Americans will be walking on the moon 4 years from now. The last time we were there was 1972.

The Washington Post

NASA awards SpaceX, Blue Origin, Dynetics first contracts since 1960s to build spacecraft that would fly astronauts to the moon

Boeing, typically among NASA’s key contractors but whose space program has experienced multiple setbacks and delays, also submitted a bid but was not selected. NASA is trying to meet a 2024 White House-set deadline to return people to the lunar surface.

I thought this was interesting. A landlady explains why it's important to pay the rent even though people are losing their jobs, and being homeless is not a good thing. One more thing: Gavin Newsom is the governor of California. Another one more thing: Click the link to see Nancy Breir's blog.

What Every Fourth Grader Knows

March 23, 2020

Nancy Brier's blog

Ask any fourth grader. Unfairness is what pisses people off.

It’s not infuriating when no one gets candy. It’s infuriating when one person gets it and another person doesn’t. For no reason.

Injustice is how wars start. Many people have died inflicting it and many others fighting it.

So when Gavin Newsom issued his executive order last week, it’s no wonder I felt the bubble of fury rise from inside and ooze through my blood stream.

The next day, a tenant called me and said he wasn’t going to pay rent. Until June. That’s his plan.

“The governor said I don’t have to,” my tenant said.

That’s not what the governor said, but it’s what my tenant heard. The executive order encourages local governments to forbid evictions until May 31st. It seems reasonable because no one should lose their home over covid. We all have enough to worry about.

But remember that science project you did in elementary school? The one where you drew a chain connecting the polar bear to the wildebeest to the fox to the chicken to the egg to the snake to the bug to the grass… that sacred chain that connects us all, that shows our dependence on each other? That same chain happens in the economy.

Business provides the wage. Wage provides the rent. Rent provides the mortgage. Mortgage provides the tax. Tax provides the infrastructure.

You can’t chuck an axe in the middle of the chain without bolloxing up the entire system. If you do, the ones who suffer first are the ones closest to where the axe lands, but eventually, the resulting chaos spreads to everyone.

It’s ironic that huge multinational banks have access to 0% interest, but American Express can still charge individuals 30% when they buy groceries.

And it’s ironic that Gavin Newsom thinks I can provide housing and not get the income it requires to sustain it.

How does he imagine it will work.

I asked my state rep if I could forgo paying property tax since I won’t get my income. He said the state can’t get by without that income.

Yes, that’s how it works.

We look to our leaders. A republican president flings irrational insults at reporters asking reasonable questions. And a democrat governor callously disregards my livelihood.

But here, towards the bottom of the chain, my hope is that kindness will triumph. That people will have manners. That we’ll pay for the goods and services we need to the best of our ability. And that goodwill and charity will sustain us.

All of us, even the landlords.

An excellent credit rating is a good thing. My credit rating made it possible for me to get 2% cash back for everything I buy using my Citibank credit card.

What is a FICO® Score? — FICO Credit Education Series

Whether you’re buying a home, a car or applying for a credit card – lenders want to know the risk they’re taking by lending you money. FICO® Scores are the credit scores used by 90% of top lenders to determine your credit risk. Your FICO® Scores can affect how much money a lender will lend you and at what terms (interest rate). Higher FICO® Scores can often help you qualify for better rates from lenders – which can save you money!

Morons love their dead Magic Jeebus Man. The stupid, it burns.

THE MAGIC JEEBUS MAN

Bsharri, a mountain hamlet in Lebanon, is known for its beauty.

The coronavirus pandemic has put the town on lockdown, after 24 cases were reported in 24 hours. With about 70 cases, Bsharri virus patients make up around 10 percent of the country's total cases.

The Washington Post

Sickness amid the cedars

The Lebanese were watching for the virus. But the outbreak in this secluded and stunningly beautiful place was not what they’d expected.

By Sarah Dadouch

APRIL 27, 2020

BSHARRI, Lebanon — When Lebanon reported its first coronavirus infection in February, the case was a woman who had come from the Muslim holy city of Qom in Iran, which was rapidly becoming the epicenter of the epidemic in the Middle East.

