You see you've stumped me, but not because your arguments are convincing but that I actually don't know how to respond: there are way too many options!

I could argue that the link you posted about muslims in America deals primarily with African-Americans who have converted to Islam, and that this demographic is radically different from the muslims marching and protesting through the streets of European cities. Primarily this difference has to do with the fact that those muslims who converted have already gown up and adapted to American culture (most importantly the significance of freedom of speech) and therefore wouldn't be a threat unless you're just afraid of the Islamic religion in general.

On the other hand I might point out that, unless there is a mass exodus of muslims to the U.S. it would take many generations for them to even become even as significant a minority group as Asian Americans, much less African-Americans or Latinos (not to mention the fact that Latinos are the fastest growing minority group, and are mostly Christian).

I could also point out that muslims growing up in the U.S. for multiple generations are (once again) far less likely to be similar to the extremists in Europe.

Maybe I could ask for some actual statistics about birth rates of different demographics since you didn't actually provide any, but instead relied on unsubstantiated stereotypes. None of the muslims I know have 6 kids in their family so until you give me some evidence I'm gonna have to call bullshit.

I could go on, but I don't think that's necessary. Instead I'm going to ask you to stop being so alarmist...I mean the world's gonna end in 2012 anyway, right?

Islam will never gain the same political power as it has in Europe, so I wouldn't worry. People in this country are ridiculously prejudiced against muslims so any muslim that wants to be taken seriously has to jump through hoops in order to show that they aren't like the extreme muslims we see in Europe protesting against freedom of speech.

I assumed that you supported laws against sweatshops and child labor, and this wasn't to what I was referring. These laws, though necessary from an ethical standpoint, don't necessarily help the economy.

What I am talking about is regulation of financial institutions, and an active counter-cyclical fiscal policy.

I wish I had a scanner because there is this great graph in my Econ textbook which shows the U.S. growth rate from about the last 200 years. I can't find a similar graph online, but if you want an idea of what it looks like imagine someone drawing peaks and valleys around a middle line, and as they move toward the present the peaks and valleys become less extreme. What the graph is meant to show is how more recent monetary and fiscal policy (mostly based on Keynsian theory) has had a "smoothing" affect on GDP growth. What this means is, in the last half of the century we have had fewer, and shorter recessions and longer periods of sustained growth (especially in the last 30 years). A part of this has to do with increased regulations on the market.

Obviously we should allow the market to operate freely in most cases, but there are areas where regulation is necessary, because financial institutions often times will take risks. Often times these risks end up having negative consequences on the economy as a whole, causing the volatile changes in GDP and rises in unemployment characteristic of the pre-Keynsian economy.

Here is a point I feel like I need to make very clear:

No one is advocating socialism

Socialism sucks: not only does it severely limit freedom, it doesn't work. The only redeeming quality is that it promotes equality, but the result would only be a society where everyone is equally poor.

What I and others like myself are advocating is a mostly free economy with some necessary regulations to protect against serious economic downturns.

I don't have a problem with your point of view: I can understand and respect it. What I don have a problem with is the fact that you right off those who disagree with you as somehow delusional. I promise that I have good reasons for the opinions I hold whether you want to believe it or not.

But that doesn't matter, just right me off as an elitist lefty liberal who has no idea what he's talking about.

I recommend a course on European history. The crusades were begun by Christians when they invaded Jerusalem and slaughtered the Jews and Muslims who were living there (Jews and Muslims living peacefully together, surprising right?) at the Seige of Jerusalem in 1099 (a.k.a. the first crusade).

In addition, did you hear the phrasing you used: "expel the infidels." Doesn't that sound eerily similar to what we hear from muslim extremist terrorists today?

Anyway, you are also mistaken about the nature of Muslims back then. They were expanding there empire, but they were not the violent extremists we think of today. In fact, they preached religious toleration, and (as I mentioned earlier) lived in peace with Jews and Christians in their empire. It was the Christians who were acting intolerantly, and had been killing jews by the thousands in Europe.

