I've personally never read the Bible, so I appreciate your quotations as well as your use of citation (a touch that most people do not care to do these days). While, your attitude is hostile, your argument is sound. Well done.

I would argue that the bible cannot "allow" anything, seeing as it is not a sentient being and therefore does not have the ability to impede anything (allowance being the lack of disruption). Now, if you are suggesting that a case is made in the bible that rape is something that ought to be condoned, I pose this question: why does it matter? Assuming that the Bible does, in fact, contain a case for rape as something permissible, then why is it even worth acknowledging considering the liberal view of the people in power? Such behavior would not be allowed by the global community. Why should we care if anything in the bible conflicts with the current majority opinion? Groupthink is reality as far as policy is concerned. This is why all people are equal in the United States. To say otherwise is blasphemy, even if it means silencing the voice of reason.

Also, I just noticed a typo. I intended to say, "no one is perfect." I'm not saying that we have a perfect candidate currently. A confounding oversight on my part. I apologize.

Yeah, I find it funny how most of the people writing here don't actually like either candidate. You've all fallen prey to well-engineered mudslinging though. Neither candidate is horrible, but neither candidate is worth voting for, and here's why:

Voting for a President is a waste of time. The president, while he is a psychological leader of the United States, has virtually no policy-making power. Unless there is a president with a party majority in congress, nothing gets done, and when there is a majority, the things that get done are immediately repealed as soon as the other party gains a foothold. Why? Well, I think that is a simple enough question to answer. The two party system is polarizing. Our political system is completely broken because of the two-party system. Until we get a multi-party system, progress in the United States will be completely stagnated. There needs to be something to facilitate cooperation, and a strong third party is the answer to that problem (or even more than three parties is preferable).

I also said that neither candidate is horrible. While I think it is silly that I need to point this out, Romney is a very smart, very successful business owner and Obama is a Harvard grad (almost certainly making him a borderline genius) who is a lawyer and a self-made millionaire. I mean, Jesus Christ, I certainly wouldn't consider any one I know to be more qualified to lead and I have friends at MIT, Harvard, Yale, etc. People who whine about the condition of the candidates are truly comical. First of all, don't believe everything you hear. Secondly, one is perfect, and there will never be a candidate that wins the presidency untarnished by campaigning. The ignorance of the masses makes liars out of any politician who stands a chance of winning. Until a candidate can expect his honesty to be rewarded by an educated voting base (good luck with that) you will never know what you are voting for. My suggestion: don't vote, and if you do, just pick the smartest one and pray to your deities.

Military should not concern themselves with the issue of sexuality at all. To make designations is divisive which is contrary to the sense of unity that they attempt to achieve in the military. The only way prejudice can go away is when people stop calling attention to the differences between people and start focusing on commonality. All attempts to cater to gays, african-americans, hispanics, and any other minority simply points out to people that there is, in fact, a gap to bridge and this calling attention to the gap only fosters prejudice. The military should focus on defensive and offensive procedure and not on politics. The argument that gay troops are inherently disruptive in the military is unfounded. There have been wonderful soldiers that later came out.

Theft is predicated on the idea that you owned to money to begin with. Government, however, is predicated on the idea that a percentage of your paycheck actually belongs to them due to services rendered. Basically, if you are a citizen of a country you implicitly agree to follow the laws of the land. One of these laws is that you agree that the government is entitled to a share of your earnings (meaning that the second that money is earned by you, it belongs to the government). It was not stolen because it was never yours. If you are a citizen, you implicitly agree to this. That agreement means that it is not stolen, but rather, is a contract. Now, if you do not agree to this contract anymore, it means you must get out of it and this is done by moving elsewhere and relinquishing the citizenship that binds you to this contract. If the government then came after you for your earnings (ones earned when you were no longer a citizen) then it would be stealing. Now, many may say that they never agreed to such a contract and that you were forced into it upon birth. You would be correct, but this has nothing to do with fairness. Fairness is another issue. Taxes, high or not, are not inherently theft.

