Daily Archives: July 12, 2016

Atheism – RationalWiki

Posted: July 12, 2016 at 6:20 am

Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely solely upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason. We may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, openmindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake.

Atheism, from the Greek a-, meaning "without", and theos, meaning "god", is the absence of belief in the existence of gods. Theos includes the Abrahamic YHWH(s), Zeus, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and every other deity from A to Z[1] (and 0-9,!, ", #, $ or any other character, obviously). For the definition of atheism, the terms "God" and "a god" are used interchangeably as there is no difference between a monotheistic deity and a polytheistic pantheon of deities when it comes to complete disbelief in them. This also has the deliberate intent of ignoring the privileged position Yahweh has held in English grammar. Most atheists also do not believe in anything supernatural or paranormal (someone like this would be considered a naturalist).

We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.

Tied up with some of the more awkward aspects of defining the term "atheist" is the question of what god, or type of god, is being denied. This is particularly important for those who claim that atheism is supported by evidence (more specifically, the lack of evidence for a theistic case).

If the god being denied is the interventionist God, which most theists hold to exist, then the argument against the existence of this being is easy; the lack of any demonstrable interventions demonstrates the god's lack of existence. In this case, absence of evidence is evidence of absence. However, if the god being denied is of a less interventionist, or deist, type god, then the above argument regarding evidence doesn't work. Indeed, the only possible "evidence" for a deist god is the very existence of the universe, and most sane people don't tend to deny the universe exists. On the other hand as said "evidence" is simply asserted and isn't testable in any way, it is a lot less than wholly convincing and we return to "What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."

Whether atheism also requires a person to disbelieve in all other forms of magic, or ghosts, or psychic powers is also a question. These are not "gods" in the conventional sense at all, but they are still supernatural entities or powers. More "hardline" atheists would insist that disbelief in all things supernatural is mandatory for the label of "atheist." They would argue that this follows from the fact that atheism is a rational position, and that therefore atheists should take rational positions on other matters also. What does and what does not constitute a "god" in the case of atheism can often be very subjective; the definition could be restricted to monotheistic "creator" gods, or expanded to include all supernatural entities, or used to describe only things that are worshipped or idolised. The variables that arise when trying to perfectly codify "atheism" are numerous, and this is fitting with its position as specifically a lack of belief.

However, atheism only makes sense in the context of the ubiquity of religion and theistic belief worldwide. If religions didn't exist, atheism wouldn't exist and any discussion of the subject would be inherently meaningless - the world doesn't feature books, internet debates and billboard campaigns saying that it's fine to disbelieve in Bertrand Russell's celestial teapot precisely because few, if any, people believe in the teapot. Therefore a working, albeit still slightly subjective, definition of what constitutes a "god" can be developed based on the beliefs of self-declared religions of the world. As a thought experiment we can conceive of a religion that achieves literal overnight success by promoting some god, Athkel,[3] who will become a worldwide phenomenon tomorrow. An atheist would simply not believe in Athkel tomorrow, despite the fact they had no belief in him/her yesterday because it is a self defined religious deity.

There are many ways to describe different types of atheism and some of these are explained below. These shouldn't be read as factions or sects within atheism in the same way as denominations and sects within religion, Protestant/Catholicism in Christianity, Sunni/Shiite in Islam, and their multiple sub-groups for example. One does not "join" a group of implicit atheists. Instead of being sects that dictate people's beliefs, these should be taken as models to, at least roughly, describe people's beliefs and their attitudes towards belief itself. There are many similarities, all of which are included in the blanket term "atheist." However - as is typical in atheist thought - not all atheists consider these divisions particularly relevant, worthwhile, or meaningful.

The commonality among these various modes of atheism is the statement that no god or gods created natural phenomena such as the existence of life or the universe. Instead, these are usually explained through science, specifically without resort to supernatural explanations. Morality in atheism is also not based on religious precepts such as divine commandments or revelation through a holy text - many alternative philosophies exist to derive or explain morality, such as humanism.

Implicit atheism is simply the state of not believing in any gods.

Explicit atheism is a conscious rejection, either of the belief in gods or of their existence. Explicit atheists can be weak or strong atheists, but all strong atheists are explicit atheists.

Weak atheism (sometimes equated with "pragmatic atheism" or "negative atheism") describes the state of living as if no gods exist. It does not require an absolute statement of God's non-existence. The argument is based on the fact that as there is no evidence that gods, spatial teapots or fairies exist, we have no reason to believe in them. This argument could also be classified as extreme agnosticism, or "agnostic atheism" - as it is an acknowledgment of the lack of evidence but acting as if there were no gods.

Pragmatic atheists however are frequently reluctant to make outright statements like "Gods (or fairies) do not exist", because of the great difficulties involved in proving the absolute non-existence of anything - the idea that nothing can be proved is held in the philosophy of pyrrhonism. Consequently many pragmatic atheists would argue that the burden of proof does not lie with them to provide evidence against the extraordinary concept that gods exist. They would argue that it is up to the supporters of various religions to provide evidence for the existence of their own deities, and that no argument is necessary on the atheist's part.

Christopher Hitchens put it another way when he said: "What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence."

Strong atheism (sometimes equated with "theoretical atheism") makes an explicit statement against the existence of gods. Strong atheists would disagree with weak atheists about the inability to disprove the existence of gods. Strong atheism specifically combats religious beliefs and other arguments for belief in some god (or gods), such as Pascal's Wager, and argument from design. These arguments tend to be geared toward demonstrating that the concept of god is logically inconsistent or incoherent in order to actively disprove the existence of a god.[4]Theological noncognitivism, which asserts the meaninglessness of religious language, is an argument commonly invoked by strong atheists.[5] In contrast, weak atheist arguments tend to concentrate on the evidence (or lack thereof) for god, while strong atheist arguments tend to concentrate on making a positive case for the non-existence of god.

An apatheist has no interest in accepting or denying claims that a god or gods exist or do not exist. An apatheist considers the very question of the existence or non-existence of gods or other supernatural beings to be irrelevant and not worth consideration under any circumstances.

In short: they simply don't care. (Well, OK, they care enough to give themselves a name - so that people explicitly know what it is they don't care anything about. But that's it.)

Antitheism is, perhaps surprisingly, technically separate from any and all positions on the existence or non-existence of any given deity. Antitheism simply argues that a given (or all possible) human implementations of religious beliefs, metaphysically "true" or not, lead to results that are harmful and undesirable, either to the adherent, to society, or - usually - to both. As justification the antitheists will often point to the incompatibility of religion-based morality with modern humanistic values, or to the atrocities and bloodshed wrought by religion and by religious wars. Religious moderation as compared to religious extremism is an example of theistic anti-theism, also known as dystheism. Dystheism also encompasses questioning the morals even of a deity you believe in, e.g. chosing to obey commandments on nonviolence over calls to violence from God, despite them both being clearly put forward by this alleged giver of all morals.

We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes.

Not all atheists are "disaffected with religion" some were just never raised with or indoctrinated with religious beliefs in the first place. Hence a substantial number have nothing to become disaffected with. However, in areas where religious belief is essentially taken as normal, there is a high chance that a person will have been religious before "coming out" as an atheist. As the term "atheist" only really means something in the context of ubiquitous religious belief, being disaffected or unconvinced by religion is certainly a factor in most, if not all, people who declare themselves as an atheist. As has been said previously, there is debate in the atheist community and not all atheists would agree with all of these reasons or even consider them relevant to atheism.

One of the major intellectual issues regarding disenchantment with religion is the fact that most world religions insist that all other faiths are wrong. While some moderate believers may like to take a stance that "all religions are right, they're just different interpretations", it's undeniable that heresy and apostasy are looked down upon very harshly in many faiths. This suggests the possibility that no religion is right, and further suggests that, because the vast majority of believers in any faith are born into it, being a member of the "correct" group or "the elect" is merely an accident of birth in most cases. There is also historical evidence that organized religion, while professing a peaceful moral code, is often the basis for exclusion and war as well as a method to motivate people in political conflicts. The enmity among different religions and even among sects within the same religion adds credibility to this idea.

Other reasons may be more directly to do with a religion or its specifics - namely (1) the evils that the concept of religion has produced over the ages, (2) the hypocrisy of professed believers and religious leaders who exhort their followers to help the poor, love their neighbors and behave morally but become wealthy through donations to the church and carry love for certain neighbors to an immoral extreme as defined by their own professed religious beliefs, and (3) the contradiction between talk of a loving god and a world in which children starve to death and innocent people are tortured and killed. Issues with religion may arise due to the nature of fundamentalists - insisting that their holy texts are literally true. This leads to attempts by such fundamentalists to undermine education by censoring scientific knowledge that seems to contradict their beliefs. Intelligent design is a prominent case of this (see Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District). Often this doesn't sit well with moderate believers and especially those who may be on the verge of losing their faith, especially when the evidence provided by daily experience suggests that there may be no events that cannot be explained by common sense and scientific study.

Other issues that atheists have with religion involve the characteristics of supposed gods. Atheists sometimes view the idea that a supreme all-knowing deity would have the narcissistic need to be worshiped, and would punish anyone for worshiping a different god (or none at all), to be perverse.