Iran has long been a factor in Lebanon’s highly sectarian politics, and many Lebanese were quick to cast blame on Iran and local Shiite Muslims for Lebanon’s widening outbreak. Avoid Shiite villages and areas, some urged.

So when, weeks later, it emerged that the largest cluster of coronavirus cases in the country was actually in the insular Christian hamlet of Bsharri in the mountains above Beirut, the irony was not lost on many in Lebanon. Bsharri is known for its devout Maronite Christian inhabitants and as a bastion of right-wing Christian militiamen during the country’s long civil war.

Bsharri is also famous for being beautiful. It is widely celebrated for its cedar trees, some of the oldest in the world — called the “Cedars of God” — and the national emblem of Lebanon. Below the town’s newly inaugurated government hospital perched atop a hill extends a lush valley. Streams, waterfalls and water springs abound, filling the silence with a permanent gurgling. Mountains, both green and snow-capped, encircle the town, giving an impression of nature-mandated isolation.

Today, however, the isolation is government imposed. Bsharri is the only town in Lebanon to have been placed under complete quarantine, after 24 cases of the coronavirus were recorded in a 24-hour period early this month. About 70 of the town’s 5,500 residents have now contracted the virus, around 10 percent of all the cases in the country.

[Stirrings of unrest around the world could portend turmoil as economies collapse]

The government has closed off the surrounding Bsharri district, which includes 22 towns and villages, allowing only supplies and police and other official personnel in and out. The emptied streets in the picturesque town look like an abandoned Hollywood set.

Residents are not permitted out of their homes except individually to go shopping. A rotation has been set for restaurants so one is open each day to feed hospital staff and policemen. Policemen are stationed outside markets to limit crowding. “You either wear the mask or quit,” one growled at a grocer.

A sectarian struggle

Lebanon continues to struggle with the religious differences that have long divided it, at times violently, and religious affiliations that define so much of the country’s politics.

The mountains extending north of the capital Beirut are mainly populated by Christians, while the northernmost part of the country is majority Sunni Muslim. Shiites dominate in the south and the northeast of the country and are the base of support for the militant Hezbollah group, backed by Iran.

Top political posts are assigned based on religion, and sectarianism plays a role in the access to public goods and services and availability of jobs, which are becoming ever scarcer as the country struggles with its worst economic crisis in a generation.

Though some Lebanese protested that the coronavirus has no sect, it was perhaps no surprise that the outbreak would also be widely viewed through a sectarian lens, especially given the size of the epidemic in Iran.

“It is as if what Iran already bestows upon Lebanon and the Lebanese isn’t enough,” a newscaster sarcastically began his news segment after Lebanon reported its first case of the virus. “So now it has sent us corona to finish its good deeds. Thank you, Iran.”

Hezbollah’s television channel responded, calling the sectarian attacks “an amoral pandemic that is also difficult to cure.”

When the Hezbollah-aligned health minister recommended isolating two predominantly Christian areas, a member of parliament from one of the areas angrily tweeted, asking the minister to explain rumors about a hospital in a Shiite part of Beirut instead of “deeming our area infested.”

Hezbollah’s response to the uproar was swift, dispatching trucks to spray its areas with disinfectant and enlisting volunteers to stand outside villages, taking temperatures. “The battle against the corona pandemic is a human battle, and does not have a religious, political, or racial affiliation,” said Hezbollah’s leader, Hasan Nasrallah, in a speech.

These steps contained the spread of the epidemic in Shiite areas, while public health measures elsewhere in the country were less aggressive.

[As men wage bloody battle for Syrian province, women sew face masks to fight the next threat]

“The direct political pressure was ugly, because they only shed the spotlight on those coming from Iran,” said a senior doctor at one of the country’s leading hospitals, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. “But in other communities, because those coming from Italy and Egypt and the United Kingdom were not treated with the same scientific approach … what happened, happened.”

