You realize atheists don't believe your god exists in the first place to have rights, don't you?

It's called hypocrisy. To lay down rules for others that you are unwilling to follow yourself makes you a hypocrite. To call an action moral when you do it and immoral when others do it is similarly hypocrisy.

Do we now get to act like children and air every Christian comment that is bigoted or uncouth?

Is there any sort of point to creating a debate with no sides just to air your grievances in public? All it does is highlight your own immaturity.

One person banning a member now equates to all atheists lacking logic?

Also, I don't think we should be relying on the logic of people who can't even figure out how to use an apostrophe.

It is not discrimination to not allow murderers to murder. If you knew the actual definition of the word, you'd know it is the "unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of things, especially according to race, sex, or age". Since NO ONE is allowed to murder, there is no discrimination.

Discrimination does not mean "you can't do absolutely everything you want".

The Butterfly Effect is a subset of chaos theory referring to the behavior of variables in a complex system such as weather. It does not, no matter what you've seen on TV or in movies, have anything to do with societal interaction.

Name one way gay marriage affects anyone else negatively.

As for your ridiculous claim that two people of the same sex cannot logically be married, you have no rational or logical support for such a claim therefore it is dismissed. Marriage is just a legal and civil arrangement- gender is irrelevant.

It most certainly is not. Gay marriage is legal in many places worldwide, and a rapidly growing number of US states.

Actually if the Christians read their own bible, they'd know that in both the Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of Matthew Jesus is quoted as saying that the "law" (i.e. the Old Testament) is still completely in affect and that he did not "come to change a letter" of it.

As someone who lives in Rochester (which Greece is a suburb of), NY, I actually know some of the people involved in this case.

The issue definitely needs to be heard- encroachment of religion into our government (Protestant Christianity to be specific) is far more pervasive than people realize.

The problem is not necessarily that they open the Town Meetings with a prayer- previous high court decisions have determined opening a government meeting with a prayer is Constitutional (Congress does it) as long as those prayers do not endorse a particular religion over others. In other words, the Town of Greece would not be in this position if they had attempted to provide any sort of diversity in their opening meetings. Yet, out of years of opening prayers only FOUR were not highly sectarian (i.e. not nondenominational) Christian prayers.

In addition, the women who brought the suit attempted to go a non-litigious route and were not only rebuffed but publicly scolded at the following meetings!

As this is happening in my own city, I can comment here:

The issue is not actually that prayer is OCCURRING before these Town Meetings, but that all but four of the prayers have been Christian. Previous rulings on government meetings have determined that opening with a prayer is not unconstitutional, as long as no endorsement of any one religion is prominent. Therefore, it would be fine if they had attempted to provide a diversity of religious views or even accept petitions as to who would provide the prayer. Yet they did not.

This is just utter stupidity.

Murder is a violation of civil rights to start- the right of a person under the law to life. Therefore it is not discrimination to prevent murder. Just like it is not discrimination to prevent theft or rape. I don't think you even know what discrimination IS.

Gay marriage affects no one but the two people involved. You are simply trying to prevent two people from forming a legal relationship based on nothing but their sexuality, which is no different than the idiots who tried to prevent interracial marriage in the sixties, and the twits who try to prevent women from holding certain jobs just because they're women.

This whole mess is pure sophistry.

For starters, the reason you don't say people who are asymptomatic, apolitical, and asexual don't believe in those things is because those root words aren't about belief. A person who is asymptomatic lacks symptoms, just like a person who is an atheist lacks theism.

Second, if an person believes a god exists, he or she isn't an atheist BY DEFINITION. Theism doesn't require WORSHIP of said gods- just belief in one or more. And trying to claim that existing only in the minds of believers counts as the existence of a god is so nonsensical as to be dismissed- it's you trying to redefine terms to suit yourself.

Third, anti-theists aren't necessarily atheists to start. Many believe in gods and just don't find them worthy of worship- that means they aren't atheist.

Fourth, it is nonsensical in the extreme to claim that one cannot be an atheist unless one believes a god exists "in some manner". You are again trying to pretend that imaginary is somehow equivalent to existence. Your false equivocation fallacy- trying to exchange two different meanings of the word "exist" as though they are the same- is obvious to anyone.