Lastly, formerly religious atheists often report to have had their belief system unsettled by lack of evidence supporting the notion of the supernatural.

Arguments related to the burden of proof deal with whether atheists must disprove theism or theists must prove theism. Conventionally, the burden of proof lies with someone proposing a positive idea - or as Karl Popper fans would put it, those who are proposing something falsifiable. By this standard, atheists have no need to prove anything, and just need to render arguments for the existence of God as non-compelling. However, the ubiquity of religion in society and history have often shifted the burden of proof to atheists, who must subsequently prove a negative. Assuming that God exists is known as presuppositionalism and has always been a key tenet of Christian apologetics but is usually rejected by more sensible scholars. The absurdity of being asked to prove a negative is demonstrated in Bertrand Russell's teapot thought experiment - where no matter how hard you look, you can't thoroughly disprove the belief that a teapot is out there in space, orbiting the sun somewhere between Earth and Mars. This sort of presuppositional thinking is illogical, so asking an atheist to disprove God is an unreasonable request.

Occam's razor can also be invoked as a guide to making the fewest assumptions, and assuming God exists a priori is a major assumption that should be avoided. Combining these thoughts to lay the burden of proof on theists indicates that without supporting evidence, the default position on God must be either weak-ish atheism or agnosticism rather than theism. Proponents of atheism argue that the burden of proof has not been met by those proposing that a god exists, let alone the specific gods described by major religions.

If someone doesn't value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove that they should value it? If someone doesnt value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of logic?

Logical arguments try to show that God cannot possibly exist (at least as described). Barring any escape hatch arguments like Goddidit, some properties of God are not compatible with each other or known facts about the world, and thus a creator-god cannot be a logically consistent and existent entity. These arguments are heavily dependent on the use of common descriptions of the Abrahamic God as a target: things such as omnipotence, omnipresence, and omnibenevolence. As a result, they are not as useful in trying to refute the claims of, say, Neopaganism, and are also vulnerable to the tactic of moving the goalposts by changing the descriptions of God.

The omnipotence paradox postulates that true omnipotence is not logically possible or not compatible with omniscience. This is primarily a logical argument based on the general question of whether an omnipotent being could limit its own power - if yes, it would cease to be omnipotent, if no, it wouldn't be omnipotent. Hence the paradox that shows, through contradiction, that God cannot exist as usually described.

Other logical arguments try to prove that god is not compatible with our scientific knowledge of reality. The Problem of evil states that a good god wouldn't permit gratuitous evil, yet such evil occurs, so a good god does not exist.[6] The argument from design is often given as proof of a creator, but it raises the following logical question: if the world is so complex that it must have had a creator, then the creator must be at least as complex and must therefore have a creator, and this would have to have had a more complex creator ad infinitum. Also, the argument from design does not offer evidence for any specific relgion; while it could be taken as support for the existence of a god or gods, it doesn't argue for the Christian God any more than, say, the Hindu pantheon.

While believers hasten to point out that their gods don't need to follow logic, let alone the known laws of physics, this is really a case of special pleading and doesn't so much prove anything itself. Atheists therefore tend to reject these counters to the logical arguments as they mostly beg the question of a creator's existence and, very arbitrarily, plead that a creator can be exempt from the same logic that was used to "prove" its existence.

I know of no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too desirous of evidence in support of their core beliefs.

At the root of the worldview of most atheists is evidence, and atheists point out that sufficient evidence for the existence of gods is currently very lacking, and thus there is no reason to believe in them. Evidential arguments are less ambitious than logical arguments because, rather than proving that there is reason not to believe in a god, they show that there is no reason to believe in a god (See Burden of proof above). It is important to remember that what constitutes sufficient evidence can be quite subjective, although rationalism and science do offer some standardization. Various "holy books" exist that testify to the existence of gods, and claim that alleged miracles and personal experiences all constitute evidence in favor of the existence of a god character of some sort. However, atheists reject these as insufficient because the naturalistic explanations behind them (tracing authors of the holy texts, psychological experiments, and scientific experiments to explain experiences, and so on) are more plausible - indeed, the very existence of plausible naturalistic explanations renders the supernatural explanations obsolete. In addition these books make claims for a variety of faiths, so to accept the Bible's stories as evidence, one would also have to accept as evidence the miracle stories from other religions' holy books.

Atheists often cite evidence that processes attributed to a god might also occur naturally as evidential arguments. If evolution and the big bang are true, then why would a creator god have needed them?[7]Occam's razor makes theistic explanations less compelling.

Many atheists argue, in similar vein to the born-again Christian who "just knows" that God exists, that the day-to-day experience of the atheist demonstrates quite clearly that God does not. This is because they have an image in their heads of what this "God" would have to look like, viz., an entity in the vein of the God of the Old Testament who runs around zapping entire cities, turning people into pillars of salt, and generally answering people's prayers in flashes of fire and brimstoneor, answering prayers for the victory of a given football team, but not answering those made on behalf of starving children in disadvantaged parts of the world.

Nobody knows for sure how many clergy members are secretly atheists (or are secretly on the fence, with serious doubts about their religion). But almost everyone I've spoken with in Clergy Project strongly suspects that the numbers are high.

Studying religion in depth during training for clerical work can lead a person to examine religious ideas critically. The study of Christian theology will include the whole of the Bible, and include historical background which can lead to rational doubt. [9][10]

In 2011, the Freedom From Religion Foundation and the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Science and Reason launched a confidential support group for clergy who no longer believe, the Clergy Project, and by December 2012 the group had almost 400 members. One of the founders of Clergy Project is Dan Barker, co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, who was an evangelical preacher for nineteen years before becoming an atheist.[11]Gretta Vosper is openly atheist as a minister and her congregation supports her. Former Methodist pastor Teresa MacBain received online support from Clergy Project before coming out as an atheist dramatically at an atheist convention in spring 2012. She became Public Relations Director of American Atheists. [12] MacBain currently works helping atheist groups to build communities with what she sees as the positive aspects of religion like music, ritual and community service without God.[13]

Freethought Blogger Greta Christina articulates a possible effect of clergy openly leaving Christianity on their parishioners' beliefs. The more traditional position of clergy is that they are somehow endowed with answers to all questions of faith. If these trained religious authorities start saying they have no answers to normal "Crises of Faith", even more if some of them suggest the most reasonable answer is atheism, lay Christians will find continuing with their belief more difficult. [14] It is worth noting, however, that modern clergy trained in most US or UK universities are discouraged from claiming to be exempt from such crises of faith, and to encourage people to share a "journey of spiritual discovery". Perhaps atheism must simply be accepted as an outcome of that endeavor.

Because atheism is effectively a lack of inherent religious or political ideology, there is very little that unifies all atheists.

That said, atheists do tend to fit a certain profile.

Specific research on atheists conducted in 2006 suggests that the true proportion of atheists is 2%[15][16][17] to 4% in the United States, 17% in Great Britain and 32% in France. A 2004 Telegraph poll found that 44% of Britons believed in a god, 35% did not, and 21% did not know.[18]

According to a 2012 WIN-Gallup International poll, 13% of the world identifies as "atheist", 23% identifies as "not religious", and 59% identifies as "religious"; these results were 3% more "atheist", 9% less "religious", and 6% more "non-religious" than 2005. Of note, in the United States 13% fewer people identified as "religious".[19]

Many studies have shown that groups with higher intelligence or more education have significantly more atheists.[20] A recent meta-analysis of 39 eligible studies from 1927 to 2002 was published in Mensa Magazine, and concluded that atheists are more likely to be of higher intelligence than their religious counterparts.[21] According to an article in the prestigious science journal Nature in 1998 the belief in a personal god or afterlife was very low among the members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. Only 7.0% believed in a personal god as compared to more than 85% of the general U.S. population.[22] A 2012 WIN-Gallup International poll found that people with college education were 16% less likely to describe themselves as religious than those without complete high school education.[19] A survey conducted by the Times of India in 2015 revealed that 22% of IIT-Bombay graduates do not believe in the existence of God, while another 30% do not know.[23] According to a Harvard survey, there are more atheists and agnostics entering Harvard University, one of the top ranked schools in America, than Catholics and Protestants. According to the same study, atheists and agnostics also make up a much higher percentage of the students than the general public.[24][25]This may suggest that the more intelligent subjects are more unlikely to believe in god or supernatural powers. An alternative interpretation is that having completed the kind of education that makes you likely to do well in IQ tests is also likely to have either divested you of religiosity or at least made you less susceptible to the kind of beliefs in a personal god which characterise Christian fundamentalism. Yet another possibility is that those with more education are simply more likely to have thought seriously about religion and scrutinized the things they were brought up to believe; the higher intelligence among atheists may simply be because those who achieve high levels of education tend to be smarter than average (meaning that it's not so much that smart people are atheists as that atheists tend to be smart people). If so, then if atheism were to become mainstream, we could expect the average age of atheists to go down, eventually approaching the average age of religious people.

