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So, I better have a 2000 year old story about God's wrath than a very recent example of what scientists can do.

Why do you keep making science responsible for Nagasaki and Hiroshima? Did science decide to kill hundreds of thousand civilists to decide war in favor of the Allies? Or where it the USA who finally dropped the bombs?

Do you agree that god and religion are responsible for hundreds of wars where millions of people died because of their different beliefs? If not, then stop pissing on things that you obviously will never understand.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_wars#Wars.

And yes, atheists are boring ...

Could you come up with an example of why atheists are boring? People who are open for new ideas, new inventions, new experiences do you call boring? Just my opinion but people who live like they used to live 2000 years before and not trying new things are boring.

Some different question @all:
Do you agree that since humans have started distancing from god en masse (beginning with reconnaissance) that life for the average man has become multiple times better than it used to be?

What should I say? Khris has already mentioned everything that's worth to mention.
Maybe you take a look at this website to see how scientists define and describe science.

Regarding your nuclear bomb example. I kinda knew that you would come up with that. Khris already mentioned that it is the human who uses it for bad things. Science does only describe how this things works and doesn't tell any use cases. Every invention by humankind can be used for good things and bad things. Bombs can be used for mining or to flatten floor for streets and building. Also in the near future we will be able to use nuclear bombs or similar bombs to destroy asteroids and comets which would be dangerous if they approach earth. But of course it can be used to kill people and animals.

Let me give you another example, which makes things even clearer: A rifle.
Science describes the way the rifle is working and how you use it in order to fire a projectile into the direction you are aiming.
But humans are the ones who decide to use it for protecting lifes, killing animals (because of food or fun) or killing people. This is the perfect example to show you that a thing can be good or bad depending on how humans use it.

If we would reject every invention that could be dangerous to humans or the earth, we would still live like apes without clothing, no roasted beef, no language, not even religion, just nothing.

There are many diseases science says it can cure but won't?  Care to name a few of those?

Malaria, which is both preventable and treatable (according to Science) and yet it kills about 500 000 people every year!.  How about that cholera epidemic that killed more Hatians than the 2010 earthquake (~ 250 000 deaths).  But maybe the media is spinning some kind of sensational yarn to sell advertisements, so let's look closer to home.  Asphyxia before birth, caused by the umbilical cord being wrapped around a baby's neck and often results in brain damage.  Easily preventable.  But I have an extended family member who will spend the rest of his life in a wheel chair and will max his vocabulary out at 100 words due to this.  Go science.

It seems you don't quite understand what the purpose of science is. What you are talking about is more of simplified science, which you hear over TV or radio. But real science is all about cause and probability. You won't hear any scientist say we can cure Malaria to 100%. He/She will say that it is extremely likely to cure a person with Malaria, if everything is done correctly. But there is always this 0.00001% (or whatsover) possibility that the therapy doesn't work for that person for several reasons.
But why are so many people dying of Malaria or similar deseases, according to science there should be just a few? Politics, culture, religion and many other things are the cause for this. In most of the countries where such illness is "normal" there is no real social or health care system. Doctors don't have the possibilites to cure such deseases. Some reject therapy because of religious beliefs and so on. Nothing that has to do anything with science.

And how does science tell kids not to play outside?

Too much UV exposure will give you skin cancer.  Too much exposure to nitrous-oxide and other smog-born chemicals causes lung disease and possibly developmental delays in younger children.  Social science gives us crime statistics that increase the perception of danger on the street (although a close reading of those same statistics should in fact do the opposite... ), and medical studies a greater awareness of the long-term impacts of concussions and breaking the growth-zone of bones before reaching maturity.  The sum total of these perfectly rational studies is to promote a vigilant culture among parents, thereby restricting such unquantifiable aspects of childhood as "unstructured fun" in favour of caution and safety.  You can look at school regulations that clearly dissuade kids from doing anything that might maybe possibly cause them even the slightest injury.  When is the last time you saw a teeter-totter on a school yard?  Or a merry-go-round?  Or a tire ladder?  Or a game of Red-Rover?  You can find scientific studies that show that kids do not play outside as much as they used to, and that childhood obesity rates are sky-rocketing.  Why?  Because people are making rational decisions based on what science tells them, to their own and society's detriment!

You are just speaking of a few little parts of science. Psychology is also science and if you ask a pyschologist he won't advise any parents to prevent their kids from all dangers. Fun, dangerous events, illness are all essential experiences to children to make them grow up normally (psychologically and physiologically).
If you are so sure that science causes detriment for society, then please tell me some real examples. I could come up with millions of examples where science helped society and no single one where religion did.

If there's a radioactive cloud coming towards your house, science doesn't tell you to stay indoors, it only tells you why and how you're going to die if you don't.
Science doesn't make moral judgments. It tries to describe and understand reality.