The result is reflected in a map issued by the health ministry depicting the spread of the virus across the country. The majority-Christian areas north of Beirut are colored in various shades of blues indicating higher case numbers.

Life under quarantine

The first two confirmed cases in Bsharri were doctors in the town’s hospital, according to Mayor Freddy Kairouz, but no one’s saying where they caught the virus.

Antoine Geagea, the hospital’s chief executive, says health authorities have a pretty good idea who imported it into Bsharri but wouldn’t disclose the individual’s identity, saying it could expose that person to retribution or ridicule.

As news of the Bsharri outbreak spread, the government announced the new containment measures. Food parcels were sent to those in need. Bsharri natives residing elsewhere donated money for virus tests, and district officials began conducting rapid random testing.

“We took the decision to attack the virus,” Kairouz said. “We decided to shut down the area and do mass tests.” He added that more than 11 percent of residents have been tested so far and this wide net may help explain why so many cases have been detected locally.

The decision to shut the town during Easter was not an easy one.

“It’s annoying, and it’s boring,” said Amal Geagea, a sprightly resident. She still sees her son, who lives down the street, but not her daughter, who lives elsewhere in the district. Her only excursion out is to the grocery store.

“I haven’t left the house in two, three weeks; I came out today to get some bread,” said Therese al-Khoury, 76, while shopping for her canned tuna dinner. “I only leave when it’s necessary.”

Police have been posted at checkpoints outside the district’s population centers to curtail travel.

During a recent visit by Washington Post journalists, a police officer forced one driver to retreat. “He wanted to go on a joyride with his friend. Can you imagine the audacity?” the officer said, shaking his head.

[Lebanon is in a big mess. But on coronavirus, it’s doing something right.]

A little earlier, the town’s silence had been broken as an ambulance raced through the streets, pulling up at a hospital directly across from the childhood home of Lebanese writer Gibran Khalil Gibran. An old man was taken in on a stretcher, one of two new cases that day.

Father Charbel Makhlouf has been live-streaming sermons to his parish via Facebook. “It’s a spiritual meeting: You are doing a new strong test [to your faith].” His voice echoed in his large, beautiful church, completely empty. Outside, a recently printed sign: “Please keep a meter and a half between the believers.”

Makhlouf has found strength in a bible passage he sends every morning to his bible study group via messaging app WhatsApp. “Whenever I hold back the rain or send locusts to eat up the crops or send an epidemic on my people,” he read from a worn piece of paper, “if they pray to me and repent and turn away from the evil they have been doing, then I will hear them in heaven, forgive their sins, and make their land prosperous again.”

Others in town are also turning to their faith.

“We’re at the edge of the world, and God is protecting us,” said a local butcher, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he also works as a police officer. But when he thought about the economic crisis that could follow the epidemic, he turned glum.

“After corona, we’ll have famine,” he said.

What I wrote at the Wall Street Journal about our insane moron president.

"The 2020 election may have been decided the moment the makers of Lysol felt obliged to issue a statement disavowing an incumbent president who offhandedly said something about using disinfectant internally to kill coronavirus. That will be one for the history books."

That's reason enough to not vote for Trump.

Another thing I didn't like was Trump's attack against the Post Office. He wants them to raise prices for Amazon. That's a good reason for Amazon to use UPS or someone else to deliver stuff. Trump is too dense to figure that out.

I don't like Biden but I'm voting for him.

I was in the 2,000's for a month. That's over with as usual. Today was a disaster.

APR 30, 2020

6 wins2 draws11 losses

Played 19 Rapid games197928

APR 29, 2020

7 wins2 draws9 losses

Played 18 Rapid games20075

APR 28, 2020

9 wins1 draw9 losses

Played 19 Rapid games20125

APR 27, 2020

12 wins1 draw10 losses

Played 23 Rapid games20076

APR 26, 2020

6 wins1 draw7 losses

Played 14 Rapid games200111

APR 25, 2020

8 wins2 draws5 losses

Played 15 Rapid games20126

APR 24, 2020

5 wins4 draws9 losses

Played 18 Rapid games200624

I wrote this about 2 years ago. It's about assholes who use censorship to defend religious stupidity.

