The Vienna Declaration.

The Vienna Declaration summary statement: The criminalization of illicit drug users is fueling the HIV epidemic and has resulted in overwhelmingly negative health and social consequences. A full policy reorientation is needed.

What this states is the war on drugs has failed. The War of Drugs is actually the Prohibition of Drugs. "Prohibition" of alcohol failed (from 1920-1933) and was started by the religious (and it failed also), so why would the war on drugs work? It simply has not worked and will never work.

However, what has been proven time and time again (which the masses don't know) is that HIV research has advanced the medical world by leaps and bounds. HIV research has helped all people under a doctor's care whether they know or not.

HIV research has compiled lots of statistics the world don't even know about. For example, there are many women who have anal sex. It has been learned that women won't admit to their doctors that they have annal sex, the reason? Condoms aren't needed and no babies are made. So the man has hotter sex and the woman does not get pregnant.

Worldwide half of the people who have HIV are women. It's now half men and half women. So, it turns out that there are all sorts of bisexual men transmitting HIV to women through annal sex. Now we know there are more bisexual men, than people thought.

If it wasn't for gay activists pushing for new drug therapies for HIV, world health care would be in a much worse position.

Again, HIV research has shown that the "War on Drugs" is helping to spread HIV, to both men and women. It's not a gay disease, in case you forgot. The Vienna Declaration is asking for signatures. You can do this by following either link below.

The Vienna Declaration home page.

The Vienna Declaration Statement.

Read more about the International 17th AIDS Conference being held in Vienna, Austria from July 18-23, 2010, here: Abandoning moralistic war on drugs becomes centre piece of AIDS meeting

What is immoral about questioning a religious belief?

Christians are offended when I ask them to question their belief. What is immoral and unethical about asking someone to use their brain?

Which is immoral, A or B?

A) To ask a Christian to question the truth claims their religion makes.

OR

B) To tell Christians to blindly accept religious propositions which can never be proven.

What a perfect proposition! Make a claim that no one can prove because the proposition claims things happen after someone dies.

Hindsight is 20/20.

I used to work in the Reservations Department for US Airways in the 1990s. Formerly, USAir and Allegheny airlines with host of mergers and other problems, by the way. I had a phone conversation I will never forget.

The person calling on the airline's 800 number was complaining about the complexity of the air fares. I said it was due to deregulation.

(Normally I would not give such a flippant response to a potential customer but after hearing that same complaint for the 10,000th time and not withstanding the fact that Americans had so readily applauded deregulation, the response simply flowed from my mouth.)

She paused and completely changed her tone of voice, to my surprise, and confessed she worked in the government office that had deregulated the airlines under Reagan. She said they felt deregulation was the best thing that could happen to airline industry.

Then she said, if we would have known that deregulation would have caused the majority of airlines to collapse and hurt the untold thousands if not millions of airline employees, we would have never deregulated the airline industry.

The Bible. Divine origin or man-made origin?

It would be child's play for an all powerful God who is all wise, all knowing, all knowledgeable, perfect, omnipotent and who knows the past, present and future to write and publish a book with timeless morals and ethics that would apply to any culture in any time period of human history and would never be able to be misinterpreted by anyone who would read the Bible.

Yet, this did not happen. Why would anyone cling to any Bronze Age or Iron Age mythology with it's blatant immorality and then claim it's not only still applicable but it's of divine origin.

Certainty. A False Goal.

“Certainty is, I think, a false goal. We’re achieving functional certainties in science and just… in our day to day lives. I mean, it’s a functional certainty that I’m sitting here talking to you, though it’s possible I could be dreaming or, you know, deceived by an evil demon.

Those kind of philosophical, epistemological worries don’t really relate too much to the ordinary practice of science, the very useful practice of science and our ordinary task of just negotiating our lives and finding happiness in this world.

We recognize there is a range, there’s a continuum of, you know, “I’m not sure,” “You know, it’s a coin toss, 50/50”, understanding of our circumstances, to be functionally certain about what is so.

And many people are pretending to be functionally certain or believe themselves to be functionally certain about things like “Jesus is going to come back and judge the world in their lifetime,” and 20% of the American population claims to be functionally certain that, that is going to come to pass and 78% think that Jesus is going to come back sometime, not necessarily in their lifetime.

And these certainties do real work for us. The person who is certain that the soul enters the zygote at the moment of conception, is the person who wants to veto stem cell research despite the fact that tens of millions of people are suffering conditions for which stem cell research is the best line of research to generate therapies.

So, these are ideas that are not just of academic interest or personal, private, spiritual relevance, I mean, these are shaping policies, they’re shaping the national conversation. And when you look at the Muslim world they are causing people to blow themselves up on street corners.” —Sam Harris

Watch video here: Is there certainty in science? (Hint: Choose the video titled, "Is there certainty in science?")

The Big Think website does not give the date this video was recorded. However, it's most likely after 2006, not sure.

6-Story Jesus Statue In Ohio Struck By Lightning

‎6-Story Jesus Statue In Ohio Struck By Lightning on June 14, 2010. Seriously, if you believe in the Abrahamic God, don't you think it's obvious that you chose the wrong God? I think Zeus was slightly pissed, don't you agree?

Read NPR news article here.

Gillard won't play religion card.

Australian PM Does Not Believe in God. Read full article here on ABC News.

The dagger of reason is here to stay.

“The dagger of reason will not stop cutting until the spread of religious cancer is gone from this world.” –Mike Hampson

Autobiography of Mark Twain to be published this year.

"Mark Twain's Autobiography Set for Unveiling, a Century After His Death." Read PBS July 7, 2010, article and/or watch video here: Mark Twain PBS article and video here.

Mark Twain: "There is one notable thing about our Christianity: bad, bloody, merciless, money-grabbing, and predatory. The invention of hell measured by our Christianity of today, bad as it is, hypocritical as it is, empty and hollow as it is, neither the deity nor his son is a Christian, nor qualified for that moderately high place. Ours is a terrible religion. The fleets of the world could swim in spacious comfort in the innocent blood it has spilled."

Christopher Hitchens speaks. Authors at Google.

Author Christopher Hitchens discusses his book "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything" as a part of the Authors at Google series. This event took place on August 16, 2007 at Google headquarters in Mountain View, CA.

Watch YouTube.com video here: Christopher Hitchens speaks for Authors at Google.