God or gods - if He/She/They exist - is/are way beyond the explanations that can be provided by science, which is, after all, the 'explanation of everything that is NOT God/gods' in this universe; and God is that which is 'beyond science'. Science does not (and should not) attempt to explain what is inexplicable.

On the other hand - to my mind at least - the religious explanations (of every faith, of every colour) have failed even more than have those of science to explain what is/are God/gods. This is not to claim that we should do away with religions: let those who need them have them. But the religions and the religious should not try to enforce their faith on those of no faith; just as those of no faith should not impose their lack of belief on those who do believe.

We could perhaps at best say that God is what lies within the gaps of our understanding. We ceaselessly fill in the gaps (because that is our nature) - and those particular gaps or 'god-spaces' disappear; but new gaps keep appearing.

In that limited sense, Stuart Kauffman is being quite reasonable (to my view): God is simply that which is unexplained (and possibly inexplicable).

Thus, most such debates about God/not-God are just empty argumentation, as we are seeing right here.

If God exists, he probably doesn't...

GSC

Timbuktom: In view of Nancy Pelosi having taking 'the issue of impeachment off the table' (and Kucinich's impeachment motion apparently going nowhere), I think yours is a GREAT idea!

Had I been a US citizen, I'd have been fully on board with you on this initiative - doing everything I can to ensure it happens. In any case, all my very best wishes to you and I do hope other Salon readers who are US citizens will seriously MOVE this wonderful idea!

(Do check out my OPMS as a practical tool that could help with designing and implementing an effective plan, based on your own current ideas, that could significantly help with your work towards the challenging Mission: "To get a million individual US citizens to sue GW Bush and Dick Cheney in the courts!")

GSC

ELEPHANT DUNG:

"There's no need to pardon anyone who hasn't been charged with a crime, who committed no crime, and whose only guilt exists in the minds of the fringe wackadoodle left.

"Since Vice President Cheney might not be in the Senate chamber this week, and Pat Leahy might be feeling lonely, it falls to me to say, 'Go fuck yourself.' " Senator.

Ahh, the smell, the stink, the incredible foul odor!

Let me out before I suffocate!!

GSC

Congratulations, Toriatama, for a passionate and very well-reasoned defence of Ho Chi Minh.

Now there will be idiots here who will call you a "Marxist", a "Comunist", a "thief" and stuff like that - but the fact is that you just believe in freedom of people (the Vietnamese, for instance) to choose whatever it is they want to be (even if they happen to make a mistake in their choice) - and not to be dictated to by the US as represented by the likes of GW Bush and Gang (and other predecessors of his).

It is too sad indeed that the US ever got involved in Vietnam because of Henry Kissinger and his utterly idiotic "Domino Theory": the Vietnamese only wanted to be free of French colonial misrule of their nation - and John F. Kennedy and his ridiculous ideas pushed them into the communist camp.

--- GSC

To be a Republican is - if GW Bush, Dick Cheney and the rest of that Gang are good representatives of this breed - to be a vicious War Criminal.

Mi>When are you US citizens going to put these scoundrels in jail where they belong, for the rest of their miserable lives?

-- GSC

GW Bush, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzales, ... - the whole bunch of those vicious War Criminals (that's my opinion) should be put on trial and - if found guilty - should be confined to Guantanamo for the rest of their miserable lives under the same conditions as they approved and ordered for a whole lot of people they got tortured at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.

-- GSC

Josef Stalin was a vicious thug, not very different in spirit and mind as those other vicious thugs, GW Bush, Dick Cheney, Con Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzales, and others...

The real difference was that the latter happened to be living in a still somewhat liberal USA (though they did everytyhing they could to make it a fascist state).

Put that in in your Rethuglican pipe and smoke it till it comes out of your ears.

-- GSC