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Just a thought: does it work if you rename the file not to have the hash in it?

And Keith Floyd too! Insert Patrick Swayze saying to St Peter "I just want all the wine bottles to be safe" joke here...

http://www.americangirlscouts.org/agswiki/AGS_Version_history

So, here's an interesting point of discussion: if the existence of God is unprovable and also undisprovable and as Mr Matti puts it "superfluous" is any church worthwhile? In some ways, even if god is irrelevant can a church still be a good thing?

Pros:
Many churches help the poor, sick, etc.
It can be a comfort to many
Some churches have services that are a form of entertainment
Some churches are a form of social club
Both of the above might be worth paying for (see money issues under Con)
Some churches encourage principles of living that are genearlly seen as good by most people even if they throw in a few extra rules that athiests may not entirely approve of or think are superfluous
Many churches support charity work in developing countries, etc.

Cons:
Some churches spout hate and hope (for example) that Obama gets cancer mainly becuase he's a Democrat
Militant anti-gay/abortion/etc nutters
Some churches give people huge burdens of guilt
Some people spend lots of money on their church
Some churches squander the money they get on giving leaders lavish lifestyles or on supporting the above nutters

Dualnames, feel free to run them if you want to do them.

And I agree with everything Babar said. 

In my version..... UR MOM!

Keep in mind that it's a theatre that shows no obvious signs of fire, and that you apperantly can't explain to the skeptics why you think it's burning despite absence of evidence, and that there are other people like you around who claim similar things but urge people to take completly different exit routes.

In my version of the analogy all the people in the theatre are blind...

But its compelling enough for some people... I'd drag the skeptics out of the burning theatre but then they'd probably claim I was being too pushy  

I love how so many think that people should have the freedom to believe what they like as long as they don't try and convert people. In other words, you're not allowed to believe that you should convert people.

You also can't shout fire in a theater but we still have freedom of speech so I think it's not too crazy!

Point being we already have limited freedoms.

Ah, but what if you beleive the theatre is actually on fire....

Who gets to draw the line and where?

Unbelief endangers souls, after all! Shoudn't you take active steps to prevent it from spreading, by, say, outlawing the expression of different viewpoints? Why tolerate Atheism? Why allow freedom of opinion to those others? With the right mindset, it's a very slippery slope from "you should push your belief" to "you should be enforcing your belief". Once again, read those anti-tolerance tracts on occasion. They're chilling.

But now you're dodging the question. You said its only a problem when people trying to spread the beliefs are pushy. Who decides when they get too pushy? Can we agree that not allowing them to talk about their faith at all is too restrictive and letting them torture people is too pushy. Where in between those extremes is the allowable line in your opinion? What about door-to-door evangelism? Handing out tracts? TV advertising?

Now, if you could force people to STOP believing woudl you do it?

No, why would I? You are the guys who assign an intrinisic value to buying into your philosphy, not we. To an Atheist, it doesn't matter if you die a believer or not - so you can belief in whatever you want, as long as you don't try to enforce your belief on others. We don't mind the believing - we only mind the intolerance. It's different with religion.

So why are you bothering arguing with me?

Is either of us trying to persuade the other only allowable becuase of its inefficacy?

So you complain that trying to convince people with arguments is inefficient? That... strikes me as rather worrying again.

No, that's not what I meant at all. (also, inefficient means somethign different to ineffective ) You said that you would never try and force me to stop beleiving. So the difference with tryign to persuade me with arguments and forcing me is simply the effuicay (100% versus, say, 0.1%)

Let's take an example where your words are so persuasive that anyone you decide to convince to agree with you would do so without any pain or suffering on their part. Would you then go round convincing everyone that you are right? You're still forcing them whether there is pain involved or not.

My guess is no, you wouldn't go around getting rid of others free will and you agree that it would be morally dubious to do so. Which kind of proves that the whole torture thing is a red herring: both situations are unacceptable (and impossible).

If one believes in an omnipotent god then god coudl painlessly make everyone believe in him. But then if god wanted robots then he would have mde robots.

You're still dodging the question. If you could, hypothetically speaking, force a person to believe... would you do it?

No. There, undodged.

Now, if you could force people to STOP believing woudl you do it? If not, lets take THAT to its logical conclusion and thus say you shouldn't bother even trying to persuade people not to. So shut ya face!  

Seriously, though. Is either of us trying to persuade the other only allowable becuase of its inefficacy?

Goin back to your earlier quote:

The problem is not that people try to spread their religion. The problem is when they get pushy.

Who gets to draw the line and where? And I think you'll find that some of the people here don't even like "unpushy" evangelism.

... that means that if you were convinced you could brainwash people into believing, you would do it? Let's assume a new method of torture was devised. It inflicts excruciating pain and totally breaks a person's will, to the point that you can directly mold their personality, their morals and their beliefs. This is not just a protective reflex, and the person cannot fake it - you truly alter their 'soul', for lack of a better term. By your logic, you would have a moral obligation to use it on unbelievers.

Lets assume instead that God makes a bowl of porridge so big that he can't eat it and thus ruins his omnipotence. Hey look, I can come up with impossible hypothetical situations, too!

Anyway, it not working is hardly the only reason I wouldn't torture someone.

SSH: The problem is not that people try to spread their religion. The problem is when they get pushy. If you follow that idea to its logical conclusion... isn't it better to push down unbelievers, to make their life a living hell, to torture, brainwash and break them until they believe? After all, as atrocious as this is, you are saving them from eternal hellfire...

That's only the logical conclusion if you beleive that doing such things induces belief. Which I don't.

religious people who feel the need to exclude other origin ideas (including but not limited to the big bang), want to convert everyone in sight, and want to save everyone's soul. These people too consider their personal believes to be facts that should be forced upon everyone-else's lives; and those people too should be opposed to. Fortunately this group reflects only a limited percentage of religious people, and most religious people accept that their assumptions are their personal believes rather than facts.

But if someone believes that all the people they meet are going to burn in hell if they don't beleive the same as them, then surely they have a moral obligation to try and save them from that.

If I believed that a man was going to come and shoot you in the middle of the night tonight, I'd not be a very nice person if I didn't try and save you from that EVEN IF I WAS MISTAKEN.

I love how so many think that people should have the freedom to believe what they like as long as they don't try and convert people. In other words, you're not allowed to beleive that you should convert people. In other words, there's no freedom of belief at all. Funnily enough, this is one of the restrictions that freedom-loving China places on religions: its OK to be a Muslim/Christian as long as you don't try and tell anyone about it.

The kind of ire and venom displayed by some people in this thread not only breaks forum rules but also sniffs faintly of some kind of fear. Perhaps some people are in denial of their true feelings.

See, that's why I think you're a pretentious idiot.

Are you accusing me of making those? I don't see where I told Misj' that he's wrong because he's an idiot.
Why don't you keep your petty snide one-liners to yourself?

I don't because your swearing, attacking people personally and general unpleasantness in this are offensive to me. And they ruin your argument that atheists are paragons of virtue.

Don't you love ad-hominem 

This is so great: it lets me make TWO terrible puns in one blog post!

http://ags-ssh.blogspot.com/2009/09/lua-of-temptress.html

It makes my spit thick

They retain their value when you come back to the room, but I'm not sure the reference counts when it comes to deallocating sprites...