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Who cares if the intention was to "insult religious feelings"? That is one of the rights of the press in a free society. It's ludicrous to ban the publication of anything that hurts people's feelings, religious or otherwise. To do that would eradicate free speech altogether by creating a heckler's veto for the most thin-skinned members of society to censor anything that offends them. Is Prime Minister Rasmussen saying that we shouldn't criticize any group that will react violently? Isn't the violent response itself an indication that the group in question needs to be criticized?

The Bible itself says that the human lifespan is between seventy and eighty years (Psalms 90:10), and given the advances in lifespan brought about by improved nutrition and modern medicine, we can safely use the higher estimate. We should then ask why, if sex is intended for procreation, it is all but impossible to use it for that purpose for about half of our natural lives. Even during the biologically brief window of maximum fertility, our rate of conception is significantly lower than that of most other animals. If sex's only or primary purpose is procreation, then it would seem to be a badly designed mechanism indeed, considering how inefficient it is for that purpose.

Verified, specific prophecies that couldn't have been contrived.

Then comes the guilt, and mountains of it. "A lot of you say you're Christians, but how many of you are leading two separate lives?" Pastor Becky lays it on thick over the PA. She leads the children on through ideas of what they might be sinfully doing at school with their friends, and how they should be ashamed of themselves for it. I considered vomiting into my drink cup. She asks the children to gather around her and reach out their hands if they wish to be cleansed of these newly uncovered sins. Their cleansing source: A 20 oz. bottle of Nestlé-brand water poured over their grouped hands. Talk about product placement! There is of course more crying. There is more of me yelling at the screen, and more of my friend elbowing me in embarrassment.

Stanislaw Lem was raised as a Catholic and, in fact, was a close friend of the man who would become Pope John Paul II. Lem came to identify himself as an atheist, saying he did so for "moral reasons."

From: "Stanislaw Lem" page on "Celebrity Atheists" website, last modified 19 Jun 2005 (http://www.celebatheists.com/wiki/index.php?title=Stanislaw_Lem; viewed 24 August 2005):

Trained to be a physician, and "brought up with the scientific outlook" by his father who was also a physician, he subsequently "spent many hours over coffee arguing about God" with his friend Karol Wojtyla who taught theology in Cracow and who is now better known as Pope John-Paul II. In an interview, Lem indicated his thinking on religion: "for moral reasons I am an atheist -- for moral reasons. I am of the opinion that you would recognize a creator by his creation, and the world appears to me to be put together in such a painful way that I prefer to believe that it was not created by anyone than to think that somebody created this intentionally" (L. W. Michaelson, "A Conversation with Stanislaw Lem": Amazing (Jan. 1981): 116-19. Peter Engel, "An Interview With Stanislaw Lem": The Missouri Review, 7, 2 (1984): 218-37. Also see Raymond Federman, "An Interview with Stanislaw Lem," Science-Fiction Studies, 10 (1983): 2-14).

From a telephone sampling of more than 2,000 households, university researchers found that Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups in “sharing their vision of American society.” Atheists are also the minority group most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry.