alright here's a something: what do you thinkt he world would look like if there was never any religion?

Never, ever?

It's a tricky question. I think almost every modern as well as ancient society has been founded with the aid of deity X/Y/Z. I have no idea how those societies would be founded without religion - my guess is that having something to believe in that others also believed in formed a bond that helped nations to be founded, and that without this social glue, we'd lose hundreds of years in development.

In a more modern setting, religion has mostly lost its role in society - it is no longer the pushing power behind discoveries or developments (which, save from possibly the invention of the Internet, have been steadily decreasing in usefulness since the middle of the 20th century, I think, with the exception of medical treatments), rather, it's probably a hindrance in many ways (my religion forbids me to do X/tells me it is immoral to do Y), but over the long-term, I'd say religion has been beneficiary for humans - even if there's things such as the crusades that make it a tougher decision.

First, I think there were some people who weren't sure if Jesus actually existed, and the answer is yes, the scientific comunity agrees that Jesus did exist as a human being. Wiki discusion.

For shos, I might be willing to wager that humans can't exist without some sort of religion, so you'd have to clarify what you mean. Everyone worships something, though they might not build an alter to it or say prayers. If we weren't worshiping deities or spirits (which is what I think you mean by religion), then we'd worship something else, probably war, money, sex, and such. More progressive nations might worship freedom, peace, equality, or some such thing (or, more likely, combinations of these). Understand that religions don't make people kill each other; we do that on our own and just use religion as an excuse, but we all know that you don't need a god in order to do terrible things. Another possible object of our worship might be science, technology, or reason.
Clearly, many atrocities have been done in the name of various religions, I'll take about my own here. The crusades were terrible wars and are generally considered to be anti-christian because Jesus specifically taught about how kings should behave and how wars should be fought. The popes obviously didn't read that part of the bible considering they launched at least 7 crusades, 6 of which failed. Essentialy, I'm saying that the crusades were the result of evil in the hearts of men, not an intrinsic failing of religion. Hitler, Stalin, Caestro, Mao; these men killed more people than every known holy war combined. So there's no way anyone could possibly argue that religion somehow causes more violence than is natural for us humans.

So now we pass into the realm of imagination and some creative license. Throughout the early history of the world, many horrific wars would be fought over land and wealth, some of which might last for centuries because larger nations would try to gobble up smaller ones, and the smaller ones wouldn't have a cause to rally behind other than common defense (which doesn't account for much if celtic history tells us anything). Eventually, the larger nations would consume much of the world, only to collapse again because of an inability to police the lands they capture (much like the roman empire). History would be marked by the dominant culture of the period until technology advanced and gunpowder came into the scene. Now, militias become formidable forces and extremely large armies would be required to take and hold an area. Thus begins the era of mixed war and diplomacy, where large nations try to ally smaller ones in order to face off against larger rivals, so you have large cold wars with intense, short real conflicts.
Science would evolve out of royal workshops and commissioned inventors. Royalty itself would be based on ancestry, much like it is irl, but instead of Divine Right it would be based on the prestige of what the royal family has done, much like in Nordic cultures. Equality movements would be much delayed and hindered by the absence of a shared superstition. Consider this exchange:
Peasant: "We deserve equality!"
King: "Why?"
Peasant: "Because we are both human."
King: "Yes, but you are a peasant and I am a king. In what way are you my equal?"
How could the peasant respond to this? We as modern people recognize the equality of human life, but it was religion that gave the peasant ammunition against the king. "That which you do to the least among you, you do to me" - Jesus (paraphrase).
Women would be hit especially hard. In what ways are women equal to men? Not physically, for sure. A woman's brain is 10% smaller than a man's brain, so people who don't know better could easily argue that they aren't mentally equal either (I know much about this topic and am not saying this is true). Spiritually equal doesn't exist. Morally equal? What does that even mean?
So, we would come to a strange modern era where there is very little in the terms of equality, women are second class citizens (if they aren't still considered property), slavery is probably still around, and we have many nations without a clear morality with very, very large stockpiles of modern weapons (including nukes). Nuclear weapons probably won't have been used on live targets, fortunately, for much the same reasons that they weren't used during the cold war: nobody wants to die. On top of this, most of the world has been heavily militarized, so the delivery of an atomic weapon would be much more difficult than it was in the real world.