I don't think science can distance itself from such clearly implicit recommendations.  Even if science doesn't tell you to go indoors to avoid the radioactive cloud, a reasonable person could anticipate that as the understood instruction.  In a court of law it is not so much the exact wording of the fine print as the interpretation of that fine print by a reasonable person that would make a party culpable or not.  Science can not wash it's hands of the consequences of its discoveries with an "I'm just saying...." remark that will absolve it of all responsibility.

Science tells you what happens with your body if confronted with too much radioactivity. It tells you the probablity of your death if you are outside, inside, behind lead walls etc.
The logical consequence is to stay in-house or if you have a bunker go in there. Lead walls preferable.
Science doesn't need to wash it's hands of consequences, it clearly says that it IS possible to die even if you are in your house or your lead bunker.
Religion says that if you do some things (without giving good reason) nothing can happen to you. But it does. So religion must wash it's hands of the consequences! Science does admit that shit can happen.

If your view of religion is similarly removed from reality, I'd almost feel inclined to defend it. The notion that Hebrews didn't eat pork because of infections if completely ridiculous. They knew nothing of microorganisms.

But they knew eating pork was making some people sick, and so agreed with their prophets and stopped....  Don't you see the parallel between "prophet" and "study"?  Both convince you to change your lifestyle as, for all intents and purposes if you're just an everyman, a matter of faith.

If a man in rags tells you to stop eating pork because god will make you sick if you do, would you believe him?
Or do you believe a man who tells you that eating old meat can make you sick because it's very probable that it already has started rotting and explains you what rotting is and causes to your body?
Like Khris says people didn't have any understanding of such things at that time. You could tell them anything and they would believe it, at least if you add god into the explanation.

Sorry I may were not specific enough. Of course there's no real study about morality. But there are several statistics which show that among atheists there is less divorce, murder, rape, crime in general, less prejudice but more tolerance... I'm in bed now but will post some links when I've time tomorrow. If you use google you should find lot of information about that subject.

@monkey:
I always find it funny that religious people call themselves moral. Actually they don't have any real sense of morality. They are just following some codex and commandments that they were told to be good or bad. God says what is good or bad for a human.

But isn't it way more logical that humans know better what is good or bad for them? You know what makes you laugh and what makes you cry; you know what things are good and what things are bad for you.
Even IF there is a god, he wouldn't know better what is good for us than we, because he is no human but we are!

Atheists, agnostics and non-believers don't have these moral codex and commandments they are told to follow. No god, who tells them what's right or what's wrong.
But if you look at various statistics and polls it's quite clear that they are way more moral than any religious people.

Why can this happen one may ask?

I believe, it's simply because these people are way more open-minded. They think about their actions and the outcome of these. They do not have to fear that they will get into hell or anything like that if they do something wrong, they can think rationally about what is really good or bad.

See, monkey is way too restricted in his view of things because of his mormon beliefs. He thinks that slavery can be good because his god or bible or some golden plates don't say that it would be bad (at least not directly). Therefore he says it could be good as he doesn't know if god is strictly against it. If he wouldn't have these strong beliefs, he would see things from a different side.

Myself, as an atheist, think the following when it comes to slavery: How does somebody feel when he is just the property of someone else? Is a life as property better than a life in poverty? How could I dare to let someone work for me in exchange for not torturing and killing him?
After thinking about these things and answering for myself I come to the conclusion that: Even if I would get the richest person in world for keeping slaves, I would rather kill myself than doing something like that.

Slavery in America was generally good. That is, the majority of slaves lived better, more productive lives as slaves than the persecution and segregation that followed.Slavery in America was generally good. That is, the majority of slaves lived better, more productive lives as slaves than the persecution and segregation that followed.Slavery in America was generally good. That is, the majority of slaves lived better, more productive lives as slaves than the persecution and segregation that followed.Slavery in America was generally good. That is, the majority of slaves lived better, more productive lives as slaves than the persecution and segregation that followed.Slavery in America was generally good. That is, the majority of slaves lived better, more productive lives as slaves than the persecution and segregation that followed.Slavery in America was generally good. That is, the majority of slaves lived better, more productive lives as slaves than the persecution and segregation that followed.Slavery in America was generally good. That is, the majority of slaves lived better, more productive lives as slaves than the persecution and segregation that followed.Slavery in America was generally good. That is, the majority of slaves lived better, more productive lives as slaves than the persecution and segregation that followed.Slavery in America was generally good. That is, the majority of slaves lived better, more productive lives as slaves than the persecution and segregation that followed.Slavery in America was generally good. That is, the majority of slaves lived better, more productive lives as slaves than the persecution and segregation that followed.

My mind is blown.

