TT was right in 2000 about Gore. He was running without any of the qualities he has taken up now that those elections are over.

The whole 2000 election was basically "Who will be the most harmless" and America ended up with the most harmful candidate possible.

IF the Democrats had actually run Gore as something other then a blank he would have won. Don't blame the independents because your party failed in its marketting and took its base for granted.

You know, just like you morons are trying to do with 2008. The left does not owe you its vote, it does not have to vote for you it can vote independent and it can tell you to go fuck yourselves.

Now, Gore is a strong candidate, in 2000 he was a zombie.

The cartoon highlights an example of why Hillary cannot win in 2008, she doesn't take a stand. She hasn't actually answered any of the questions on her policy decisions.

She giggled off questions about her vote on Iran and then attacked the person asking the question because somehow, her making the exact same mistake twice is not an indication of the fact that she will not make a good president.

She has alienated the youth vote by following in what amounts to Jack Trick lunacy, and she does not have the ability to pull the Religious Right. She could birth the reincarnation of Jesus and she would not have the ability to pull the American religious right.

She is falling in the polls despite her huge money train. She is falling behind because she is not an appealing candidate, and unlike Gore, who has since risen to being something, she doesn't show any signs of becoming something.

Obama and Edwards have a chance at winning, Hillary does not. She doesn't even really rally the liberal movement and while you guys seem to think that someone actually standing for the very things you would like to see happen is a minus, the rest of us have noticed what happens to weasel candidates.

If Gore stood firm on his liberal ideals, he would have won in 2000. That he didn't win was not because he was too far left, it was because he didn't stand firm. His electoral strategists where wussies who should have really just admitted that they were working for the Bush campaign.

Clinton will not be Gore II, she will be Kerry II, this time with people who actively hate her voting. Even if she wins you will lose, she will dither on Iraq, fail on public healthcare and leave you with more examples the rightwing can use to paint the Democrats as spineless.

If Hillary wins the Democrats will lose in 2008. Vote for someone who can win.

If that was what it took for you to abandon religion, and then atheism then you were and are never an atheist or a theist.

You were just a "Me-too".

Atheism and theism are conclusions on how the universe works, not on which group you would rather belong to.

By saying that you changed your beliefs not because of evidence or thinking about it one way or the other, but by a form of peer pressure makes it seem like you lack the moral fortitude to make your own mind up on anything.

Free will is a concept, and thus doesn't specifically exist (Pretty much like the concept of zero.)

That said; without a God there is nothing to stop one having what one would term "Free will." Indeed, a deterministic universe where there is a God, or Fate if you prefer, would nullify free will as it is a concept based on there being no authority directing our decisions.

So, while you argue "Why," the atheist response would be "Why not?"

Further, on morality. Religion teaches certain ideals of morality but does not actually teach morality itself. What defines morality is not what we do for fear of punishment or want of reward, but rather what we do because we want a better world to live in and the best contribution we can make towards that is via our own actions.

You are not a moral person because you think that some all loving father in the sky will torture you for all eternity if you aren't, you are a moral person because you care for your fellow human being, for the world you live in, and for your self-image.

The offer of reward is thus meaningless from an atheist point of view because reward is not why we act well, and punishment is equally meaningless, as it doesn't nullify whatever harm we have done.

This is why it horrifies atheists when the religious make claims about morality being based on God. If the only reason why a theist isn't out there lying, cheating, murdering and raping people is the threat of eternal torment and the promise of eternal reward, it says something frightening about the theist.

Fortunately, most atheists don't believe this to be the case. You do not think of God or Jesus when you take pity on somebody, you think of that somebody and that is because you are a good person who wants to make the world a better place to live in.

It probably wasn't always that way, but it probably evolved before we became what we would term "Humans." We are pack animals, and thus we feel for social emotions like compassion in order to further our own survival.

Indeed the evolution of compassion may have been in some ways more significant to us than the evolution of the thumb.

Free will is a concept.

God is a being.

The two are not equivelant.

1st: Hitler was a Christian. His reign was enabled by Christians. Stop buying into the BS that he wasn't a Christian.

The general rule of thumb is: We get the communists, the theists get the fascists.

Also, the agnostic "It will never be knowable" is both a copout and unscientific. We might not know yet but that doesn't make something unknowable.