So, that's mostly a little story that I didn't take horribly seriously, but put some thought into. Feel free to discuss.


EDIT FOR SHOS:


I'm not sure if the jewish priesthood still exists today, I'd wager it does, but I'm not certain. Back in Jesus' time, the ruling class among the jews were the priesthood, called the Pharasees in the bible. Some selected quotes from that page:


EDIT2:
Just for reference, the main idea behind Christianity is that there is one god that is manifest in different ways. This behavior is known as the trinity: father, son, holy spirit. The Father is essentially the jewish god. When god acts in Father mode, stuff explodes. The Son is Jesus, the physical god. The Son is the manifestation of love and mercy; when he acts, people are healed or enlightened. The Holy Spirit is the guide for the lost. The Holy Spirit, neither heavenly nor earthly, is the link between humans and the rest of the godhead (father and son); when he acts, people are given various heavenly gifts including salvation (there are some caveats here, but we won't worry about that).
One point of common confusion, these are not separate entities. It is one being taking different forms. The common anology used is water, which can exist as ice, liquid water, or steam but is always water.

So this is getting pretty intense now. At the time I'm looking at it, the average of polls has Obama up by 0.1.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/us/general_election_romney_vs_obama-1171.html
I guess we're heading into recount territory for the election. Oddly, when you look at the polls, gallup has romney up by 6, whereas Rasmussen Tracking has a dead tie. I thought Gallup was normally pretty neutral and Rasmussen was normally republican leaning? What is this madness?

Do you trust what FiveThirtyEight says on the matter?

Long story short - Gallup has moved away from the consensus, and when they do that, it's usually a sign that they are in the wrong.



http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/18/gallup-vs-the-world/

Lol, so they're not biased, they're just bad at polling?

More or less. =p

Fun thing - today, in one of our biggest national newspapers, there was an article about the past accuracy of Gallup and their polling result this time. The article was...far from critical. I emailed the journalist who had wrote the piece, said that "Hey, I think you're missing a part of the story" and explained why, and linked the above. He responded at once with a "Thanks a lot!" and shortly thereafter, he had almost doubled the length of the article, adding the information I wanted him to add. Hooray!

i dunno about you guys, but i personally hope obama gets reelected for president.

because, in my opinion, romney has absolutely no idea what he's talking about. at least it seems that way. it seems like he only wants to become president for money and power. those two things are the only things that you should not abuse, especially when you've earned a high rank that hipsters these days call "presidency".

obama, on the other hand, cares about his country. although romney probably would too if he ran for president, definitely not at the same extent as obama. obama has done many great things for the united states, and should continue doing what ever he's currently doing to ensure that more great things happen.

haha and of course 'not enough time' has passed that romney has been president, so he hasn't exactly done anything for america. but if he were elected in the aftermath, i might just change my opinion about him.

just my opinion, not that i'm the biggest fan of politics.

Your opinion is pretty much a double-edged sword. What you may consider Obama doing a lot for the country could be considered doing nothing in others' eyes and what you may think Romney is running for might be the exact opposite of someone else's thoughts.

No offense, but you'd have a hard time arguing for that post due to lack of supporting details and pretty much no depth or solid facts. I'm not one to bash opinions, I'm just warning you because people like to furiously debate/dismantle others arguments in this topic and "source?" is a common rebuttal.

"haha and of course 'not enough time' has passed that romney has been president"
I think that's the biggest problem you have. Romney isn't and hasn't been president.

"although romney probably would too if he ran for president, definitely not at the same extent as obama."
And that is so horribly untrue I can't even imagine how you could say it. Watching MSNBC, are we? You know how partisan Fox News is? MSNBC is much worse, to the point that they are considered the least honest news station in america (apart from things like "KKK Live").

"obama has done many great things for the united states"
Like yaya said, my response to this is What great things? The only thing he's really done is obamacare, which is not great at all. If you're gonna do national healthcare, you should at least do it competently. Or are you just saying "he's done great things" because he's black and the president? I positively despise people who say that because that's so incredibly racist.