Mine too. Seriously stating that slavery was generally good without joking, can be enough information to judge a person.
If it's just a joke to pretend to be #1 gay basher, I think it won't be a problem to share this:

[embed=425,349]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06jF1EG8o-Q[/embed]

xD haha that's a nice graphic!! I already knew it but without the most important last step

I so much love these religious debates! Everyone gets angry on another, fights for his beliefs and tells the others what they should think... aah it's just lovely

Talking about Christianity now, I belief that Jesus Christ is one very impressive personality. Even though I don't agree in everything he said/did there is this special thing about this man that has changed the world (for good) over the past 2000 years. He praised charity and love at a time where noone else would have thought like that or dared to. Today there are lots of people that are like him, doing things to help other people for non-reward, something really unthinkable in the time Jesus lived.

You are not helping. This naive, sentimental view of Jesus and Christianity is very common unfortunately. I urge you to read up on the arguments against that position.

I was just argueing that the aspect of helping other people without getting anything for it IS a good thing. Or do you think the red cross isn't good? Religion was built around that idea in order to abuse it.
BTW no one is helping here anyone. Everyone has it's own opinion on things and wants to tell his version in a debate. I'm just kicking in to show my perspective of things and want to know what others think about it.

So how do you disagree with that? Do you argue:

1. There's no such thing as sexual orientation; people are not more sexually attracted to people of one sex than the other.
2. There's no such thing as homosexuality; no one is more sexually attracted to people of their own sex.
3. Everyone can choose their own sexual orientation; if you want, you can decide who you're sexually attracted to and aroused by.

1 and 2 seem to be trivially false, so if you hold to 3, are you really claiming that you personally (and everyone else) have the capacity, if you so choose, to change your sexual orientation so that you're attracted to men and not by women, sexually aroused by men and not by women, and sexually satisfied by sex with men and not by sex with women? (Assuming you currently identify as heterosexual, and I seem to remember posts that would suggest you do.)

Regardless of how sexual orientation is decided (whether it's purely genetic, some random event during development, or influenced by environmental factors in early life), science, introspection and common sense would all argue that homosexuality or heterosexuality is not a choice.

To back up Snarky's arguments:

If you think of "falling in love" or "having a crush" you also do not decide whom you fall in love with, or do you? Do you decide rationally that this girl or boy excites you, or does it simply happen?

Lt. Smash, why would it be requisite that there be only one god? There are many polytheistic belief systems. There are even polytheistic denominations of Christianity for example. Is it more arrogant to suppose that a god could have created the universe than to suppose that human beings are the most complex creatures in the universe? (Or the multiverse for that matter?)

Of course you can invent trillions of different gods for everything and anything. It may makes it more "possible" but even more absurd. There were so many chemical, physical, mathematical... reactions involved during the development of our known universe, maybe even some creatures, which need our respect and not "ghosty" gods, which were invented by the minds of some human many years ago.

I didn't say that we are the most complex creatures in the universe. Actually I think we may be at average, if not below, 'cause there are lots of bad things in our world like murder, hate, rape etc also there are so many unanswered ethnical, moral and scientific questions; I'm sure there are races who have a better understanding of the universe. I agree with you, it would be really arrogant to say anything else.

You are absolutely right Atelier. It is really arrogant to argue that one "living thing" (god) would have created galaxies, stars, planets, vegetation, animals, human, reactions, sub-atomar particles etc. And now this "god" should also interact with all our lives and minds?? Assuming we are the only planet with rational thinking beings this would be totally impossible. Now assume that there are billions of planets with beings similar to us. How could anything handle that all???
No one knows for sure what happened before the big bang but this mostly has to do with our definition of time. We think of a beginning and an ending, while this could easily be a loop or anything else without time at all.

Single humans will never understand everything of the universe. Our brain is not capable of this. So there will always be place for beliefs in super douper beings above all levels of existence and logic. If we once can describe matter (speaking of things which are influenced by gravity), presumable the average person won't understand it. They will continue to believe that god is holding these particles together or they simply don't care. That's humankind...

monkey you got my point There is nothing wrong in general about religion or science. If every person would question himself if something is right or not there wouldn't be so many (if any?) wars, murders and other cruel things.
People with faith can be really peacefully or really dangerous, depending on what they believe in and how they practice that belief. The problem really is that many don't think for themselves when doing things like killing a sinner or psychicollogically terrorizing someone for his non-belief etc. God or more general their religion tells them to behave like so, everything else - even their own opinion - often has no relevance. You can compare it to peer pressure. If you wanna be cool, you do like the other cools do, if you don't some of 'em will bully you.

Talking about Christianity now, I belief that Jesus Christ is one very impressive personality. Even though I don't agree in everything he said/did there is this special thing about this man that has changed the world (for good) over the past 2000 years. He praised charity and love at a time where noone else would have thought like that or dared to. Today there are lots of people that are like him, doing things to help other people for non-reward, something really unthinkable in the time Jesus lived. I don't believe that he is any relative of god, or sent by him (This was invented later by the emperors, which recognized that Christianity could be used for their own purposes and telling the people he is son of god, will make much more people believe in the words of a carpenter.) But I think that we, as an intelligent race, have the own power to be like Jesus and love each other without wanting a reward for everything we do.

