[Scotty]

Iron also composes just over a quarter of the entire Earth by weight .

[Flipside]

Well, I probably worded that wrongly, let's put it this way, if we mined all of the copper in the Earths crust and recycled every bit of Copper we used, we still wouldn't have nearly enough to bring every country on the planet up to the current technological level of the US and Europe.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=measure-of-metal-supply-f

In many ways, that's another reason why expanding into Space is vital, contrary to popular belief, the Earth doesn't have enough to go round, and that requirement gap is only going to grow.

What is this? The bronze age?

Guess what Copper wire is made of...

[Blue Lion]

So let's get all the Platinum now before the other countries get to it!

[Flipside]

It's happening with Oil right now.

[Mongoose]

Yea are we saving Platinum for something?

Maybe for the magnetics lab I worked in a few summers ago.  I was using platinum chloride to attempt to synthesize iron-platinum magnetic nanoparticles.  The going price for a 5-gram bottle was something like four hundred dollars.  You don't spill that stuff.

[Kosh]

Yea are we saving Platinum for something?

Maybe for the magnetics lab I worked in a few summers ago.  I was using platinum chloride to attempt to synthesize iron-platinum magnetic nanoparticles.  The going price for a 5-gram bottle was something like four hundred dollars.  You don't spill that stuff.

I read somewhere there's more platinum on the asteroid Eros than has ever been mined in the history of the world combined.

Expensive and only marginally better mileage than a good conventional diesel

The original hybrids, yeah, but the plug in hybrids are better in that you can go pretty much your entire daily commute on just the battery.

incredibly admaging to the enviroment if you take into account CO2 costs to manufacture and eventually scrap the car

Links?

Godless Atheists providing a legal beatdown anytime someone expresses a belief in God.

And after centuries of oppression and religious imperialism (literally) beating down anyone expressing a disbelief in god it is time they got what they deserve.

[Nuclear1]

The best religious groups can do right now is just sit back and shutup.  I don't know of any major civil liberties or aetheist organization that is actively seeking the repression or dismantling of religion...they just want to be able to live in a country where not being religious doesn't automatically set you as an outcast or make you feel unwelcome.

Religion is just using the aetheist/civil liberties movement to justify a jihad against the unbelievers again...

[Mongoose]

Religion is just using the aetheist/civil liberties movement to justify a jihad against the unbelievers again...

"Religion" as a whole is?  Like, every single one of us?  Guess I missed that memo.

[Scotty]

You're not the only one.

[Blue Lion]

Man, it's jihadist AND has poor communication?

[Flipside]

It's because no-ones come right out and said' Let's have a Jihad on Athesists, instead it is the constant drone about 'Godless Liberals' from several 'Godheads' in the church, and constant referrals to atheists as though if they could all be removed from the US, we'd all be eating Apple Pie and drinking 4 Star.

[Sushi]

It's because no-ones come right out and said' Let's have a Jihad on Athesists, instead it is the constant drone about 'Godless Liberals' from several 'Godheads' in the church, and constant referrals to atheists as though if they could all be removed from the US, we'd all be eating Apple Pie and drinking 4 Star.

To be fair, you get the same thing in the other direction too ("we could actually make progress if religion just disappeared!"). Why can't we all just get along?

On one hand, it's annoying that small, vocal, vitriolic minorities are making so much (unnecessary) trouble for so many people. On the other hand, snarky debate is better than one side shutting out ALL debate (although civil debate is infinitely preferable to both).

[Flipside]

Agreed, neither side should be wishing for the non-existence of the other, and I'll freely admit that there are as many radical anti-religious nuts here as there are radical religious nuts, different colour background, but still the same picture

It's the old story of 'If we could only get rid of X, Y wouldn't happen', when the truth is 'Y always finds a way of happening'.

[Blue Lion]

Flipside, if we just stop talking about the controversy, it'll go away! I can feel it in my gut on this one.

[Flipside]

That's probably wind, or your gut is lying to you.

I didn't say 'don't talk about it', I said, wishing for the non-existence of the other isn't going to help'. Please don't put words in my mouth.

[Nuclear1]

And I never said the world would be better off without religion. What I said is that church needs to stop using the moderate aetheists' (not the ones who want religion demolished) desire to have church and state separated as a causus belli to scream persecution and get sensitive.

The flipside is also true...aetheism and the civil liberties movement need to respect the church's existence, and not seek to demolish it. I would think the goal of this movement anyway is mostly to have religion out of politics and to keep religion from enforcing itself on others who don't agree (looking at you, gay marriage bans).

[TrashMan]

And after centuries of oppression and religious imperialism (literally) beating down anyone expressing a disbelief in god it is time they got what they deserve.

This is the stupidest argument in the history of stupid arguments.
What next? Are you planning to kill my kids cause my garnd-granddad cheated yours out of some land?

[General Battuta]

We just had one of these.

Let's pretend it just all happened right here in this post. nuclear1 was reasonable, Flipside was wise, BlueLion made fair points but for some reason they were miscommunicated to Kosh or iamzack or something, Trashman said something I took as misogynistic, I flipped out, Scotty stayed on the reasonable side of the religious thing, Liberator (adorably) didn't, HerraTohtori clarified some point of science, Kazan talked about the evils of circumcision, Androgeos Exeunt said something totally irrelevant about how GenDisc is dumb, and then

LOCK.

[Flipside]

Brings a tear of nostalgia to my eye