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Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: paret who wrote (67805)	10/1/2005 1:03:42 PM
From: ChinuSFO	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81568

"China has undergone earthshaking changes and achieved world-stunning successes," Very significant. And they are communists? Russia which was Communist is not doing so well, is it not? Have you ever stopped to ask whether it is national pride or the political system which has got to do something with a country's progress. India is a socialist democracy and it is in the same boat as China. It is important to understand that tin both these countries religion and politics do not mix unlike the US where the President and his evangelical friends are trying their best to mix religion and politics. And off course in the US we have started to see the creep of corruption and roguery thanks to Delay, Frist, Rove, Libby and their leaders Cheney and Bush.

To: paret who wrote (67805)	10/1/2005 8:32:29 PM
From: American Spirit	Respond to of 81568

Communist China has never been stronger with Bushies in charge, encouraging the out-sourcing of US manufacturing there. It's the Walmart Bushie economy where everything is made in China and US jobs don't even count anymore. Bush's outrageous deficit spending is all loans from communist China now. The whole war is a loan from communist China. They own our butts thanks to Bush and his pork barrel spenders and under-taxers of the rich. Thanks a lot, GW.

To: paret who wrote (67805)	10/2/2005 9:09:57 AM
From: ChinuSFO	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 81568

We had exchanged our opinions on whether religious beliefs should be a public issue or not and what its benefits were. Societies worse off 'when they have God on their side' By Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent RELIGIOUS belief can cause damage to a society, contributing towards high murder rates, abortion, sexual promiscuity and suicide, according to research published today. According to the study, belief in and worship of God are not only unnecessary for a healthy society but may actually contribute to social problems. The study counters the view of believers that religion is necessary to provide the moral and ethical foundations of a healthy society. It compares the social peformance of relatively secular countries, such as Britain, with the US, where the majority believes in a creator rather than the theory of evolution. Many conservative evangelicals in the US consider Darwinism to be a social evil, believing that it inspires atheism and amorality. Many liberal Christians and believers of other faiths hold that religious belief is socially beneficial, believing that it helps to lower rates of violent crime, murder, suicide, sexual promiscuity and abortion. The benefits of religious belief to a society have been described as its “spiritual capital”. But the study claims that the devotion of many in the US may actually contribute to its ills. The paper, published in the Journal of Religion and Society, a US academic journal, reports: “Many Americans agree that their churchgoing nation is an exceptional, God-blessed, shining city on the hill that stands as an impressive example for an increasingly sceptical world. “In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion in the prosperous democracies. “The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developing democracies, sometimes spectacularly so.” Gregory Paul, the author of the study and a social scientist, used data from the International Social Survey Programme, Gallup and other research bodies to reach his conclusions. He compared social indicators such as murder rates, abortion, suicide and teenage pregnancy. The study concluded that the US was the world’s only prosperous democracy where murder rates were still high, and that the least devout nations were the least dysfunctional. Mr Paul said that rates of gonorrhoea in adolescents in the US were up to 300 times higher than in less devout democratic countries. The US also suffered from “ uniquely high” adolescent and adult syphilis infection rates, and adolescent abortion rates, the study suggested. Mr Paul said: “The study shows that England, despite the social ills it has, is actually performing a good deal better than the USA in most indicators, even though it is now a much less religious nation than America.” He said that the disparity was even greater when the US was compared with other countries, including France, Japan and the Scandinavian countries. These nations had been the most successful in reducing murder rates, early mortality, sexually transmitted diseases and abortion, he added. Mr Paul delayed releasing the study until now because of Hurricane Katrina. He said that the evidence accumulated by a number of different studies suggested that religion might actually contribute to social ills. “I suspect that Europeans are increasingly repelled by the poor societal performance of the Christian states,” he added. He said that most Western nations would become more religious only if the theory of evolution could be overturned and the existence of God scientifically proven. Likewise, the theory of evolution would not enjoy majority support in the US unless there was a marked decline in religious belief, Mr Paul said. “The non-religious, proevolution democracies contradict the dictum that a society cannot enjoy good conditions unless most citizens ardently believe in a moral creator. “The widely held fear that a Godless citizenry must experience societal disaster is therefore refuted.” timesonline.co.uk