still think it's about class struggle — Benkei

Probably a sweeping generalization, but "The class war is the only war."

This was not always the case. — Olivier5

True enough, the Dutch were quite imperialistic with colonies in the Americas, Asia and Africa. Royal Dutch Shell didn't get rich harvesting clams, after all.

the kind of things the Nazis were doing. — Olivier5

Exactly. It is hideously ironic that Russia, which claims to be "de-nazifying" Ukraine is emulating the actual Nazis.

True, I probably don't travel enough. Why don't you take me on a whirlwind tour of Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, and SE Asia? You can introduce me to all sorts of people who are pissed off about America. I am shocked (shocked!) to hear that we are not universally loved and admired.

Hypocrisy is easy to complain about because whoever the target is, they are guilty (except me and thee, and even thee has spoken out of both sides of your mouth on one occasion). People are pretty much alike, and your righteous European sneering at American hypocrisy, is able to overlook their own and their own government's and nation's hypocrisy. What! Holland has hypocrites? No!

We great powers also are pretty much alike. Whether it was the British in their Empire, the French, Belgians, Russians, Germans or Americans, we generally exercise power similarly. We have the wherewithal to off-shore our requirements for a temporary torture chamber; we can pull off an invasion of Ukraine, Iraq, or Afghanistan if it suits their current needs. Taiwan, beware. The Netherlands can not. Neither can Denmark, Latvia, or North Macedonia, fine places though they may be. If you all want to get to the bottom of something in a hurry, you have to deploy the thumb screws and waterboards yourselves, which helps you avoid hypocrisy. BTW, when is the Netherlands finally going to invade Lichtenstein?

Has the digital age of information overload do campaigns for justice have less impact. — Jack Cummins

It was much more difficult to organize large groups of people prior to, oh, say 1990, than it has been since the wide availability of personal computers, information networks, the internet, and digital phones. Back then one had to put up flyers, hand out leaflets, take out ads in newspapers, get announcements on radio and television shows, and the like. Lots more word of mouth organizing. Doable? Effective? Absolutely, but it took a lot more effort.

how important is the idea of peaceful process — Jack Cummins

Peaceful methods are essential. Taking on the police with violent protest is a fools errand. Violent movements will be defeated, if not by the police, then by the national guard, and if need be, regular troops. The government has much more practice in deploying force than anybody else does.

Most people are not personally prepared for violent protest. Organizers have a responsibility to not lead people into danger which exceeds anyone's reasonable expectations. Civil rights organizers in the south knew violence was likely, and demonstrators were forewarned, A lot of people got beat up, some rather badly, but they were there through their own informed willingness.

Ghandi was one of a kind whose like doesn't appear very often. Same goes for Nelson Mandela and other heroes. They (and others) worked in societies being driven to very radical change. In India the Raj was collapsing. In South Africa the intransigent white regime was confronted by a sophisticated black majority liberation movement.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine allowed space for only military resistance; peaceful protest was beside the point (for Ukrainians) once the bombers, tanks, and troops were on the move.

The actual effectiveness of any popular movement against poverty, war, injustice, and so on is ALWAYS difficult to determine, and many popular movements would have to be deemed dismal failures if prompt policy change were the only measure of success.

I was active in the anti-Vietnam war demonstrations in the 1960s. Did the demonstrations stop the war? I'm not sure. It seems to have cost Lyndon Johnson a second term (he declined to run again); the demonstrations put pressure on various government figures. It certainly affected the collective public opinion about the war, which is always a concern to the government (and other institutions). It probably had a role in bringing an end to that particular war.

Demonstrations have other benefits, however, especially mass demonstrations, Participation in this mass movement was a watershed experience for many young white people, just as the civil rights movement was a watershed experience for many young black people. Occupy Wall Street did nothing significant to Wall Street, but it was a productive experience for thousands of young people who get together to work (however briefly, however effectively) for social change.

Generally smaller demonstrations, agitations, and consciousness raising went on at the launch of the gay liberation movement (which morphed pretty quickly into a civil rights movement). These were first effective for the participants, whatever they did for anybody else. They were affirming, in the same way the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament was affirming to you. Once we all got our acts together and started focusing on political issues, we made some progress. I would say we made progress because society was changing and we were able to ride a small wave. It certainly wasn't a free ride.

ACT-UP (SILENCE=DEATH) and related organizations had a tough struggle to obtain adequate responses from the government and health care institutions for individuals infected with and dying from AIDS. They used some brilliant disruptive public demonstration tactics.