Somewhere I read in this thread that if there would be no people believing in god, we would all kill ourselves. Actually I think that this would happen if every person would be 100% believer of some religion. I'm not sure who wrote that but I'm sure he is someone who needs a reward for everything good he does. If you really think that you get in heaven for doing good and go to hell for doing bad, then you are not a real good person. You only do good things to others because you think you will be rewarded with paradise for that. Doing something just for the sake of a reward, isn't the purpose of charity. Thinking of that, the praising of charity of Jesus Christ actually makes the belief of an after-life senseless.

But the mighty google can do it (at least a barrel roll): https://www.google.at/search?q=do+a+barrel+roll 

I could say "Fuck! So many people believing in old unproven shit that has absolutely nothing to do with todays life? Man, I'm gonna have some beers to cope with that."
Because that's my opinion. But my opinion is just an idea, a feeling that has no proven context, therefore is absolutely rubbish until I can probe it to be true or not to be true.

That's science. Ideas, theories, assumptions can all be science, if you can effectively claim them to be true or not to be true. Actually it's the process that takes to prove if something is true or false.

Religion is not that different. It's also about ideas, theories, assumptions about a god, some important people (mostly prophets), rules about a better society... If you can effectively prove one of the assumptions of any of the various religions to be true, then they are also part of science.

The difference between science and religion is that most religions state that it is a fact that there were some prophets, there is god, it is the best to have no sex before marriage, you should honor your family (regardless how cruel or nice they are) and millions of other "facts".
While there are some things you can prove to be true or false - like the earth being a sphere and no disk - there are many things that we cannot really question ATM. Because these things are more abstract, not entirely defined; you cannot catch them.
When you ask two people about what is god, will they have the exact same answer? I don't think so.

Science will always improve it's methods for proving things. Eventually we WILL know if there ever was or is a thing like god.

Morals are a bit different. Is it good to kill somebody? Are there circumstances where it is less bad or good to do so? Who tells you if it is?
Everybody has to ask for himself. In general, if you are not influenced by religion or science most people will come to the same conclusion. Based on this we can form a system of law on which most of the people agree.
If it gets to morals, there is one simple sentence which you can answer all question: "Don't treat others in ways you wouldn't want to be treaten yourself!" or "Don't harm others because you don't want them to harm you".

What do I want to say with that? Science and religion can go hand in hand but when something is proven to be true or to be false, you shouldn't call it religion any more. Religion is about beliefs. If you know something for sure, you do not need to believe it, you just know it. So guys, stop criticizing each other and just open your eyes and ask things. Just keep asking Why? until he/she doesn't know the answer or the answer is already found.

Money, money, money 

No I'm not developing just because of the money. Developing is my passion. It gives me a wonderful feeling to create something new that the world hasn't seen yet.
I totally have to agree Darth. It's great to be able to fabricate something from out of absolutely nothing and then duplicate it for the world without any cost.

Oh and for the chicks, of course 

I like Java because of its nice and simple structure (this is true OO), its readability, its extensibility (there are loads of opensource libs out there)...

Of course it's not the super-language for everything. Some say it's slow, some say it's too strict... I say every language has it's purpose; in Java you can at least use the JNI if you need it.

LibGDX is one of the few Java libraries that allow you to code games in 2D and 3D. Although it's not in an 1.x release, it's pretty stable and I've never got any problem.  There are many contributor and if you're missing something you can easily contribute yourself.
I like it that much, because you have control over every aspect of your project. You just need one code base and don't need to make any further modifications to deploy to Windows, Mac, HTML5, Android and iOS. According to some benchmark tests it's even faster than Unity.

Hey guys!

Anyone ever heard of LibGDX (http://libgdx.badlogicgames.com)?
Since a few months it's my favorite cross-platform game development kit (except for adventure games  ) and I've been able to create some nice (commercial) projects with it.
For example, the iOS version of my Tangram-like game BlockRam Puzzle: https://itunes.apple.com/app/blockram-puzzle/id632783393.

Just wanted to see if there are some other Gdxers out there or other interested people who also find this library pretty cool

My proposal again is:
> Go to the tent III (archeologic artefacts).

+1

> smash and then search crates

I wouldn't risk smashing possible ammunition boxes. Who knows if it contains grenades which could explode?

> take off hat and put it into backpack

-1
instead
>remove the rank from the hat and pocket it for later.

I totally understand.
So I -1 my +1 and -1 selmiaks command. Finally +1 for NightHawk's command. Everything clear??