The Programme for International Student Assessment notes that the best education is present in China and Singapore, while the poorest is present in Peru, Colombia, Qatar and Indonesia.[26] China is noted for having an atheist majority[27] and Singapore is noted for having a religious majority of Buddhists.[28] Peru and Colombia have an overwhelming religious Catholic Christian majority[29][30] and Qatar and Indonesia have an overwhelming religious Islamic majority.[31][32]

Education professor Yong Zhao asserts that the reason why countries with such differing religious attitudes succeed, while countries with other differing religious attitudes fail is simply due to the excessive workload and testing present in the Confucian cultural circle, the students within which make for outstanding test takers.[33]

Studies have shown that groups with more income have significantly more atheists. A 2012 WIN-Gallup International poll found that people in the highest quintile of income were 17% less likely to describe themselves as religious than the bottom quintile.[19] This is likely because those with more education tend to have higher incomes.

A recent study published in the Annals of Family Medicine suggests that, despite what some may think, religiousness does not appear to have a significant effect on how much physicians care for the underserving.[34]

The Pew Research Center (2014) reports that in the US:[35]

The Pew report also reported that 57% of "unaffiliated" were male and 43% were female.

Atheists are becoming more numerous but also more diverse. White middle-class men such as Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens no longer define the movement. One blogger argues that

Other atheists [Who?] strongly disagree and want to see the atheist movement focus on philosophical arguments against religion and pseudoscience.[36]

African American atheists are a small minority (2% of the American population) facing severe prejudice.

In most African-American communities, it is more acceptable to be a criminal who goes to church on Sunday, while selling drugs to kids all week, than to be an atheist who ... contributes to society and supports his family.

Despite this black atheists are getting together in online groups and giving each other confidence, also online groups progress to arranging offline meetings. [37] Atheists of color frequently feel they have different priorities from white atheist groups; they may be allied to faith groups that help poor blacks and fight racial discrimination. Atheists of color also form their own groups focusing more on economic and social problems their communities face and hope general atheist groups will focus more on these issues in the future. Sikivu Hutchinson is one of many atheists of color campaigning against injustice faced by poor people, black people, LGBT people, women and other oppressed groups. [38][39]

Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it, too?

There has been a long history of rational people who have not accepted superstitious or magical explanations of natural phenomena and who have felt that "gods" are not necessary for the working of the world. The Eastern philosophy of Buddhism is broadly atheistic, explicitly eschewing the notion of a creation myth. In the Western world, there have been atheists almost as long as there has been philosophy and writing. Some of the most famous thinkers of the ancient world have been critical of belief in deities or eschewed religion entirely - many favouring logic and rationality to inform their lives and their actions, rather than religious texts. Democritus, who originally conceived of the atom, hypothesized a world without magic holding it together. Critias, one of the Thirty Tyrants of Athens, preceded Marx when he called religion a tool to control the masses.

Perhaps the best example of an explicitly atheistic ancient philosophy is the Carvaka school of thought, which originated in India in the first millennium BCE. The Carvakas posited a materialistic universe, rejected the idea of an afterlife, and emphasized the need to enjoy this life.[43]

Modern atheism in the Western world can be traced to the Age of Enlightenment. Important thinkers of that era who were atheists include Baron d'Holbach and Denis Diderot. The Scottish philosopher David Hume, though not explicitly avowing atheism, wrote critical essays on religions and religious beliefs (his most famous being a critique of belief in miracles), and posited naturalistic explanations for the origins of religion in The Natural History of Religion as well as criticizing traditional arguments for the existence of God in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.

Not until recently, however, did the term known as "atheism" begin to carry its current connotation. In an increasing number of countries around the world it is a neutral or unimportant label. The nation of New Zealand, for example, has thrice elected an agnostic woman (Helen Clark) as Prime Minister, followed by its current agnostic leader (John Key). Several Prime Ministers of the UK have been atheists, including Clement Attlee, and the current deputy PM, Nick Clegg. Also, the former Prime Minister of Australia, Julia Gillard, is openly atheist, and at least one other former Australian PM was atheist. However, in more religious areas such as the United States or Saudi Arabia the term carries a heavy stigma. Indeed, prejudice against atheists is so high in the United States that one study found that they are America's most distrusted minority.[44]

The reason for such attitudes towards atheists in these nations is unclear. Firstly, there is no stated creed with which to disagree (except perhaps for "strong" atheists, whose only belief is that there are no gods). Nor are atheists generally organized into lobbies or interest groups or political action committees (at least none that wield massive power), unlike the many groups that lobby on behalf of various religions. And yet an atheist would be the least likely to be elected President of the United States. According to the American Values Survey, about 67% of all voters would be uncomfortable with an atheist president, and no other group including Mormons, African Americans, and homosexuals would lose so much of the potential vote based on one single trait alone.[45][46] One potential reason for this is that in the United States, Christian groups have managed to push and implant the concept that without religion there can be no morality - often playing to people's needs for absolutes and written rules - absolute morality is presented as something inherently true and achievable only by believers.

The mistrust of atheism is often accompanied by snarl words, straw man arguments and various other myths and legends in order to denigrate the idea of disbelief in established gods. Some misconceptions about atheism should be addressed:

Atheism is a religion in the same way as 'off' is a television station.

One of the widest misconceptions, often used as a strong criticism, is that atheism is a religion. However, while there are secular religions, atheism is most commonly defined as "no religion." To expand the definition of "religion" to include atheism would thus destroy any use the word "religion" would have in describing anything. It is quite often pointed out that if atheism is a religion it would be akin to stating that the act of not collecting stamps is a hobby, or that being unemployed is an occupation. Following from this, atheists do not worship Charles Darwin or any other individual. Although some think that atheism requires evolution to be a complete worldview,[49] there is no worship of anything or anyone in atheism, and acceptance of evolution isn't exclusive to atheists - for that matter there is no necessity for an atheist to accept the evidence for evolution (Stalin is a good example: he rejected Darwinian evolution, promoting Lysenkoism instead, and he consistently purged evolution biologists in favor of Lysenkoists). By definition, if atheists worshiped Darwin as a god, they wouldn't be atheists. Basically, "atheism" is a word for a negative. However, this leads to a few semantic issues.

This confuses the religious because they are used to terms of religious identity being a declaration of allegiance to a view, rather than of separation from. This confusion then leads them to assert that a denial of their religion must be an avowal of another. They then do things like declare the so-called New Atheists as hypocrites for denigrating religion while sticking to an unstated one of their own, or declare that because science has an epistemology and religion has an epistemology, therefore science is just another faith (when religion's problem is that science's epistemology provably works much better than religion's).

Atheism is actually a religion - indeed, much like "not collecting stamps" might be called a hobby, or "not smoking" might be called a habit.

A standard response is to note that if atheism is a religion, then "bald" is a hair color, "not kicking a kitten" is a form of animal abuse, and so on. Another is to note that if the definition of religion was expanded enough to legitimately include atheism - say, by defining a religion as "any philosophy on life" - then practically everything in the world would be a religion, such as socio-economic policies or views on equality. (British law has come close to finding this in employment discrimination cases.)

A new movement of atheist churches appears to be developing (such as Sunday Assembly), but what they do is not worship; rather, they are places where like-minded people get together on Sunday mornings to have fun, celebrate life and whatever. This is a relatively new phenomenon, and its prospects for the future are unclear.[51]

Atheists, as a whole, are not a unified group, so accusation that "atheists" are doing x, y and z hold little water. In fact, a disaffection with organized religion, and the potential for groupthink, is what causes many believers to abandon faith and come out as atheists. It doesn't follow that such individuals would happily join another organised group. Debate within the atheistic community is robust - debates even about whether there is even an "atheistic community" at all, for instance - and the fact that this debate exists presupposes no dogmatic mandate (or at least not a widely followed one) from an organized group. It does follow from this lack of organisation that there is no atheist equivalent of the Bible, Koran, or other holy text. There are, of course, atheist writings, but one does not need to adhere to opinions held by, say, Friedrich Nietzsche, Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens to be considered an atheist. Some atheists will actively oppose what these kinds of authors do and say. In fact, some atheists wish they could believe.[52]

Believers sometimes denigrate atheists on the grounds that they "hate God." This, however, makes no sense. People who make such assertive claims towards atheists are confusing atheism with misotheism.

What I'm asking you to entertain is that there is nothing we need to believe on insufficient evidence in order to have deeply ethical and spiritual lives.

Morality is one of the larger issues facing the world, and many religions and believers openly express the notion that they have the monopoly on deciding, explaining, and enforcing moral judgments. Many religious people will assume that since morals rise from (their) god, without (their) god one cannot have morals. Contrary to the claims of such people, "no gods" does not equal "no morality." There are strong humanistic, cultural, and genetic rationales for the existence of morality and ethical behavior, and many people, not just atheists, recognize this fact.

Some atheist groups are doing charitable work traditionally done by religious organizations like funding scholarships as an alternative to faith based scholarships [53] and at least one atheist group volunteers to do environmental protection work.[54]

In the US, where criticism of atheism is common, it often works well for politicians and evangelists to compare atheism to the "evils" of communism, or even to Communism itself. These "evils" are not inextricably fused with the values of atheism in reality. Although most orthodox Marxists are atheists (Marxism treats religion as a "false consciousness" that needs to be eliminated), the atrocities wrought by Stalin and others were not on account of their being atheists, but on account of their being totalitarians and authoritarians. Additionally, there have been many anti-communists who were atheists or agnostics, such as Ayn Rand and the computer pioneer John von Neumann. In North Korea, one of the only 4 countries where communism still exists (the others being China, Vietnam and Cuba), it is mandatory to believe that the Kim-dynasty consists of supreme omnipotent deities.