Sunday, September 16, 2018

Richard Dawkins wrote this after 3,000 Americans were murdered for Allah on September 11, 2001: "Those of us who have for years politely concealed our contempt for the dangerous collective delusion of religion need to stand up and speak out. Things are different after September 11th. Let's stop being so damned respectful!"

I recently wrote this comment at New York Times article about the Catholic Church's out of control child abuse problem: "The Catholic Church doesn't need to be fixed. The Catholic Church needs to be completely destroyed."

My comment was not published, probably because what I wrote might offend the stupid fucking assholes who belong to the world's largest child abuse organization.

If I wrote "Islam must be completely destroyed" the New York Times would probably not publish it because I might offend terrorists.

There is a stupid idea that says it's OK to criticize anything and anyone but it's not OK to criticize the extreme stupidity of the fucktards who think a Magic Man is real. In other words it's wrong to hurt the sentiments of god soaked morons. This is suppressing freedom of speech to defend bullshit.

Fortunately at this blog I can write anything I want, for example "We should nuke Mecca."

Should we nuke Mecca? Probably not because crybabies would call it genocide. So while I'm against the idea I think it would be fun to watch.

I found this stuff and I agree with it. It's about agnostic morons.

Do you think one day everyone will be agnostic atheists?

No, there will always be people rational enough to know that agnostic atheism is like being agnostic about Santa. It's stupid to make up special rules for God thingies, just because most people are delusional and believe in them. We humans deal with the preponderance of evidence (not absolutes), so let's not pretend that we have to when dealing with God thingies. God thingies have no more credibility or evidence than the Easter bunny or unicorns. Actually they have less because we know that horses and rabbits exist, so it isn't as much of a stretch. Only a few immutable natural laws are broken for unicorns, but God thingies break every single one of the "unbreakable" natural laws. We can know that Gods don't exist in the same way we can know that any baseless claim is bullshit.

My opponent who lives in Egypt killed me in a game of chess. I looked at his profile and I found something which I will add to my list of favorite quotes.

Muhammed Elhlwany

You must take your opponent into a deep dark forest where 2+2=5, and the path leading out is only wide enough for one.

Egypt

America is winning. "The United States leading the world in both deaths and infections."

Central Park in Manhattan on Monday.Credit...

New York Times

After 100 days, there have been more than one million confirmed infections and a country has been transformed.

It has been 100 days since a 35-year-old man presented to an urgent care clinic in Snohomish County, Wash., with a four-day history of cough and fever and tested positive.

His was the first case to be detected. Since then, more than one million people had tested positive in the United States.

Residents in most states in the country — along with more than half of all humanity — have been ordered to shelter in their homes in the hopes of slowing the spread of the highly contagious virus and to try to keep hospital systems from being overwhelmed.

Still, more than 53,000 people across the United States have died — roughly one in four of the 210,000 deaths around the world.

TIMELINE
Read about how the pandemic has unfolded.

Epidemiologists have estimated that the true number of infections may be about 10 times the known number, and preliminary testing of how many people have antibodies seems to support that view. Similarly, the official death toll is likely to vastly underestimate the true number by at least several thousand, according to an analysis of mortality data by The New York Times.

While the timeline for the spread of the virus across the country has shifted as public health authorities find evidence that the pathogen was spreading in communities earlier than believed, the speed at which the world has been transformed is shocking.

The global economy has suffered such a swift and sudden decline that economists have had to reach back to the Great Depression for analogies. More than 26 million people in the United States have lost their jobs.

Masks are becoming an accepted part of public life, which is why there was such a backlash on Tuesday after Vice President Mike Pence flouted the Mayo Clinic’s protocols on wearing a protective face covering on a visit there.

With the United States leading the world in both deaths and infections, the image of the country has taken a beating around the world, and Americans have been forced to re-examine their own self-image.

The country has watched Mr. Trump speak about the pandemic almost every day in ways that were alternately misleading, resentful, insulting, dangerous and, often, sown with self-praise.

But as the country tries to slowly move out of a lockdown and find a way to restore some form of public life, with no vaccine or therapy yet available, the virus is still setting the course.

FIRST CASES
Read about the investigation into the roots of the virus in the U.S. And about the changing understanding of the spread of the virus.

Handel: Trumpet concertos - One Hour

This might be good news.

New York Times

LIVE UPDATES

Coronavirus Live Updates: F.D.A. Plans to Announce Emergency Use of New Drug After a Trial Showed Shortened Recovery

The U.S. economy shrank at a 4.8 percent annual rate in the first quarter. Officially, more than 53,000 have died, according to The Times’s count, but death rates suggest the true toll is far greater.

RIGHT NOW

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci called one study of an experimental virus drug, remdesivir, “very optimistic,” even as another study found no benefit to severely ill patients.

Johann Friedrich Fasch Trumpet Concerto in D major, Maurice André

I'm adding this New York Times comment to my list of favorite quotes. It's about religious stupidity.

This is one of many comments about god bullshit at the New York Times.

"Religion does nothing besides create false comfort and tribalism. Christianity, Islam and Judaism collectively contribute nothing to the betterment of our real world. The path to human development must begin with the wholesale abandonment of religion."

Something I wrote for Christian fucktards.

Atheism is an acceptance of reality.

Theism requires throwing out reality.

Take your pick.

Do you want to be a normal person or do you want to be an uneducated cowardly know-nothing god-soaked moron who hides in the Dark Ages?

Sometimes the coronavirus is a good thing.

Wikipedia - Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis

The character of Rat came from Pastis's earlier strip, Rat. The character of Pig, who is Rat's opposite, had been featured in The Infirm, which was about an attorney who numbered an evil pig farmer among his clients. Although Pastis had developed the characters, they were still just stick figures with jokes. One day in 1996, Pastis drove to an ice rink in Santa Rosa where Charles Schulz, the creator of Peanuts, had his coffee every day. The meeting did not begin auspiciously, since Pastis blurted out: "Hi, Sparky [Schulz's nickname], my name is Stephan Pastis and I'm a lawyer." Schulz turned pale; he thought Pastis was there to serve him with a subpoena. However, he recovered, and Pastis remembers Schulz's graciousness:

I was a total stranger to him, and he let me sit down at his table and we talked for an hour. I took a picture with him. He looked at some of the strips that I had been doing and gave me some tips. Man, I was on cloud nine.

In addition to Peanuts, Pastis drew inspiration from Dilbert.

What worked for me personally was to study the writing of Dilbert. I just bought a bunch of Dilbert books and studied how to write a 3-panel strip. Then I showed them to a group of people who were acquaintances (but not quite friends) in order to get their honest assessment of which ones were funny and which ones weren't. As to the ins and outs of getting syndicated, I bought a book called "Your Career in the Comics" by Lee Nordling.

Pastis drew about 200 strips for the new comic and selected 40 of the best, but fearing more rejection, let them sit on the counter in his basement for the next two years. It was not until 1999, when he visited the grave of a college friend who had been a free spirit and had encouraged him to be the same, that he overcame his fear and submitted them to three different syndicates, including United Features. United took the unprecedented step of first running the strips on its Comics.com Internet site to gauge reader response. When Scott Adams, Dilbert's creator, whom Pastis had never met, endorsed the strip the response "went through the roof".

Pastis also credits Get Fuzzy cartoonist Darby Conley with contributing to the development of the strip. They met through their syndication attorney, and Conley taught him how to color the Sunday strips and add gray tones to the dailies.

Eight months afterwards, Pastis gleefully quit his law practice. Pastis attributes his dissatisfaction with the law in being helpful insofar that "humor is a reaction to and defense against unhappiness", and that wanting to get out of his job provided him with the impetus to create better comic strips so that he could get selected for syndication.