Atheism is not a belief system, a philosophy, or religion. Atheism has no dogma nor does it have a "cause". The only thing any two atheists can be said to have in common is that they don't believe in gods.

"New Atheism" is just atheists finally being able to openly criticize religion without being burned at the stake. The religious have openly denounced and demonized atheists for several millennia, and yet now we are not allowed to even voice a critical examination of religion without people getting up in arms.

The thing is, atheism doesn't HAVE a cause. It's not a belief system, a philosophy, or a religion. The only thing any two atheists can be said to have in common is that they don't believe in any gods.

Trying to redefine a term to mean something it doesn't is not an improvement.

The term atheist comes from the Greek "a theos", literally "without gods". It is just any person who lacks a belief in deities. End of list.

The Cosmological Argument is both (a) based on a bare assertion fallacy and (b) makes a ludicrous and unfounded logical jump from "the universe has a cause" to "that cause is god" and more specifically "the Abrahamic God"- a jump that has no actual logical support.

The "fine tuning" nonsense is similarly based on a bare assertion fallacy- it simply states that the physical constants in our universe weren't out of necessity or chance but does not support those claims.

As for the moral argument, I can't honestly believe anyone actually buys that.

There is no evidence that any gods exist, so no I don't believe in any gods.

Ah yes- the book that tells us that "God" had to sacrifice himself to himself to get around his own rules that he put in place because a man made from dirt and a woman made from a bone ate a magic fruit given to them by a talking snake?

Sure, sounds infallible to me.

Judaism was an offshoot of the Canaanite religion, but their sect practiced monolatry as they BELIEVED in all the gods in the pantheon (which is what the term "El Elyon" refers to) but only worshiped one- the minor sky deity YHWH (Germanized as Jehovah).

It wasn't until the eighth century BCE that the Jews became monotheists after contact with the Greeks.

CHRISTIANS on the other hand are pretty much polytheists. The "trinity" is a doctrine the early church adopted at the Council of Nicaea. The early Christians were highly divided on whether "Jesus" WAS god or just the son of god- the Council voted on "god" (despite the fact that this made the "atonement" nonsensical- how does one sacrifice himself to himself?), since the Jews of the time were denouncing them as polytheists for worshiping god AND "Jesus". So they stole a march from the Zoroastrians and developed the Trinity nonsense to claim Jesus was god too.

The bible is historically and scientifically inaccurate, contradictory, and riddled with inconsistencies and promotions of unethical behavior.

Actually agnosticism isn't a position on belief at all, but knowledge. The vast majority of atheists and theists both are also agnostic. Agnostic is not some midway point on the belief spectrum between theist and atheist. Theist and atheist are opposite positions on belief, while agnosticism and gnosticism are opposite positions on knowledge.

Atheism has no dogma and no beliefs in common. And since there are atheistic religions that shoots down the "testable" claim to atheist "beliefs".

Not to mention that it is a common conflation fallacy to attach atheism to socialism- they are not integrally related. There have been theistic socialist systems, and in fact Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge based their non-standard version of socialism on tenets of Theravada Buddhism; which, by the way, is where Pol Pot's ACTUAL religious affiliation lay.

There is not a shred of objective, verifiable evidence that any such thing exists.

Because it is more accurate.

CE stands for "Common Era" and BCE "Before Common Era". The old Western system of BC/AD revolved around a religious figure that, because of incorrect calculations, would not have actually been born on the "start" year even if he had existed. The newer system, in addition to being used by academics and scholars, also acknowledges that other cultures did not use the same calendar systems as Western nations did and that the adoption of the Western system was just to make it easier in an Era of globalization.

Hitler was a staunch Christian who cited his God in nearly every speech he ever made- his religion was a large part of why the JEws were his biggest focus.

And for crying out loud, the Nazi emblem has "Gott Mit Uns" on it- "God With Us".

Banning abortion doesn't actually stop abortions- it just forces it into back alleys and kills the desperate women who seek it.

Attempting to bar marriage based on sexuality is a violation of civil rights.