Atheism and agnosticism are not entirely mutually exclusive, and atheists are not "actually agnostic because no one can ever know whether God exists." This is a highly contested point among religious believers and atheistic philosophers alike, as most, if not all, thinking atheists would happily change their minds given the right evidence, and thus could be considered "agnostic" in this sense. However, this conflates the ideas of belief and knowledge. Atheism is a statement of a lack of belief, and not a lack of knowledge - which is often accepted on all sides of the theistic debate. Atheism takes the position that it is rational to think that gods don't exist, based on logic and lack of evidence. Agnostics, on the other hand, state that the lack of knowledge cannot inform their opinion at all. There are agnostic atheists, who can be either weak or strong. It is at least logically possible for a theist to be an agnostic (e.g., "I believe in a pantheon of lobsterish zoomorphic deities, but cannot prove this with evidence, and acknowledge and embrace that my belief is rooted in faith")but it is markedly difficult to find anyone who will fess up to such a position.

Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply an admission of the obvious. In fact, "atheism" is a term that should not even exist. No one ever needs to identify himself as a "non-astrologer" or a "non-alchemist." We do not have words for people who doubt that Elvis is still alive or that aliens have traversed the galaxy only to molest ranchers and their cattle. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make in the presence of unjustified religious beliefs.

One difficulty with the term "atheism" is that it defines what its adherents do not believe in, rather than in what they do believe in. The lack of positive statements of belief has led to the fact that there is really no overarching organisation that speaks for atheists (some would regard this as a good thing, keeping atheism from becoming an organised religion) and has led to the comparison that organising atheists is like "herding cats", i.e., impossible. It is possible that the only thing which does really unite atheists is a lack of belief in gods; thus an overarching organisation to represent them would be physically impossible.

Primarily because of the prevalence of extreme discrimination against atheists, people have tried to come up with more positive terms or campaigns to get the godless philosophy noticed and respected. This allows atheists to feel more united and happy with their beliefs (or lack of), but has also led to organisations that will help them in situations, such as legal cases, where individuals couldn't do it on their own. The most prominent examples:

To date, none of these alternative descriptions seems to have taken hold a great deal and the term of choice for most people remains "atheist." "Freethinker" is probably the term with most support, as it dates back at least to the 19th Century. "Naturalism" may be the second most popular, although the name may lead people to confuse it with naturism or with some kind of eco-hippy ideal. "Bright" is the most recent term invented, and as a result is currently the most controversial and divisive. Supporters of the Brights movement see it as a positive and constructive redefinition (on par with the re-branding of homosexuality with the word "gay", which until then primarily meant "happy" or "joyous") while its detractors see it as nothing more than a shameless attempt to turn atheism into an organized religion, and the use of "bright" as a cynical attempt to appear more intellectual.

In some contexts words such as "rationalist" and "skeptic" may also be code words for "atheist." Although not all atheists need to be rationalists, and not all rationalists need to be atheists, the connection is more in the method a person uses to derive their beliefs rather than what their beliefs actually are.

As in the quote above, some who have expressed criticism to religion, among them Richard Dawkins, have pointed out that the word atheism enforces theism as a social norm, as modern languages usually have no established terms for people who do not believe in other supernatural phenomena (a-fairyist for people who do not believe in fairies, a-unicornist, a-alchemist, a-astrologer, etc).

With the existence of deities being central belief of almost all religious systems, it is not surprising that atheism is seen as more threatening than competing belief systems, regardless of how different they may be. This often manifests in the statement that "freedom of religion" doesn't include freedom from religion. It is also important for theists that the political hierarchy, the priesthood, should do their utmost to discourage dissent - as true believers make better tithe givers. Most religious codes are more than a bit irritated with those who do not believe. The Bible, for example, includes clear ad hominem attacks on non-believers, The fool has said in his heart, "There is no God." (Psalm14:1 and Psalm53:1), while the penalty for apostasy in Islamic law is death - and this is still endorsed today. One author has proposed a correction to Psalm 53, as follows:[57]

In the USA the increased public visibility of atheism - what some commentators call the "New Atheism", seen in the popularity of books like The God Delusion - has brought renewed energy to the debate between believers and non-believers.[58] As part of that debate, some believers have put considerable effort into trying to stop what they think of as the irresponsible promotion of atheism. Their efforts range from material that has academic pretensions to arguments that are plainly abusive, focusing on "smacking" atheists with PRATT arguments regarding how great the Bible isn't is - and, of course, a heavy bias towards their own religion being true.[59] What these arguments tend to have in common is that they are less about providing arguments for religious belief and more about keeping atheists quiet, with questions such as "don't you have anything better to do than talk about the God you don't believe in?" or arguing that "faith is better than reason so shut up".[60] It's not entirely unexpected that this would be the thrusts of several anti-atheist arguments - after all, according to several Christians in influential positions, mere knowledge that atheism exists can be dangerous.[61]

Atheists may view the Bible and other religious works as literature, fiction, mythology, epic, philosophy, agit-prop, irrelevant, history, or various combinations thereof. Many atheists may find the book repulsively ignorant and primitive, while other atheists may find inspiration from certain passages even though they don't believe in the supernatural events and miracles mentioned in the Bible. Many atheists see religious works as interesting historical records of the myths and beliefs of humanity. By definition atheists do not believe any religious text to be divinely inspired truth: in other words, "Dude, it's just a book" (or, in fact, a somewhat random collection of different books).

There are several types of evidence to support the idea that "it's just a book." Textual analysis of the various books of the Bible reveals vastly differing writing styles among the authors of the individual books of the Old and New Testaments, suggesting that these works represent many different (human) voices, and not a sole, divinely inspired voice. The existence of Apocrypha, writings dating from the time of the Bible that were not included into official canon by Jews or Christians (and peppered with mystical events such as encounters with angels, demons, and dragons), further suggests that "divine authorship" is not a reliable claim. Within Christianity, there are even differences among sects regarding which books are Apocrypha and which are included in the Bible, or which are included under the heading "Apocrypha", indicating that they constitute holy writings but are not meant to be taken as literally as the other books. The Book of Tobit, for example, is included in the Catholic Bible but considered Apocrypha by Protestants and is wholly absent from the Jewish Bible.

Another problem with the "divine authorship" of the Bible is the existence of texts that pre-date it but contain significant similarities to certain Biblical stories. The best-known among these is the flood story, found in numerous versions in texts from across the ancient Middle East, including the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, which bears textual similarities with the Biblical account. Another such story with apparent Babylonian origin is that of the Tower of Babel. It has been suggested that some of these stories were appropriated by the Jews during the Babylonian Exile.

Studies of the history of the Bible, although not undertaken with the intent of disproving it (in fact, many Biblical historians set out to prove the Bible's veracity), shed light on the Bible's nature as a set of historical documents, ones which were written by humans and were affected by the cultural circumstances surrounding their creation. It should be noted that this type of rational discourse neither proves nor requires an atheistic worldview: one can believe that the Bible is not the infallible word of God either because one adheres to a non-Judeo-Christian religion or because one is a Christian or Jew but not a Biblical literalist. These criticisms of Biblical "truth" serve mainly to counter the arguments of fundamentalists, who are among atheism's most vociferous critics.

Atheists and the nonreligious face persecution and discrimination in many nations worldwide. In Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Kuwait, Pakistan and Jordan, atheists (and others) are denied free speech through blasphemy laws. In Afghanistan, Iran, Maldives, Mauritania, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Sudan being an atheist can carry the death penalty. In many nations citizens are forced to register as adherents of a limited range of religions, which denies atheists and adherents of alternative religions the right to free expression. Atheists can lose their right to citizenship and face restrictions on their right to marry. [62][63] In many parts of the world atheists face increasing prejudice and hate speech like that which ethnic and religious minorities suffer. Saudi Arabia introduced new laws banning atheist thought in any form; there a Muslim expressing religious views the government disliked was falsely called an atheist, sentenced to seven years in prison and 600 lashes. In Egypt young people talking about their right to state atheist ideas on television or on YouTube were detained.[64]

I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.

Research in the American Sociological Review finds that atheists are the group that Americans least relate to for shared vision or want to have marry into their family. [66]

From the report's conclusions

To be an atheist in such an environment is not to be one more religious minority among many in a strongly pluralist society. Rather, Americans construct the atheist as the symbolic representation of one who rejects the basis for moral solidarity and cultural membership in American society altogether.