Fifteen years later, Pearls was still one of the fastest-growing comic strips, appearing in more than 650 newspapers worldwide. Pastis generally works five to nine months ahead of deadline, a rarity in the world of newspaper comics.

Pastis lives in Santa Rosa, California, with his wife and two children, where he is on the board of the Charles Schulz Museum, helping with merchandising rights issues and answering questions about Peanuts.

Schulz is to comic strips what Marlon Brando was to acting. It was so revolutionary. Before ‘Peanuts,’ the writing was physical, over the top, but Sparky goes inside the soul. His influence on me is enormous. I’ve taken his backgrounds, the front porch, the beach and the TV beanbag. Rat is Lucy, Goat is Linus and Pig is Charlie Brown. Sparky is a template, whether or not you know it, he’s the template.

In 2011, Pastis cowrote the Peanuts special Happiness Is a Warm Blanket, Charlie Brown.

In June 2014, Pastis collaborated with Bill Watterson, the creator of Calvin and Hobbes, to do a week-long story line in which a second-grade girl named "Libby" wrote a few of Pastis's cartoon frames for him. After the strips were published, Pastis revealed that the artwork for three of the strips was in fact drawn by Watterson. In the last cartoon of the sequence, Libby explains to Pastis that she would not continue drawing comic strips, saying that "There's a magical world out there," a reference to the words spoken by Calvin in the final strip of Calvin and Hobbes.

This my favorite comic strip. It's about a billionaire who has no moral values, his trophy wife, his homeless friend, and his brilliant daughter who is always getting in trouble.

Barney & Clyde by Gene Weingarten

Wikipedia - Gene Weingarten

Gene Norman Weingarten (born October 2, 1951) is an American syndicated humor columnist at The Washington Post. He is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, and is the only person to win the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing twice. Weingarten is known for both his serious and humorous work. Weingarten's column, "Below the Beltway," is published weekly in The Washington Post magazine and syndicated nationally by The Washington Post Writers Group, which also syndicates Barney & Clyde, a comic strip he co-authors with his son, Dan Weingarten, with illustrations by David Clark.

I published this about 3 years ago. It's about Idiot America and their excuse for being morons. They have faith so who needs evidence. The stupid, it burns.

Tuesday, October 24, 2017

Someone with the internet name "Methane Mama" wrote some stuff about creationist retards. This is excellent.

Creationists don't have to care about evidence. They have "faith."

"Faith" is the superpower that allows even the most stupid among the God garbage followers to be smarter than everyone else on the planet and renders all of their beliefs to be absolutely true and everyone else wrong at the same time. That is some powerful juju, there.

"Faith" brings a level of certitude unmatched by mere evidence. For example, science does not have enough evidence to declare how the Universe came into existence. But, the God garbage followers need no logic, no reason, no rationality, no evidence, and no effort on their part, whatsoever, to know, for certain, that THEIR God thingy did it. And, no one on the planet can convince them, otherwise. Why? Because they have FAITH.

That's the power of faith, and they will tell you so - just not in those words. And, all they have to do is decide to exercise it. That's it - they just decide that they know the truth. Isn't that easy? Isn't that convenient? And, doesn't it make sense that it would appeal to both the lazy and the stupid?

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This blog has 1,414 posts about Idiot America at Idiot America.

The is Vice President Fucktard Mike Pence. He is one of the know-nothing creationist assholes of the Fucktard Trump administration.

I published this a year ago. Here it is again. Several people at the New York Times wrote comments about religious stupidity.

Monday, March 25, 2019

New York Times - "A God Problem" Perfect. All-powerful. All-knowing. The idea of the deity most Westerners accept is actually not coherent.

I found these comments at the New York Times which are much more interesting than the article.