Hey, it made me sad that creationists wouldn't throw down the gauntlet here and attempt to debate you, so I'm going to go ahead and play devil's advocate here. I think the problem is the way you worded it. You told them to "disprove evolution" which is really an unreasonable task. A task just as unreasonable as me asking you to "prove evolution". How about we decide to provide evidence instead. Instead of using the creation of the universe as a preface for this argument, let's skip ahead to the beginning of life. As a creationist to this argument, I say that God created the creatures as they are here now. Life is so complex, that "intelligent design" is a logical conclusion serving as the only valid explanation for the otherwise unanswerable question of where life came from. When you establish what your argument is predicated upon, we can discuss that further. As far as evolution is concerned, it is simply illogical when you trace it back to its origins. It is easy to say that things evolved to fill niches, but what did they evolve from? What forced them to evolve? Take, for example, the difference between mammals and birds. Birds lay eggs and walk away. Mammals, on the other hand, must nurture and care for their young, expending a great deal of effort. It seems to me that the bird method is superior in just about all ways. Without a biological contract to care for the young, an individual is free to reproduce more often, creating more offspring with the potential to succeed in doing the same. This continuity of existence is the premise for evolution. Evolutionary speaking, this method would make more sense if it weren't for the fact that eggs were vulnerable when left undefended. Therefore, evolution would select for thicker and stronger eggs until they simply could not be broken prior to hatching. Logically, using the evolutionary thought process, egg-laying would be the dominate form of birthing. This was just an example of course, but evolution pins creatures against each other. In predator-prey relationships, evolution pins them against each other in an evolution contest. For example, prey could develop digging as an escape tactic while the predator could develop speed to catch them before they dig to safety. Eventually, one mutated freak in the species would be unreachable by the best of predators. This freak would reproduce and would lead his species to safety underground while the predators would go extinct after years of decreasing success with the one mutated freak's offspring. Predator-prey relationships would, logically, fade from existence. However, we see them still today, balanced as god intended. If the species change because of evolution we would see this perfect harmony disrupted, however, it is not because the predators and the prey each match each other by culling the weak and finding new weak to fill the void. Your move.

I love the title "attention whore." That is such a wonderful bit of politics. Yes, seeking the attention and, hopefully, the approval of your peers (in this case the random rabble on the internet) is inherent in human nature. Go out into the world and impose yourself on others like a good little human.

I hate how it forces you to one side or the other. Idealistically, yes, it should be abolished. Thinking about it from this way is depressing though. You see, there are too many people alive right now. We simply do not need them all. For this reason there are people who are completely desperate and willing to work for less money than others. This competition of undermining eventually leads to people working for less than what is necessary to sustain life (see industrial period of United States). What it comes down to is that people are not worth the food they eat for big business. Ideologically, a person getting paid more than what they are worth seems unethical (if you subscribe to the idea of capitalism) but the cold truth is that individuals are not worth all that much in the grand scheme of things. We are replaceable cogs. The minimum wage forces companies to give people the minimum needed to sustain life and this allows the quality of life to improve for the working class which creates the satisfaction necessary to sustain a government to preside over the people. So, in practicality, the wage should exist (predicated on the idea that we believe society is worth sustaining).

Something to preface this: While an example undermines a wholistic view contrary to your point (for example, if I were to say that atheists as an entirety are without faith, then your counterexample would invalidate that point) it does not prove a wholistic view to the contrary (i.e. it does not prove that all atheists have faith).

That said, I would like to dispel the misunderstandings about atheism. People say that anyone that does not believe in the existence of a god is an atheist. This is not correct. Atheists believe the contrary: That god does not exist. Now this, is also a point of confusion. There are different types of atheists. For example, atheism and agnosticism are not mutually exclusive. An agnostic believes that there can neither be proof for nor against the existence of a god. It says nothing of the individual's stance. For this reason, someone can be an agnostic-atheist meaning that while the person does not think the condition of a god can be validated, they are of the opinion that he does not exist due to evidence. Evidence and proof are different as well, but I have enough faith in you readers to know the difference there (don't disappoint me). Obviously, I am an agnostic-atheist because I would not have otherwise had the motivation to delineate. Speaking from experience (though I cannot say that it is free from bias) it is possible to be objective as an atheist just as it is possible to be objective as a deist. A person, I suppose, could accumulate enough evidence throughout a lifetime to entertain the idea of a god and be a deist. I say "entertain," because to say with certainty that a god exists, or on the contrary, to say that he does not exist with evidence in lieu of proof is the mark of foolishness (and yes, people are foolish). It is my hope that one day everyone will either be an agnostic deist or an agnostic atheist. To quote my favorite movie.

"The search for god is absurd?"

"It is is everyone dies alone."