A 2012 Gallup poll shows presidential candidates who are open atheists are the least likely demographic to be voted into office. [67]

In some parts of the United States people who are openly atheist may be attacked, spat on, turned out of the family home, sent to Bible camp and forced to pretend religiosity. [68]

In the US, atheists are the least trusted and liked people out of all social groups, possibly because of their cracker-stealing banana fetishes and their superior knowledge[69] of actual religious content. They top the charts when people are asked "who would you least trust to be elected President" or "who would you least want to marry your beautiful, sweet, innocent Christian daughter."[70][71] It probably doesn't help that the U.S. is one of the most religious developed countries in the world.[72]

Many have lost jobs and been harassed out of their homes for what is essentially a lack of any belief that could act as motivation to cause harm. Chuck Norris infamously claimed that he would like to tattoo "In God We Trust" onto atheist foreheads before booting them out of Jesusland[citationneeded], possibly to work as slaves in the Mines of Mora (he claims this is a joke, but few actually laughed). More extreme fundamentalists seem to want them outright banned from existence; blogger Andrew Schlafly seriously considered banning them from his website and George H. W. Bush declared "I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God," questioning whether anyone who disbelieves in God should even be allowed to vote (or at least be allowed to vote themselves out of persecution).[73] A creationist group has refined this way of thinking, stating that atheists and other "evolutionists" should be disenfranchised, as anyone who believes the theory of evolution is clearly mentally incompetent.[74]

Six US states have laws on the books that prohibit atheists from holding public office.[75] This despite a U.S. Supreme Court ruling -- Torcaso v. Watkins (1961)[76] -- that prohibits discrimination against atheist officeholders.[77] These states are:

If atheism isn't a hanging offense in these places, they probably wish it were.[citationNOT needed] (Ok, maybe not Maryland, but you get the point.)

In some European countries being an atheist is unremarkable.

France has an entirely secular culture, with a suitably large proportion of the population declaring "no religion." In Scandinavia, while the majority of the population are members of their respective national churches, irreligiosity is nevertheless widespread and being openly atheist is completely unremarkable.[78] In the UK, Tony Blair's spin-doctor Alistar Campbell was led to declare that "we don't do god"[79] and Tony himself said that he kept quiet about religion because people would think he was "a nutter". The previous deputy Prime Minister was an atheist, while the Prime Minister himself has said that his Church of England faith "comes and goes". Overall, atheists in Europe aren't demonized as they are in America and other countries led by fundamentalists. Despite this, British Muslims who become atheists can face ostracism, threats and even physical abuse.[80]

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Atheism – The New York Times

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North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) | Britannica.com

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Alternative title: NATO

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), military alliance established by the North Atlantic Treaty (also called the Washington Treaty) of April 4, 1949, which sought to create a counterweight to Soviet armies stationed in central and eastern Europe after World War II. Its original members were Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Joining the original signatories were Greece and Turkey (1952); West Germany (1955; from 1990 as Germany); Spain (1982); the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland (1999); Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia (2004); and Albania and Croatia (2009). France withdrew from the integrated military command of NATO in 1966 but remained a member of the organization; it resumed its position in NATOs military command in 2009.

The heart of NATO is expressed in Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, in which the signatory members agree that

an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all; and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defense recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

NATO invoked Article 5 for the first time in 2001, after terrorist attacks organized by exiled Saudi Arabian millionaire Osama bin Laden destroyed the World Trade Center in New York City and part of the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C., killing some 3,000 people.

Article 6 defines the geographic scope of the treaty as covering an armed attack on the territory of any of the Parties in Europe or North America. Other articles commit the allies to strengthening their democratic institutions, to building their collective military capability, to consulting each other, and to remaining open to inviting other European states to join.

Barkley, Alben W.: North Atlantic Treaty signingEncyclopdia Britannica, Inc.After World War II in 1945, western Europe was economically exhausted and militarily weak (the western Allies had rapidly and drastically reduced their armies at the end of the war), and newly powerful communist parties had arisen in France and Italy. By contrast, the Soviet Union had emerged from the war with its armies dominating all the states of central and eastern Europe, and by 1948 communists under Moscows sponsorship had consolidated their control of the governments of those countries and suppressed all noncommunist political activity. What became known as the Iron Curtain, a term popularized by Winston Churchill, had descended over central and eastern Europe. Further, wartime cooperation between the western Allies and the Soviets had completely broken down. Each side was organizing its own sector of occupied Germany, so that two German states would emerge, a democratic one in the west and a communist one in the east.

In 1948 the United States launched the Marshall Plan, which infused massive amounts of economic aid to the countries of western and southern Europe on the condition that they cooperate with each other and engage in joint planning to hasten their mutual recovery. As for military recovery, under the Brussels Treaty of 1948, the United Kingdom, France, and the Low CountriesBelgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourgconcluded a collective-defense agreement called the Western European Union. It was soon recognized, however, that a more formidable alliance would be required to provide an adequate military counterweight to the Soviets.

By this time Britain, Canada, and the United States had already engaged in secret exploratory talks on security arrangements that would serve as an alternative to the United Nations (UN), which was becoming paralyzed by the rapidly emerging Cold War. In March 1948, following a virtual communist coup dtat in Czechoslovakia in February, the three governments began discussions on a multilateral collective-defense scheme that would enhance Western security and promote democratic values. These discussions were eventually joined by France, the Low Countries, and Norway and in April 1949 resulted in the North Atlantic Treaty.

Spurred by the North Korean invasion of South Korea in June 1950, the United States took steps to demonstrate that it would resist any Soviet military expansion or pressures in Europe. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the leader of the Allied forces in western Europe in World War II, was named Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) by the North Atlantic Council (NATOs governing body) in December 1950. He was followed as SACEUR by a succession of American generals.

The North Atlantic Council, which was established soon after the treaty came into effect, is composed of ministerial representatives of the member states, who meet at least twice a year. At other times the council, chaired by the NATO secretary-general, remains in permanent session at the ambassadorial level. Just as the position of SACEUR has always been held by an American, the secretary-generalship has always been held by a European.

NATOs military organization encompasses a complete system of commands for possible wartime use. The Military Committee, consisting of representatives of the military chiefs of staff of the member states, subsumes two strategic commands: Allied Command Operations (ACO) and Allied Command Transformation (ACT). ACO is headed by the SACEUR and located at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) in Casteau, Belgium. ACT is headquartered in Norfolk, Virginia, U.S. During the alliances first 20 years, more than $3 billion worth of infrastructure for NATO forcesbases, airfields, pipelines, communications networks, depotswas jointly planned, financed, and built, with about one-third of the funding from the United States. NATO funding generally is not used for the procurement of military equipment, which is provided by the member statesthough the NATO Airborne Early Warning Force, a fleet of radar-bearing aircraft designed to protect against a surprise low-flying attack, was funded jointly.

A serious issue confronting NATO in the early and mid-1950s was the negotiation of West Germanys participation in the alliance. The prospect of a rearmed Germany was understandably greeted with widespread unease and hesitancy in western Europe, but the countrys strength had long been recognized as necessary to protect western Europe from a possible Soviet invasion. Accordingly, arrangements for West Germanys safe participation in the alliance were worked out as part of the Paris Agreements of October 1954, which ended the occupation of West German territory by the western Allies and provided for both the limitation of West German armaments and the countrys accession to the Brussels Treaty. In May 1955 West Germany joined NATO, which prompted the Soviet Union to form the Warsaw Pact alliance in central and eastern Europe the same year. The West Germans subsequently contributed many divisions and substantial air forces to the NATO alliance. By the time the Cold War ended, some 900,000 troopsnearly half of them from six countries (United States, United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Canada, and the Netherlands)were stationed in West Germany.

Frances relationship with NATO became strained after 1958, as President Charles de Gaulle increasingly criticized the organizations domination by the United States and the intrusion upon French sovereignty by NATOs many international staffs and activities. He argued that such integration subjected France to automatic war at the decision of foreigners. In July 1966 France formally withdrew from the military command structure of NATO and required NATO forces and headquarters to leave French soil; nevertheless, de Gaulle proclaimed continued French adherence to the North Atlantic Treaty in case of unprovoked aggression. After NATO moved its headquarters from Paris to Brussels, France maintained a liaison relationship with NATOs integrated military staffs, continued to sit in the council, and continued to maintain and deploy ground forces in West Germany, though it did so under new bilateral agreements with the West Germans rather than under NATO jurisdiction. In 2009 France rejoined the military command structure of NATO.

From its founding, NATOs primary purpose was to unify and strengthen the Western Allies military response to a possible invasion of western Europe by the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies. In the early 1950s NATO relied partly on the threat of massive nuclear retaliation from the United States to counter the Warsaw Pacts much larger ground forces. Beginning in 1957, this policy was supplemented by the deployment of American nuclear weapons in western European bases. NATO later adopted a flexible response strategy, which the United States interpreted to mean that a war in Europe did not have to escalate to an all-out nuclear exchange. Under this strategy, many Allied forces were equipped with American battlefield and theatre nuclear weapons under a dual-control (or dual-key) system, which allowed both the country hosting the weapons and the United States to veto their use. Britain retained control of its strategic nuclear arsenal but brought it within NATOs planning structures; Frances nuclear forces remained completely autonomous.

A conventional and nuclear stalemate between the two sides continued through the construction of the Berlin Wall in the early 1960s, dtente in the 1970s, and the resurgence of Cold War tensions in the 1980s after the Soviet Unions invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and the election of U.S. President Ronald Reagan in 1980. After 1985, however, far-reaching economic and political reforms introduced by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev fundamentally altered the status quo. In July 1989 Gorbachev announced that Moscow would no longer prop up communist governments in central and eastern Europe and thereby signaled his tacit acceptance of their replacement by freely elected (and noncommunist) administrations. Moscows abandonment of control over central and eastern Europe meant the dissipation of much of the military threat that the Warsaw Pact had formerly posed to western Europe, a fact that led some to question the need to retain NATO as a military organizationespecially after the Warsaw Pacts dissolution in 1991. The reunification of Germany in October 1990 and its retention of NATO membership created both a need and an opportunity for NATO to be transformed into a more political alliance devoted to maintaining international stability in Europe.

After the Cold War, NATO was reconceived as a cooperative-security organization whose mandate was to include two main objectives: to foster dialogue and cooperation with former adversaries in the Warsaw Pact and to manage conflicts in areas on the European periphery, such as the Balkans. In keeping with the first objective, NATO established the North Atlantic Cooperation Council (1991; later replaced by the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council) to provide a forum for the exchange of views on political and security issues, as well as the Partnership for Peace (PfP) program (1994) to enhance European security and stability through joint military training exercises with NATO and non-NATO states, including the former Soviet republics and allies. Special cooperative links were also set up with two PfP countries: Russia and Ukraine.

The second objective entailed NATOs first use of military force, when it entered the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1995 by staging air strikes against Bosnian Serb positions around the capital city of Sarajevo. The subsequent Dayton Accords, which were initialed by representatives of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Republic of Croatia, and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, committed each state to respecting the others sovereignty and to settling disputes peacefully; it also laid the groundwork for stationing NATO peacekeeping troops in the region. A 60,000-strong Implementation Force (IFOR) was initially deployed, though a smaller contingent remained in Bosnia under a different name, the Stabilization Force (SFOR). In March 1999 NATO launched massive air strikes against Serbia in an attempt to force the Yugoslav government of Slobodan Miloevi to accede to diplomatic provisions designed to protect the predominantly Muslim Albanian population in the province of Kosovo. Under the terms of a negotiated settlement to the fighting, NATO deployed a peacekeeping force called the Kosovo Force (KFOR).

The crisis over Kosovo and the ensuing war gave renewed impetus to efforts by the European Union (EU) to construct a new crisis-intervention force, which would make the EU less dependent on NATO and U.S. military resources for conflict management. These efforts prompted significant debates about whether enhancing the EUs defensive capabilities would strengthen or weaken NATO. Simultaneously there was much discussion of the future of NATO in the post-Cold War era. Some observers argued that the alliance should be dissolved, noting that it was created to confront an enemy that no longer existed; others called for a broad expansion of NATO membership to include Russia. Most suggested alternative roles, including peacekeeping. By the start of the second decade of the 21st century, it appeared likely that the EU would not develop capabilities competitive with those of NATO or even seek to do so; as a result, earlier worries associated with the spectre of rivalry between the two Brussels-based organizations dissipated.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization: flag-raising ceremony, 1999NATO photosDuring the presidency of Bill Clinton (19932001), the United States led an initiative to enlarge NATO membership gradually to include some of the former Soviet allies. In the concurrent debate over enlargement, supporters of the initiative argued that NATO membership was the best way to begin the long process of integrating these states into regional political and economic institutions such as the EU. Some also feared future Russian aggression and suggested that NATO membership would guarantee freedom and security for the newly democratic regimes. Opponents pointed to the enormous cost of modernizing the military forces of new members; they also argued that enlargement, which Russia would regard as a provocation, would hinder democracy in that country and enhance the influence of hard-liners. Despite these disagreements, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland joined NATO in 1999; Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia were admitted in 2004; and Albania and Croatia acceded to the alliance in 2009.

Meanwhile, by the beginning of the 21st century, Russia and NATO had formed a strategic relationship. No longer considered NATOs chief enemy, Russia cemented a new cooperative bond with NATO in 2001 to address such common concerns as international terrorism, nuclear nonproliferation, and arms control. This bond was subsequently subject to fraying, however, in large part because of reasons associated with Russian domestic politics.

Events following the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001 led to the forging of a new dynamic within the alliance, one that increasingly favoured the military engagement of members outside Europe, initially with a mission against Taliban forces in Afghanistan beginning in the summer of 2003 and subsequently with air operations against the regime of Muammar al-Qaddafi in Libya in early 2011. As a result of the increased tempo of military operations undertaken by the alliance, the long-standing issue of burden sharing was revived, with some officials warning that failure to share the costs of NATO operations more equitably would lead to unraveling of the alliance. Most observers regarded that scenario as unlikely, however.

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Information Assurance – NSA.gov

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The Information Assurance (IA) mission at the National Security Agency (NSA) serves a role unlike that of any other U.S. Government entity. National Security Directive (NSD) 42 authorizes NSA to secure National Security Systems, which includes systems that handle classified information or are otherwise critical to military or intelligence activities. IA has a pivotal leadership role in performing this responsibility, and partners with government, industry, and academia to execute the IA mission.

Now that cyberspace is the primary arena in which we protect information, we are working toward shaping an agile and secure operational cyber environment where we can successfully outmaneuver any adversary. A key step in building Confidence in Cyberspace is a willingness to offer what we know. Please visit our site at http://www.iad.gov to learn more about our unique experiences and capabilities.

Note: The IAD.Gov website uses TLS 1.2, supported by a Department of Defense (DoD) PKI certificate, to ensure confidentiality and integrity for all users. IAD.Gov website users will need to have the current DoD Root and Intermediate Certificate Authorities (CA) loaded into their browsers to avoid receiving untrusted web site notifications.

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The Second Amendment was ratified to preserve slavery

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The real reason the Second Amendment was ratified, and why it says State instead of Country (the Framers knew the difference see the 10th Amendment), was to preserve the slave patrol militias in the southern states, which was necessary to get Virginias vote. Founders Patrick Henry, George Mason, and James Madison were totally clear on that . . . and we all should be too.

In the beginning, there were the militias. In the South, they were also called the slave patrols, and they were regulated by the states.

In Georgia, for example, a generation before the American Revolution, laws were passed in 1755 and 1757 that required all plantation owners or their male white employees to be members of the Georgia Militia, and for those armed militia members to make monthly inspections of the quarters of all slaves in the state. The law defined which counties had which armed militias and even required armed militia members to keep a keen eye out for slaves who may be planning uprisings.

As Dr. Carl T. Bogus wrote for the University of CaliforniaLaw Reviewin 1998, The Georgia statutes required patrols, under the direction of commissioned militia officers, to examine every plantation each month and authorized them to search all Negro Houses for offensive Weapons and Ammunition and to apprehend and give twenty lashes to any slave found outside plantation grounds.

Its the answer to the question raised by thecharacter played byLeonardo DiCaprio inDjango Unchainedwhen he asks, Why dont they just rise up and kill the whites? If the movie were real, it would have been a purely rhetorical question, because every southerner of the era knew the simple answer: Well regulated militias kept the slaves in chains.

Sally E. Haden, in herbookSlave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas, notes that, Although eligibility for the Militia seemed all-encompassing, not every middle-aged white male Virginian or Carolinian became a slave patroller. There were exemptions so men in critical professions like judges, legislators and students could stay at their work. Generally, though, she documents how most southern men between ages 18 and 45 including physicians and ministers had to serve on slave patrol in the militia at one time or another in their lives.

And slave rebellions were keeping the slave patrols busy.

By the time the Constitution was ratified, hundreds of substantial slave uprisings had occurred across the South. Blacks outnumbered whites in large areas, and the state militias were used to both prevent and to put down slave uprisings. As Dr. Bogus points out, slavery can only exist in the context of a police state, and the enforcement of that police state was the explicit job of the militias.

If the anti-slavery folks in the North had figured out a way to disband or even move out of the state those southern militias, the police state of the South would collapse. And, similarly, if the North were to invite into military service the slaves of the South, then they could be emancipated, which would collapse the institution of slavery, and the southern economic and social systems, altogether.

These two possibilities worried southerners like James Monroe, George Mason (who owned over 300 slaves) and the southern Christian evangelical, Patrick Henry (who opposed slavery on principle, but also opposed freeing slaves).

Their main concern was that Article 1, Section 8 of the newly-proposed Constitution, which gave the federal government the power to raise and supervise a militia, could also allow that federal militia to subsume their state militias and change them from slavery-enforcing institutions into something that could even, one day, free the slaves.

This was not an imagined threat. Famously, 12 years earlier, during the lead-up to the Revolutionary War, Lord Dunsmore offered freedom to slaves who could escape and join his forces. Liberty to Slaves was stitched onto their jacket pocket flaps. During the War, British General Henry Clinton extended the practice in 1779. And numerous freed slaves served in General Washingtons army.

Thus, southern legislators and plantation owners lived not just in fear of their own slaves rebelling, but also in fear that their slaves could be emancipated through military service.

At the ratifying convention in Virginia in 1788, Henry laid it out:

Let me here call your attention to that part [Article 1, Section 8 of the proposed Constitution] which gives the Congress power to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States. . . .

By this, sir, you see that their control over our last and best defence is unlimited. If they neglect or refuse to discipline or arm our militia, they will be useless: the states can do neither . . . this power being exclusively given to Congress. The power of appointing officers over men not disciplined or armed is ridiculous; so that this pretended little remains of power left to the states may, at the pleasure of Congress, be rendered nugatory.