...and the Muslims. I'm sure that if you look deep enough, you'll find that there are others that object to homosexuality.

I agree, but you asked about Christianity. Just because others are oppressing homosexuals as well doesn't make it any better that Christians are doing it.

From the wikipedia article about the English civil war:

One of the first events to cause concern about Charles I came with his marriage to a French Roman Catholic princess, Henrietta-Marie de Bourbon. The marriage occurred in 1625, right after Charles came to the throne.[5] Charles' marriage raised the possibility that his children, including the heir to the throne, could grow up as Catholics, a frightening prospect to Protestant England.[6]

So religion once again did play a part.

...was caused by the leader of a very warped form of Christianity.

I would argue that any war fought in the name of a religion is a warping of religious texts. It says "Thou Shall Not Kill" in the 10 commandments and yet we see all of this violence. I'm not arguing that Christianity always leads to war, I'm merely disputing your point that atheists have committed atrocities (in the name of atheism) that are far worse than Christians.

The dutch revolt was caused by a number of issues, but the oppression of Protestants by Charles V and Philip II played a significant role.

Many of the wars I mentioned had numerous causes but in all of them religion also played a part.

The cold war was not fought because of atheism. This is one of the stupidest things I've heard you say yet. As I've stated before, the only atheists that killed were communists: I'm not sure why that's so difficult for you to understand. I am strongly opposed to communism in general and especially opposed to the actions that were taken by Stalin, Mau and other communists who have killed in the name of their ideology. Their atheism was a symptom of their communism not the other way around. They all also believed in gravity, but this likely didn't influence their decisions to kill people either.

So once again: any non communist, atheist mass murderers? Didn't think so.

The muslims began some of the crusades, definitely not all. In addition the crusades as a whole were begun by Christians invading Jerusalem and killing Jews and Muslims. Read about it here.

I never mentioned the conquest of Alexander the great, I mentioned the Alexandrian Crusade.

The French wars of religion were civil wars fought between French Catholics and Huguenots (French Protestants). The main conflict was religion.

Almost all of these wars were fought either because of Christianity, or had Christianity as a cover for some other reason (like money or power).

Damn, what's with all the hate?

I promise we're not that bad.

I kinda like my Christian, Jewish and Muslim friends and family. I actually don't know all that many atheists so I'd probably be pretty lonely.

(You know that you don't have to copy and paste my whole argument into yours, right? I mean I literally just wrote it, and it appears on top.)

I find your first statement kind of funny because it, is both incorrect, and misses the point. As I just stated, the crimes committed by atheists weren't because of their atheism but because of their communist ideology.

Name for me a few wars begun by Christians.

Almost every war in western history, because for the past 1,000 years almost everyone in Europe (and later the Americas) has been Christian.

But this isn't what you meant, right? You see I just did the same thing you did: I took all wars that Christians began, and then implied that Christianity was their cause. You obviously meant to say: "Name me a few wars begun because of Christianity."

I would be happy to:

The Crusades

The first crusade

The second crusade

The third crusade

The fourth crusade

The albigensian crusade

The fifth crusade

The sixth crusade

The seventh crusade

The Eighth crusade

The ninth crusade

The Northern Crusades

The numerous crusades against the Tatars

The Aragonese crusade

The Alexandrian crusade

The Hussite crusade

The swedish crusades

The European Wars of Religion

The French Wars of Religion

The first war

The second war

The third war

The fourth war

The fifth war

The sixth war

The seventh war

The war of the three Henrys

The war in Brittany

The war with Spain

Wars of Religion in Germany and Bohemia

The Schmalkaldic Wars

The thirty years war (one of the worst, killed 15 - 30% of all Germans)

The wars of religion in the Netherlands

The dutch revolt (eighty years war)

The wars of religion in England and Scotland

The Scottish Reformation

The English civil war

The scottish civil war

The Taiping Rebellion was the bloodiest civil war in history and resulted in the death of 20 million people. It was started by Chinese Christian Protestants over religion.