There were some fucktard comments, for example this gullible moron:

"Philosophical games are fun. But God is not a philosophical concept; He has revealed Himself to us and, as nearly as we could get the message, He said we should think of Him as omnipotent, omniscient, infinitely good and infinitely merciful. And, to really blow tiny little philosophical minds, He revealed that He loves us and wants to help up to attain holiness. The rest of the message can only be learned by dedicating oneself to Him and living in Him."

The comment I wrote: "I have been reading the comments. I never saw so many normal people (aka atheists) in one place before."

"Religion does nothing besides creating false comfort and tribalism. Christianity, Islam, and Judaism collectively contribute nothing to the betterment of our real world. The path to human development must begin with the wholesale abandonment of religion."

"Since humans first swung out of the trees, history is filled with thousands of gods that humankind has created for itself. Starting with the first one they have all been real until the next new god came along and made the previous gods obsolete, right up to the present day. Gods provide simple answers for difficult questions and are provided with mystical and magical powers to rule over everything. Humans have always wanted to believe this nonsense despite the lack of a shred of evidence to prove what they believe. Just remember all gods and religions have been created by man with no proof of their existence. Humankind has been very foolish for millennia."

"As a girl, I was raised in a very traditional Roman Catholic house with a father who expected my mother to obey him because that is what she said in her marriage vows to him in the 1950's. I figured out as a teenager that the idea of an all-powerful, all-knowing and of course male God was most likely created by men to prop up the patriarchy. That the Catholic priesthood was/is all male only cemented the theory for me that the idea of God was made up by men to keep women subservient to them."

"Many of the defensive comments here from Believers are based on assumptions and dogma that are stated as incontrovertible fact (i.e. God is this..., God is that... The Bible says, etc...). In other words, circular reasoning -- deploying their assumptions to demonstrate that their assumptions are true. Yet they also state that God is unknowable, beyond human comprehension (a convenient special pleading, a get-out-of-argument-free card), therefore logic does not apply. So, how can they know any of these attributes of God if God is unknowable?"

"Tony Pratt - Canberra Australia - "Professor Atterton, thank you for your cogent writing here. Once again, we have a demonstration of how silly all this speculation about the existence of god is - especially its multitudinous accompanying dogmas. All of the history of our evolution demonstrates that once human self consciousness emerged we had to ask where did it come from. Since the earliest assessments was that humans could not have evolved consciousness out of our own spectacular brains the next best explanation everywhere was it must have been god in all his and her myriad forms. Everywhere, in all cultures, local humans invented god. Humans' capacity to imagine anything clearly includes the imagining of god. We haven't yet properly got to the implications the awful realisation that we - all sentient humans everywhere for all time - are god - and that we are responsible for everything that emerges out of our consciousness. What happens to us in our world is our responsibility. It has nothing to do with any invented God anytime anywhere."

"After reading in a National Geographic magazine entitled "The Birth of Religion" that religion was created in southern Turkey to keep social order, I felt a sense of relief knowing that it's man made and is inherently flawed. I just wish I didn't spend so much time in my life reading about the many sides of religion."

"If I am a King, or a Preacher, I definitely want an all powerful God defined. God so defined, when I tell 'God's people' what God wants, that same God who speaks only through me, then, hey, they better hop to it. Or else. And don't forget to be back next Sunday and tithe."

"The last words spoken by the pilot were ‘God is great’ as the plane plowed into the ground. With this, and all the wars, all the scandals and abused children. God is not great."

“Is man merely a mistake of God's? Or God merely a mistake of man?” - Friedrich Nietzsche It turns out that 'God' is a cruel manmade invention used to wield power over innocents, a fairy tale for vulnerable, naive and frightened minds to be duped by its fancy buildings, its organ music, it costumes, its pageantry and the irrational fear of mortal death. There's a cruelness in religion that teaches people to live for the next life while ignoring or shortchanging the current life. Have you ever seen anything more irrational than belief in the supernatural and religious fairy tales? It's all so embarrassing, so childish and cruel. Off with your mindless head, organized religion."

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There are more than 300 excellent comments at the New York Times. I recommend it. If you don't have a subscription you can still read 5 articles a month for free.