A thoroughly ignorant statement, with nothing to back it up besides your biased point of view. One does not require religion or a belief in a personal god to care for others. Logic, empathy, compassion, love and humility are all human traits bred not from religion but from a mind able to distinguish the desirable from the undesirable, or the 'good' from the 'bad' if you want. If you truly think you need the threat of eternal punishment - of an ever watching, ever judging God - to be a moral and compassionate person, to love, protect and be kind to your fellow man, I think that's a fairly sad state of affairs.

No, for the most part it wasn't and isn't. I'm not disputing all laws, a lot of them are good rules of thumb - but to say that all laws are there solely to protect us is insanity. Why is outlawing ganja for our protection? Yet at the same time a drug that causes literally hundreds of thousands deaths worldwide per year (alcohol) through violence, stupidity, poisoning, choking, sorosis etc., causes violence and cases of abuse both physical and sexual, sold to us at exuberantly high prices? Is that in our best interest?

The only harm and death that can be caused through marijuana is associated with inhaling hot smoke and carbon monoxide - you can't O.D on it, it is virtually never known to turn people irrationally violent etc. Yes it can cause psychosis in certain individuals, but so can alcohol - I'm not trying to sound like a blatant pro-doper I'm just proving a point in general by using a specific case.

Laws are there to keep us complacent, to control and take advantage of us - I can purchase products that are known to kill literally millions per year (cigarette) and most of the profit goes straight to the people making laws saying I can be locked up for smoking a different sort of plant - and if I want to quit smoking cigarette? Why of course I pay for another heavily taxed item such as nicotine gum or patches - if you truly think all laws are there to protect us you are naive to the facts.

You are aware that theres a difference between a poll and a debate yes? Besides which, what compelled you to ask people this anyway? Is it really something that has been bothering you so much you thought "ah I must get online and find if others share my bra-stance"? Sorry, i do sound cynical, I just think theres more pressing issues to be discussed... perhaps not though, I mean everything is relative...

Lust (in homo-sapiens at any rate) is the driving force behind reproduction, without such a strong ingrained need to lust after the opposite sex (or the same sex, as it may be, although that doesn't really aid reproduction) we most likely wouldn't be here today - we are all, nearly every one of us the product of lust. So, in my opinion, the question is a little absurd. I think the only things that can really be classed as 'bad' are those that harm, take advantage of or deprive others - greed, hate, irresponsibility, selfishness - can, I think, all be classed as 'bad' (although bad, good, evil etc. are all such implicitly subjective terms I much prefer to refer to such things as undesirable).

So short answer: no, it is perfectly natural to lust over others and we, as a species, wouldn't be around today if it weren't for such urges.

But the point is does religion cause violence, hatred and ignorance? Yes. Does athiesm? No. Yes there have been many killers, dictators and evil deeds commited by both athiest and religious people alike - but does religion in some cases inspire people to slaughter, hate and discriminate? Yes, ofcourse it does. Does athiesm, no.

People are quick to point out cases such as Stalin, Hitler etc. when denouncing athiesm as being just as bad as religion in inspiring such things, but Stalin wasn't inspired by athiesm to be such a absolute cunt, he was inspired by ideals such as Marxism, as Hitler was inspired by his vision of a super-race. That is simplyfing things, yes, but it does get to the heart of the problem, which is that a beleif that your serving a God (the true and only God, mind you, your God) can lead to, in extreme cases, terrible atroscities being commited. Can a beleif in a Godless and random universe, combined with nothing else, inspire such things? No.

I'm going to say... no, just because I don't want to be lynched by a bunch of pissed fanatics.

It counts for very little in the long run, to quote both Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking "Is any intelligent civilization doomed to destroy itself soon after it discovers that E = MC²?" Just because we have survived the first 60-odd years since the first A-Bomb was succesfuly detonated means very little in the larger scheme of thing.

I think he is referring to the acronym Mutualy Assured Destruction (MAD) in a rather silly way.

OK I think some things need to be put straight. Firstly, creationism is pure ignorance of truth and fact, we know beyond doubt (and not just beyond reasonable doubt, beyond any doubt) that the world isn't 10, 000 years old and that we weren't all created, as we are, by 'God' in seven days. Radioactive decay is proof that the earth is well over 4 billion years old.

Secondly, evolution has been proved beyond any reasonable doubt, it is no longer a theory, it is scientifically accepted fact, there may still be a small amount of ambiguity as to whether 'survival of the fittest' is the driving force behind evolution, but none as to whether evolution is the driving force behind life - to deny just proves you really don't understand what your talking about.

Thirdly, most any argument as to why there 'must' be a god is usually circular logic; IE. 'there must be a God because the cosmos is so complex that it had to have been the product of a conscious mind' - by that logic then God itself must be infinitely more complex, and therefore must have been created by a greater 'God', and so on ad infinite. Those are arguments of logic, other arguments are just bred through pure ignorance and aren't even worth combating.

In summary; evolution is fact, creationism is based on an archaic system of beliefs that existed literally millenia before we had any reason to believe otherwise. The big bang theory is just that, a theory - no one is suggesting that is fact (if they are then again they don't know of what they speak). It makes sense because all the things we see in the cosmos coincide with the idea; IE. red/blue shift of galaxies, radiation decay etc. These things follow the theory of what we call 'the big bang' and there is no hard evidence to disprove it - however science, unlike religion, recognizes that it doesn't know everything and that certain things may be proved false in the future, the big bang is a theory and may be replaced by another when we have garnered more knowledge.

However it is completely irrational to attribute everything we don't know yet to God. Hundreds of years ago we didn't know what caused wind, waves or fire - so we reasoned that it must be a great god - now we know better but we still aren't advanced enough to answer all our questions, so we say that anything we don't yet have an answer for must have been God - unacceptable in this day and age if you ask me.

Are those comforts really worth giving us the ability to blindly destroy our world? Our greed and short sightedness in such matters of comfort, profit and short-term benefit, our complacency, our seemingy inability to handle such things responsibly - the real threat we pose to ourselves far outweighs the paltry comforts of hot water and electric light - it however does not (perhaps) outweigh the massive advances in science, medicine and insight we have gained as a byproduct of these technologies.