"romney has absolutely no idea what he's talking about."
Have you watched even one debate? I'd be careful of saying someone doesn't know what they're talking about if I were you.

I decided to take you on because it's pretty well known here that I support Romney, and you just essentially said "romney is stinky, obama is good!" I can just as easily say "Obama just talks and says nice things, but doesn't do anything, while Romney gets the job done."  

For what it's worth, there's a major difference between "least honest" and "most dishonest", which is what's relevant. All conservatives agree that Fox News is the most credible name, since it's the only conservative station, while liberals/independents are split between CNN/ABC/MSNBC/what have you. I think you're getting your statement from a poll that measures honesty, not dishonesty, which is important.

With that said, I didn't even read Cedric's post but judging by the reactions I didn't miss anything. ;p

Are you kidding me? You really believe that Fox news is better than MSNBC? Wow. I can't get this through my head... MSNBC is a bad news source for sure, but not even close to the evil of Fox News.

Also, I'd say that Obama is one of the worst US presidents (drone strikes anyone?), but I just can't stand the idea of Romney being president because of his lack of views (what is his view on abortion? he must have swapped between pro-life and pro-choice at least ten times by now) and his quite frankly, stupid plan to fix the economy (he says he'll cut education and healthcare, but of COURSE he can't cut the humongous military defence budget. and obviously cutting taxes help the economy too). Despite all your moaning about Obama's handling of the economy, it really hasn't been that bad in comparison to the rest of the world. Our government is so obsessed with austerity that growth is now pretty much non-existent, but unfortunately they'll have already run the country into the ground by the time that the next election comes by.

Also, to all those saying that Romney is just doing it for the money and power - You're dumb. If you way out the costs/benefits, it would be far better just to buy out all of the politicians. Romney probably does legitimately believe that he's going to improve the country.

Sniper, why do you believe that Romney will do better than Obama in terms of economics? Time and time again, it has been shown that cuts will not sort out a recession. Do you really want to argue with history? I know that the deficit has to be sorted out, but you can't cut too deep and too fast, whether you like it or not.

Your best news source for the elections would probably be BBC. Being based in Britain, I doubt they have an interest in either party.

Fox has been wrong about plenty of issues, but I've watched them a lot and havn't seen outright lies and set-ups like MSNBC does. I don't know if you guys over there heard about the Treyvon Martin case? I will never trust anything from anyone related to MSNBC because of that.


Erm, it does. If a business' expense go down, their profit goes up. When profit goes up, money changes hands more quickly. I think a big problem people have is that they don't know anything at all about what an economy is. A very simplistic, but powerful, way of thinking about an economy is that it is a single number: economy = (the rate at which money changes hands) + (the amount of new wealth created). In developed nations, the first term is much larger than the second, to the point that the second is usually considered negligible, but in theory, increasing either will improve the economy.

Do I need to say the cheap comeback to this?


That depends on how you measure things and what you consider 'sorted out' to be. Obviously I don't support a pure capitalist society because very bad things happen to a very large number of people, but I equally don't support a pure socialist society because there's a difference between equality and fairness. Sometimes they are the same thing, but not always. Is it good if everyone is equally poor? Capitalism generates wealth; socialism generates equality. The trick is balancing the two depending on what your situation requires. I believe that America (and indeed the world, although I care much less about you than I care about me, just saying) needs more wealth to sort out the problems. It is true that in the distant future we will all probably live in a very socialist society (see: Star Trek), but I don't believe that the world has a high enough level of development to support that. Eventually, people who don't have things will want to take them from people who do, so we shouldn't sacrifice our production base for happiness just yet. In all honesty, it's been less than a century since WWII and then all the mini cold war hot spots, the world economy is still a huge mess. We still have entire countries without industrial bases. These things won't get better just because we shift goods around a little. For things to really improve to the point that the world could sustain a mainly socialist system, we need massive production and advanced technology. For that, you need a powerful free market.



So that was a bit of rambling, my apologies. The gist of my beliefs is that socialism can be good (sometimes it's clearly dumb), but it's good in the same way that chocolate cake is good. You can't live off of chocolate cake alone but you do appreciate it when you get it.