So there you go. It's more than a few, but it is not at all comprehensive, and could have been longer if I wanted to add more. I also did not include the numerous atrocities committed in the name of Christianity (killing of Jews, and witches) or the current worldwide oppression of of homosexuals in the name of Christianity.

So now I ask you: name even one war that was begun in the name of atheism, not just by atheists.

All atheists that have been mass murderers (like the ones you mentioned) have all been communists, whereas religious murderers have come from nearly every major religion, and have supported a wide variety of of ideologies.

Therefore, if you are an atheist, and not a communist then you're probably fairly peaceful.

I think it should be punishable by death.

What's the point in making a law that is unenforceable?

If there is a large enough spanish speaking population in the area, then it would probably make economic sense depending on the business, but I think a law would be unnecessary (except for maybe cases like pharmacies in which people may be seriously harmed.)

Joe now I know you're fucking around. You want to make life difficult on a very large group of people in our country so that you don't have to press one extra button?

"If we don't play God, who will?"

-James Watson (Co-discoverer of DNA)

Oh I can still consider you scientifically challenged, just not purely on the basis of your religion, or any other generalization. If you said, for example, that dinasours and humans roamed the earth together, and had no evidence to support this claim (The Flnstones don't count) I would still laugh at you.

Yes we can get into a debate about semantics, but if you ask him I can guarentee that he at the very least meant most liberals, and wasn't making a debate about why specifically some liberals resort to name calling.

Generalizing groups of people without much basis does tend to annoy me regardless of the side it's coming from, and I do think that it is a problem on both sides and would firmly stand against anyone who tries to make these generalizations, even if I do not fall into the catagory of generalization.

In this case the debate was more an attack on liberals than an actual debate, however, it was also mostly in jest because it was made by Joe, so don't think that I took it too seriously.

As for your question: because people are lazy. It's easier to assume that someone who disagrees with you is ignorant, or racist or uneducated or out of touch, than trying to consider that they may have a different world view than you, and that their view could be as valid as yours. This is the same with most generalizations, and is why I am so strongly against them.

See, I would never resort to name calling when I know that I have legitimate arguments to defend my positions.

Neither would I make broad generalizations about groups, because I know that in general they are not true. I don't call conservatives racists, or greedy. I am happy to debate any issue, however I know that name calling just makes me look immature.

Considering that's what basically every one of your debates are I kinda figured, but I'm sorta sick of people generalizing liberals so I figured this was a good a time as any to make a statement about it.

Why on earth do we keep getting these broad generalization over and over again. I don't care which side you are attacking, generalizations that deamonize your opponents are not helpful, and are in fact simple minded. Whether it's liberals or conservatives or independants doesn't matter. What's ironic is this debate is essentially complaining about name calling by labeling an entire group in a certain way: that's essentially name calling!

Joe, I have debated with you numerous times and I'm pretty sure I can't think of a gngle case where I name called in replacement for an argument. So according to you I must not be a liberal... does that sound right?

Well next time you're sick have the ambulance drop you off at a church and see what happens.

I'm not sure I understand this one Joe... are you saying that by warming the earth we are destroying some things, but giving oppurtunities to others? Cus that's kinda dumb.

Perhaps in you own delusional idea of reality, but the real world he would be countered by economists and politicians who understand why providing for those who are unable, for some reason, to support themselves and their family is beneficial to society. In addition, you would hear numerous personal stories of people who worked numerous jobs, yet still needed a little help to feed their kids.

As people who don't need welfare it's easy to argue that those people who need welfare are just freeloaders, but in reality they are people who need a little help to get by.

It's the same result they could come up with if special interests weren't involved, and there weren't people denying the overwhelming evidence of global warming.

See what clarity a little objectivity can bring to a situation?

Not if they did it in a smart way, like by spending money on alternative energy programs.

Anyway, in the long term Australia's economy will suffer more if the current warming trend continues.