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"Religious people are upset at atheists because atheists threaten their power base, potentially cutting them off from the money, sex, and power they've enjoyed through the common belief in their invisible friends.
It boils right down to that.
If there was a common belief that feeding me and giving me backrubs grants a person immortality, you can bet that I would be inclined to speak out vehemently against anyone threatening that belief.
The last thing I would want would be guys like Richard Dawkins, Douglas Adams, and George Carlin going around writing books and giving lectures about all the people who grew old and died despite having spent their lives preparing sumptuous meals for me and working the kinks out of my upper deltoids.
I would be forced to resort to ad hominem attacks against my critics, threatening them with crippling lawsuits for their interference with my activities, and lobbying Congress for special protection for my status as a giver of immortality for all those devoted meal-preparers and back-massagers among my faithful flock.
What religious people need to realize is that they're being played for chumps."
"I think what it boils down to is the difference in purpose between science and religion.
The purpose of science is to advance human understanding empirically through experiment and observation, and the purpose of religion is to allow a small elite group to continue to have unchecked power and unearned authority over increasing numbers of people through belief in the existence of invisible beings.
Those two goals aren't necessarily exclusive of one-another."
"In the novelization of Red Dwarf, the human species colonizes the rest of the solar system, deciding to use Earth as the dumping ground for all of its garbage."
"One thing I find annoying in futuristic short stories is when the main character expresses nothing but irritation with every technological marvel his age presents."
"You know, all of us gaming geeks should get together for four days a year at a convention center in some central city like Indianopolis, maybe in the summertime, and play these games together without sleeping or bathing the whole time.
Who's up for it?"
"ia!
ia!
Cthulhu ftagn!
That last drawing, the one of the Nightmare Corpse-city of R'lyeh, is from this awesome book that my former housemate had a copy of."
Jim_in_Buffalo commented
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