George Mason expressed a similar fear:

The militia may be here destroyed by that method which has been practised in other parts of the world before; that is, by rendering them useless, by disarming them. Under various pretences, Congress may neglect to provide for arming and disciplining the militia; and the state governments cannot do it, for Congress has an exclusive right to arm them [under this proposed Constitution] . . .

Henry then bluntly laid it out:

If the country be invaded, a state may go to war, but cannot suppress [slave] insurrections [under this new Constitution]. If there should happen an insurrection of slaves, the country cannot be said to be invaded. They cannot, therefore, suppress it without the interposition of Congress . . . . Congress, and Congress only [under this new Constitution], can call forth the militia.

And why was that such a concern forPatrick Henry?

In this state, he said, there are two hundred and thirty-six thousand blacks, and there are many in several other states. But there are few or none in the Northern States. . . . May Congress not say, that every black man must fight? Did we not see a little of this last war? We were not so hard pushed as to make emancipation general; but acts of Assembly passed that every slave who would go to the army should be free.

Patrick Henry was also convinced that the power over the various state militias given the federal government in the new Constitution could be used to strip the slave states of their slave-patrol militias. He knew the majority attitude in the North opposed slavery, and he worried theyd use the Constitution to free the Souths slaves (a process then called Manumission).

The abolitionists would, he was certain, use that power (and, ironically, this is pretty much what Abraham Lincoln ended up doing):

[T]hey will search that paper [the Constitution], and see if they have power of manumission, said Henry. And have they not, sir? Have they not power to provide for the general defence and welfare? May they not think that these call for the abolition of slavery? May they not pronounce all slaves free, and will they not be warranted by that power?

This is no ambiguous implication or logical deduction. The paper speaks to the point: they have the power in clear, unequivocal terms, and will clearly and certainly exercise it.

He added: This is a local matter, and I can see no propriety in subjecting it to Congress.

James Madison, the Father of the Constitution and a slaveholder himself, basically called Patrick Henry paranoid.

I was struck with surprise,Madison said, when I heard him express himself alarmed with respect to the emancipation of slaves. . . . There is no power to warrant it, in that paper [the Constitution]. If there be, I know it not.

But the southern fears wouldnt go away.

Patrick Henry even argued that southerners property (slaves) would be lost under the new Constitution, and the resulting slave uprising would be less than peaceful or tranquil:

In this situation, Henry said to Madison, I see a great deal of the property of the people of Virginia in jeopardy, and their peace and tranquility gone.

So Madison, who had (at Jeffersons insistence) already begun to prepare proposed amendments to the Constitution, changed his first draft of one that addressed the militia issue to make sure it was unambiguous that the southern states could maintain their slave patrol militias.

His first draft for what became the Second Amendment had said: The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed, and well regulated militia being the best security of a freecountry[emphasis mine]: but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms, shall be compelled to render military service in person.

But Henry, Mason and others wanted southern states to preserve their slave-patrol militias independent of the federal government. So Madison changed the word country to the word state, and redrafted the Second Amendment into todays form:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a freeState[emphasis mine], the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Little did Madison realize that one day in the future weapons-manufacturing corporations, newly defined as persons by a Supreme Court some have called dysfunctional,would use his slave patrol militia amendment to protect their right to manufacture and sell assault weapons used to murder schoolchildren.

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Minn. police shooting reignites debate over Second Amendment …

Posted: at 6:19 am

President Obama responded to the recent police shootings in Louisiana and Minnesota by recognizing the need to root out bias in law enforcement and encouraging communities to trust their local police department.

A memorial left for Philando Castile following the police shooting death of the black man on July 7, 2016, in St. Paul, Minn. 8(Photo: Stephen Maturen, Getty Images)

A black Minnesota man fatally shot by police Wednesday during a stop for a broken tail light was a licensed gun owner, prompting some observers to suggest that the debate over gun control and the Second Amendment has racial undertones.

When police in Falcon Heights, Minn.,stopped the car in which Philando Castile, 37, was riding on Wednesday night, Castile attempted to give them his license and registration, as requested. He also told them he was a licensed weapon owner, according to the Facebook Live video posted by Diamond "Lavish" Reynolds, who identified herself as Castile's fiance.

As Castile put his hands up, police fired into his arm four times, according to the video. He was pronounced dead later at a hospital.

"I'm waiting to hear the human outcry from Second Amendment defenders over (this incident)," NAACP president and CEO Cornell William Brooks told USA TODAY Thursday.

Brookswas preparing to travel to Minnesota to get up to speed on the Castile case after a trip to Baton Rouge, La., to get details on the police-involved shooting of another black man earlier this week.

"When it comes to an African American with a license to carry a firearm, it appears that his pigmentation, his degree of pigmentation, is more important than the permit or license to carry a firearm," Brooks said. "One would hope and pray that's not true."

Tweeted author and TV commentator Keith Boykin: "Does the Second Amendment only apply to White People?"

Amanda Zantal-Wiener, tweeted aboutthe National Rifle Association, perhaps the most powerful of the national organizations supporting the Second Amendment, saying: "Hey, NRA, I'm sure you're just moments away from defending Philando Castile's second amendment rights. Right? Any minute now, right?"

The NRA did not immediatelyrespond to a request for an interview. The organization has been publicly silent regarding the Minnesota shooting.

But at least two organizations, the Second Amendment Foundation and the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, both based in Bellevue, Wash., expressed concern over the case and called for an investigation by state-level entities, perhaps even from a state outside of Minnesota.

"Wednesday nights shooting of Philando Castile is very troubling, especially to the firearms community, because he was a legally-armed private citizen who may have done nothing more than reach for his identification and carry permit," Allan Gottleib, founder and executive vice president of the foundation, and chair of the Citizens Committee, said in a statement Thursday.

"We are cognizant of the racial overtones arising from Mr. Castiles death,"Gottlieb said. "The concerns of our members, and honest gun owners everywhere, go even deeper. Exercising our right to bear arms should not translate to a death sentence over something so trivial as a traffic stop for a broken tail light, and we are going to watch this case with a magnifying glass."

Survey data show that white Americans and black Americans appear to have two different and distinct relationships with firearms.

Data released in 2014 by the Pew Research Center showed that blacks are less likely than whites to have a firearm at home.According to the study, 41% of whites said they had a gun at home compared to 19% of blacks.

But there has been much research to show that black Americans are more likely than white Americans to be gun homicide victims.

In 2010, blacks were 55% of shooting homicide victims but 13% of the U.S. population, according to a Pew review of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. By contrast, in the same year, whites were 25% of gun homicide victims but 65% of the population, according to the same data.

In the early days of the Second Amendment, blacks were prohibited from possessing firearms, according to the National Constitution Center, a nonprofit organization in Philadelphia. The measure was intended to protect Americans' right to bear arms, and designated states as the entities who would manage this.

Gerald Horne, an historian at the University of Houston, said during a recent interview with the Real News Network that there was a race and class bias inherent in the amendment's provisions.

"The Second Amendment certainly did not apply to enslaved Africans," Horne said. "All measures were taken to keep arms out of their hands. The Second Amendment did not apply to indigenous people because the European settlers were at war with the indigenous people to take their land. And providing arms to them was considered somewhat akin to a capital offense. So the Second Amendment was mostly applicable to the settler class."

Horne says that many of the battles during reconstruction were about keeping arms out of the hands of black Americans hesays one of the key reasons the Ku Klux Klan was formed in the post-Civil War era was to keep arms out of the hands of blacks.

Said Brooks, "I would just simply note that in a state like Texas, where we have thousands upon thousands of people with concealed weapons permits, a permit is sufficient proof to vote while a college ID is not. Think about that."

Follow Melanie Eversley on Twitter:@MelanieEversley

USA TODAY

Obama, angered by police shootings, calls for elimination of racial bias

USA TODAY

Minn. governor: Castile would be alive if he had been white

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The Right to Bear Arms

Posted: at 6:19 am

Miller was subject to two possible interpretations. One, that the Second Amendment is an individual right, but that the right only extends to weapons commonly used in militias (the defendants in Miller were transporting sawed-off shotguns). The second--broader--view of Miller is that the Amendment guarantees no rights to individuals at all, and the defendants lost the case as soon as it was obvious that they were not members of a state militia.

In 2008, the U. S. Supreme Court, in District of Columbia vs. Heller, struck down a Washington, D.C. ban on individuals having handguns in their homes. Writing for a 5 to 4 majority, Justice Scalia found the right to bear arms to be an individual right consistent with the overriding purpose of the 2nd Amendment, to maintain strong state militias. Scalia wrote that it was essential that the operative clause be consistent with the prefatory clause, but that the prefatory clause did not limit the operative clause. The Court easily found the D. C. law to violate the 2nd Amendment's command, but refused to announce a standard of review to apply in future challenges to gun regulations. The Court did say that its decision should not "cast doubt" on laws restricting gun ownership of felons or the mentally ill, and that bands on especially dangerous or unusual weapons would most likely also be upheld. In the 2008 presidential campaign, both major candidates said that they approved of the Court's decision.