Will the deficit be lowered if you lower taxes?

Cutting taxes helps the economy, but it doesn't help if it isn't supported by sufficient growth. Cutting taxes in a time where growth is at standstill will do nothing, especially when you cut Corporation taxes (more debatable for Income tax). Businesses will hoard te extra money an only spend it when the recession is finally over.

If you only lower taxes, no, that wouldn't make sense. While it won't increase the deficit on a one to one scale, it still won't generate enough growth to cancel the loss completely. I don't believe anyone is arguing this either. I don't recall if Romeny has promised to cut taxes. I thought (and could be wrong) that he just wanted to not increase taxes.



This line of reasoning runs into a big problem. Raising taxes slows growth. There are two 'levers' at the government's disposal: the effective tax rate and the tax code itself. Lowering the effective tax rate increase the speed at which money changes hands, simplifying the tax code lowers the economy's inertia. Other than those two, there's no other way for a government to encourage growth, despite what silly measures have been attempted by both Bush and Obama. Printing money doesn't stabilize an economy, nor does printing less (until you get to the extremes of supply side devaluation or hyperinflation).
I believe Romney is the better choice because Obama wants to increase taxes, which doesn't help. However, if Romney can make business law more employer friendly, that would help. I don't see Obama doing that.

Then you haven't paid a lot of attention - Romney keeps saying that he'll cut taxes by 20% across the board, while making sure that the deficit is lowered. The way he'll make sure this happens, according to himself (but not according to any non-partisan economists, because the math does not add up) is by closing loopholes in the current tax code.
http://www.mittromney.com/issues/tax

As you can see, there's quite a lot of tax lowering going on here. The exception is that there'll be "no tax cuts for the rich", but they also won't see any tax increase. That's...probably not true either.

http://money.cnn.com/2012/10/04/news/economy/romney-tax-cuts-rich/index.html

Tell you what, Sniper. I know that you plan to vote for Romney, because you've said so in the past, but I strongly advice that you look up the economic policy of the candidate you plan to vote for, because it doesn't seem like you know anything about it.

"Switch to a territorial tax system"
And there's the kicker.

From your source:
"But he has also promised to pay for his tax reform plan,"
This phrase doesn't really make sense. You pass a tax reform plan, you don't pay for them.

"Romney's promise to "not reduce the share" of taxes paid by the rich is not necessarily the same as saying the tax bills of some high-income filers wouldn't go down. It means that what high-income filers as a group contribute as a percentage of total revenue would be the same as it is today."
There's this too.

"Tell you what, Sniper. I know that you plan to vote for Romney, because you've said so in the past, but I strongly advice that you look up the economic policy of the candidate you plan to vote for, because it doesn't seem like you know anything about it."
The problem is that it doesn't really matter what his policy is, sadly, because it's almost impossible to do worse than Obama. "I'm gonna make rich people pay their fair share!" Really, that's your plan? Even raising taxes on the rich to 80% won't cover the deficit.
Something to look at:
http://money.cnn.com/2012/03/21/pf/taxes/obama-tax-plan/index.htm
Gotta run to class.

Here's a related source about what happens to the deficit if you raise taxes only on the rich.

Also, likely the reason I didn't remember romney saying that is because I thought it was just republicans doing their thing again. I don't like his plan very much, but I like obama's even less.

More food for thought:
http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/tax-the-rich-14-facts-you-may-want-to-consider

I'll just say this: Consider voting third party. Romney still got Arizona.

I would, but that's an empty gesture. I do like Gary Johnson, although sometimes he's a little silly.

I'd argue it's no less of a gesture than it'd be voting for Romney. I can't tell anyone to vote third party in important battle states (look at Ralph Nader in Florida 2000), but in non-competitive states, where the winner is all but decided, you should make your vote heard. Gary Johnson would care more about your vote than Romney or Obama, I promise.

http://www.smh.com.au/world/israelis-back-discrimination-against-arabs-poll-20121024-2844m.html

Not surprising at all IMO. Will respond when I'm home

Just piping in, you realize of course that this goes both ways in the middle east, right?