John UK wrote:
I wonder if brain malfunction can extend to a whole country, all at once.

The chief complaint involved two magazines that CMI published and Answers distributed.

The lawsuit alleged that Answers misled subscribers into thinking that CMI was no longer publishing the magazines, and instead signed them up for Answers in Genesis' own, new magazine, "Answers."

CMI said that it lost 39,000 subscribers that produced annual gross revenue of $252,000.

When the suit was filed, Answers called the allegations baseless and without merit. In its defense, Answers said it had offered to settle the dispute through binding arbitration.

Before initiating legal action, CMI commissioned a former chief state magistrate in Australia, Clarrie Briese, also a nonvoting member of CMI, to investigate the dispute.

In a report he prepared for CMI, he found that the dispute started in August 2004, when CMI staffers offered some proposals to reorganize Answers.

They sought to correct what they saw as poor morale and too great a dependency on Ham.

That provoked retaliation from Ham, Briese reported.

That's just silly. If I heard of some ancient god from South America today, I guarantee I wouldn't believe in it for a moment.

"Atheism is another form of man's ignorance and his total depravity."

Ah. If you or John are simply using the the term "depravity" to replace the word "atheism" from God's point of view, I suppose that would make a sort of sense. It just wasn't obvious from John's context.

"...Atheists...determine what God should or should not be like..."

The atheist who rebutted Gerson's article was just pointing out that the majority of Christians *say* they believe in the morality of the God of the Bible, but they clearly don't. They pick and choose their own morality. They ignore Old Testament laws when they conflict with their own morality, but then claim the Ten Commandments must be followed. The atheist is right on that point.

"Human depravity on their part aside..."

Yes, the courts ruled *against* Free Speech. That, and that alone, was the issue.

A woman complained to the city that the flier targeted and disparaged her. Nobody disputes that that's what the flier did -- it insulted and condemned. The boss took down the GNEA group's insults.

Then, the people of faith (the GNEA group) who had put up the flier were offended that someone noticed their insults and suppressed their free speech. They complained that they had the right to state what they saw as the truth, even if it did target and insult someone. The courts disagreed.

That's not a double standard. Equating a woman complaining about being insulted with a group complaining about not being able to insult that woman is the only double standard, and it is not valid.

Now,the free speech issue -- that was a valid complaint, and it's what the case was about. And the article was lying when it asserted that what's going on is all about making "Natural family," "Marriage," and "Union of a man and a woman" into unlawful hate speech.

http://atheistexperience.blogspot.com/2007/07/what-theists-dont-ask.html

The atheist's counter-arguments are pretty solid. Here's an excerpt:

"Michael Gerson didn't make an argument for modern liberal Christianity; he made the more general claim that believing in a higher power solves the problem of morality. Of course it doesn't. Belief in a higher power simply adds a level of arbitrary abstraction to your moral decisions. You are no less likely to commit acts of atrocity, only now you are free to attribute these actions to the deity of your choice. Instead of picking your morals, you are picking your god, as well as your interpretation of what the god wants...

Most people are ready to argue that they shouldn't be expected to accept some of these edicts that were supposedly directed by God [stoning unruly children to death]. At that point, the question of "Where do you atheists get their morality?" is easily answered: "It's probably about the same place YOU get your morality, since it clearly isn't from God."