 
lends itself to them circling the the wagons in defense of the trolls 
words, and chastising the person questioning them for attacking 
religion, even if the words used are *not* negative, are *not* 
offensive, and are presented by someone with a personality similar to 
Ben Stein's, so can't even be claimed to have been given "loudly", or, 
"over emotionally".

No, the window has been dragged so far over, compared to just about 
every place other than say.. the Vatican, that Dawkins is often accused 
of *attacking* religion using *vile lies and misrepresentations*, as 
though he where George Carlin, or something, when the man never raising 
is voice publicly, never gets overly emotional, and never lies about 
what the other side thinks (or at least some of the more crazy ones). 
Seriously, why shouldn't people be damn fed up with this, and why should 
they all be Dawkins, when ***no one among them frakking listens to 
Dawkins***, and they all call him over the top, aggressive and hateful 
anyway?

We here this all the time. Ah, well. I understand you have a message, 
but.. why do you have to be so mean about it? Maybe because no one 
listens to the quiet guy in the corner, when there are three total 
idiots in the middle of the room shooting and speaking in tongues? Or, 
maybe, because actually knowing people do challenge this foolishness, 
and they *are not afraid* of doing so in a way that can piss someone 
off, encourages people in the side lines to recognize they are not alone 
in questioning any, or even all, of it? We need both. And the one thing 
we don't need is more people trying to kiss the ass of middle grounders, 
even while those middle grounders side ***every single time*** with the 
complete wackos, the moment someone glues "attack" and "religion" 
together, when talking about something like, "don't force my kid to 
pray.", and points at some random passerby as the "source" of the 
supposed problem.

-- 
void main () {

     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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