Heller left open the question of whether the right to bear arms was enforceable against state regulation as well as against federal regulation? In 1876, the Supreme Court said the right--if it existed--was enforceable only against the federal government, but there was a wholesale incorporation of Bill of Rights provisions into the 14th Amendment since then. In 2010, in the case of McDonald v Chicago, the U. S. Supreme Court held (5 to 4) that the 2nd Amendment right has been incorporated through the 14th Amendment's Due Process Clause and is fully enforceable against the states. The Court, in an opinion written by Justice Alito, proceeded to strike down Chicago's gun regulation insofar as it prohibited the private possession in the home of handguns for self-defense. Justice Thomas, concurring, would have held the right to bear arms to be a right protected by the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the 14th Amendment, an approach to applying Bill of Rights protections against the states first rejected in the 19th-century Slaughter-House Cases and never used since.

Cases United States vs. Miller (U.S. 1939) District of Columbia vs Heller (U.S. 2008) McDonald v Chicago (U.S. 2010)

Justice Antonin Scalia, for the majority in District of Columbia v Heller (U. S. Supreme Court 2008)

The Supreme Court votes 5 to 4 to strike down a Washington, D. C. ban on the private possession of handguns. Justice Scalia authors majority opinion.

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DNA | Facts & Structure | Britannica.com

Posted: at 6:18 am

Alternate Titles: deoxyribonucleic acid

DNA, abbreviation of deoxyribonucleic acid, organic chemical of complex molecular structure that is found in all prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells and in many viruses. DNA codes genetic information for the transmission of inherited traits.

A brief treatment of DNA follows. For full treatment, see genetics: DNA and the genetic code.

The chemical DNA was first discovered in 1869, but its role in genetic inheritance was not demonstrated until 1943. In 1953 James Watson and Francis Crick determined that the structure of DNA is a double-helix polymer, a spiral consisting of two DNA strands wound around each other. Each strand is composed of a long chain of monomer nucleotides. The nucleotide of DNA consists of a deoxyribose sugar molecule to which is attached a phosphate group and one of four nitrogenous bases: two purines (adenine and guanine) and two pyrimidines (cytosine and thymine). The nucleotides are joined together by covalent bonds between the phosphate of one nucleotide and the sugar of the next, forming a phosphate-sugar backbone from which the nitrogenous bases protrude. One strand is held to another by hydrogen bonds between the bases; the sequencing of this bonding is specifici.e., adenine bonds only with thymine, and cytosine only with guanine.

genetics : DNA and the genetic code

The configuration of the DNA molecule is highly stable, allowing it to act as a template for the replication of new DNA molecules, as well as for the production (transcription) of the related RNA (ribonucleic acid) molecule. A segment of DNA that codes for the cells synthesis of a specific protein is called a gene.

DNA replicates by separating into two single strands, each of which serves as a template for a new strand. The new strands are copied by the same principle of hydrogen-bond pairing between bases that exists in the double helix. Two new double-stranded molecules of DNA are produced, each containing one of the original strands and one new strand. This semiconservative replication is the key to the stable inheritance of genetic traits.

Within a cell, DNA is organized into dense protein-DNA complexes called chromosomes. In eukaryotes, the chromosomes are located in the nucleus, although DNA also is found in mitochondria and chloroplasts. In prokaryotes, which do not have a membrane-bound nucleus, the DNA is found as a single circular chromosome in the cytoplasm. Some prokaryotes, such as bacteria, and a few eukaryotes have extrachromosomal DNA known as plasmids, which are autonomous, self-replicating genetic material. Plasmids have been used extensively in recombinant DNA technology to study gene expression.

The genetic material of viruses may be single- or double-stranded DNA or RNA. Retroviruses carry their genetic material as single-stranded RNA and produce the enzyme reverse transcriptase, which can generate DNA from the RNA strand. Four-stranded DNA complexes known as G-quadruplexes have been observed in guanine-rich areas of the human genome.

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Martine Rothblatt Is the Highest-Paid Female CEO in …

Posted: at 6:16 am

(Photo: Peter Hapak/New York Magazine; Hair by Kelsey Bauer, Make-up by Amber Doty/Mirror Mirror)

Martine prefers not to limit herself to available words: Shes suggested using Pn., for person, in place of Mr. and Ms., and spice to mean husband or wife. But trans is a prefix she likes a lot, for it contains her self-image as an explorer who crosses barriers into strange new lands. (When she feels a connection to a new acquaintance, she says that she transcends.) And these days Martine sees herself less as transgender and more as what is known as transhumanist, a particular kind of futurist who believes that technology can liberate humans from the limits of their biologyincluding infertility, disease, and decay, but also, incredibly, death. Now, in her spare time, when shes not running a $5 billion company, or flying her new helicopter up and down the East Coast, or attending to her large family and three dogs, shes tinkering with ways that technology might push back that ultimate limit. She believes in a foreseeable future in which the beloved dead will live again as digital beings, reanimated by sophisticated artificial-intelligence programs that will be as cheap and accessible to every person as iTunes. I know this sounds messianic or even childlike, she wrote to me in one of many emails over the summer. But I believe it is simply practical and technologically inevitable.

During our first conversation, in the beige United Therapuetics outpost in Burlington, Vermont, Martine made a distinction between boundaries and borders. Borders, denials, limitsthese are Martines siren calls, pulling her toward and beyond them even as she, a pharma executive responsible to shareholders and a board, must survive every day within regulations and laws. She was sprawled across from me on a sectional couch, her hair in a ponytail and her long legs before her. At times I sort of feel like Queen Elizabeth, she said. You know, she lives in a world of limitations, having the appearance of great authority and being able to transcend any limitations. But in reality she is in a little cage.

Martin Rothblatt was raised by observant Jewish parents in a working-class suburb of San Diego; his father was a dentist. His mother, Rosa Lee, says she always believed her first child was destined for greatness. Days after Martins birth, I was walking back and forth in the living room and I was holding him like a football. And I remember saying, Menashe, honeythats his Hebrew nameI dont know what it is, but theres something special about you. You will make a difference in this world. And she is.

The Rothblatts were the only Jewish family in a mostly Hispanic neighborhood, and Martin grew up obsessed with difference, seeking out families unlike his own. Rosa Lee remembers her child as a fanatical reader, the kind of kid who would spend an entire family vacation with his nose in Siddhartha, and Martine herself sent me a list of the books that as an adolescent had been influential: Exodus, by Leon Uris; anything by Isaac Asimov; and especially Black Like Me, by John Howard Griffin. But Martin was an unmotivated student and dropped out of UCLA after freshman year, because he wanted to see the world; he had read that the Seychelles were like a paradise, and with a few hundred dollars in his pocket he made his way there.

The Seychelles disappointed. Cockroaches covered the floor of his hut at night, and when he turned on the light, moths or locusts would swarm in through the open windows. But a friend of a friend was working at an Air Force base tracking satellites for NASA, and one day Martin was invited to visit. Outside, there was a big, giant, satellite dish. Inside, it was like we stepped into the future, Martine told me. Everything was crisp and clean, she said, like a vision out of science fiction made real. It seemed to me the satellite engineer was making the whole world come together. Like that was the center of the world. Martin hightailed it back to California to re-enroll at UCLA and transform himself into an expert in the law of space.

Martin first met Bina at a networking event in Hollywood in 1979. There was a DJ, and the music started, and there was a disco ball and a dance floor, Martine remembers. I saw Bina sitting over there, and I just felt an enormous attraction to her and just walked over and asked her to dance. And she agreed to dance. We danced, we sat down, talked, and weve been together ever since. They were from different worlds: Martin was a white Jewish man on his way to getting a J.D.-M.B.A.; Bina, who is African-American, grew up in Compton and was working as a real-estate agent. But they had much in commonstarting with the fact that they were both single parents. Martin had met a woman in Kenya on his way home from the Seychelles; the relationship had not worked out, but had produced a son, Eli, who was 3. Binas daughter, Sunee, was about the same age.

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The Possible Reality of Artificial Gravity – futurism.com

Posted: at 6:16 am

In Brief

The prospect of artificial gravity on space stations is actually possible, but highly expensive and resource-demanding

Working to make astronauts lives easier and less health damaging is a pretty big goal for NASA. The real problem is actually limiting the effects of zero gravity on the human body. Science Fiction has posited the solution of artificial gravity. However,as this video shows, that is no easy feat.

Artificial gravity couldcertainly be a possibilitywith current technology.Sadly, we are limited by the expense and availability of materials.Through the use of centrifugal force, a spinning space station would be able to generate artificial gravity. However, it would have to be spinning at a very fast rate. Alternatively, itd have tobe big enough to not need speed. The trade-off is between being too big to build or spinning too rapidlyto be practical.

Building something as huge as science fiction models would certainly cost. Building the eponymous space stationsfrom the 2013 filmElysiumwould require500,000 people contributing $10 million each. Even more, aluminum would have to be mined from asteroids as Earths supply would not beenough.

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Daily Archives: July 12, 2016

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The Second Amendment was ratified to preserve slavery

Minn. police shooting reignites debate over Second Amendment …

The Right to Bear Arms

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Martine Rothblatt Is the Highest-Paid Female CEO in …

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