Demonstrations are almost always worth it, but they may not be immediately successful in changing policy. They change the participants for the better,

I am willing to bet international outrage grows over Western governments hypocrisy. — FreeEmotion

I am not counting on it.

For one thing, I do not accuse governments --ours, the Russian, the Indian, Chinese, or North Macedonian to be consistently truthful and never to be dissemble. Sovereign states are not individuals, and they cannot operate with very much transparency. So, The US can criticize Russia, even though our own foreign policy has often been backed up with brutal warfare, and visa versa. War is, after all, the conduct of diplomacy by 'other means'.

Hypocrisy is a feature of human behavior, and everyone, and every institution we create, employs it periodically.

Better to save our outrage for what we see (or about which we have reliable reports). Russia invaded Ukraine. It doesn't matter much to me whether they are hypocrites, racists, sexists, imperialists, or anything else. They probably want to acquire some nice real estate, and maybe they want to control Ukraine's politics and economy, for their own convenience of course.

[quote: The New York Times]As Russia Pulls Back, the Horror and Atrocities Mount[/quote]

Like other sensible peace-loving people, I am totally opposed to Russia's attacks on Ukraine, aka "war". However, I am surprised by the official and press reactions to dead bodies, particularly dead civilian bodies. As Sherman observed, "War is hell!" Why would there not be civilian casualties? Granted, corpses with tied hands and a bullet in the head look like executions, and we are right to ask "What the hell is going on here?" But people get killed in war, and not just soldiers.

It's been a long time since armies met on a field and did battle away from the civilian populations. Urban war is bound to destroy people and property. It goes with the territory.

bacteria — Manuel

are going to have the last laugh,

my response is more based on a I-wish-people-weren't-like-that pipe dream — Dawnstorm

And if wishes were horses the peasants would ride. I don't believe "human nature" is infinitely malleable. We are not all that nice, a good share of the time,

Your "1-9 list" seems more like an origin story for drama than for humor. However, a good joke is also a 'little drama'.

BTW, saber tooth tigers were extinct by 10,000 years ago. How did they go extinct? We wiped them out -- along with other megafauna. How did we manage to do that? Sharp objects.

Meanwhile, back at the comedy club...

I suspect laughter has more ancient roots than the lithic or neolithic periods, but you are spot on in identifying tension and relief as key elements. Our primate ancestors may have developed the vocalized relief breathing that developed into laughter. We also LEARN when to laugh and when to not laugh. For instance, if you see someone slip and fall in a muddy puddle, you probably won't laugh, being a sophisticated urbanite who understanding that laughing at other people's misfortunes is not just schadenfreude, it makes you look like a rube. God forbid! So, if you dislike the person in the muddy puddle, you'll laugh inwardly.

When we hear a joke that promises to be racist and/or sexist (what's black and white and rolls around in the sand), there is first a tension then a release, anticipating the punch line confirming our racist/sexist attitudes. These days sophisticated urbanites are never racist and/or sexist, so no laughter.

Maybe 25 years ago, The Prairie Home Companion Joke show featured a batch of "Your mother is so fat..." jokes. "Yo mama's so fat, when she fell down I didn't laugh, but the sidewalk cracked up." for example. The humor in the joke derives from the surprise exaggeration.

A major component of humor is founded on our negative beliefs and attitudes. Fat people (yo fat mama, for instance) are often the subject of negative attitudes which Fat Liberation (there is such a thing) tries to combat. I am too fat, and I have no time for fat people's liberation. [If you look at crowd photos from the 1950s, 60s, and 70s--all kinds of people--you will see far fewer fat people.]

So, are fat people legitimate targets of humor?

Satire and travesty are two kinds of more extended humor. Tom Lehrer (Harvard Mathematician turned satirist in the 1960s) said, 'When Kissinger won the Nobel peace prize, satire died." The next step after satire is travesty. Travesty too becomes impossible, at times--the entire Trump administration, for instance,

Whenever you rely on somebody else that person has authority over you. An advantage of being independent is that you're not giving people power of you, you're not giving people authority over you. This is something to realize if you do plan to rely on others and if you do plan to not be a recluse. — HardWorker

Oddly, you are interpreting "rely" as a vertical relationship where anyone you rely on has (up down) authority over you. True enough vertical reliance/authority relationships exist. However, most o the people rely on are in a horizontal relationship, where authority over doesn't play a role. We are all reliant on many people, every day--all the other people who, along with our esteemed selves, keep the world running. Everything from the sewer system on up to the banking system.

The postal worker, bank teller, grocery store worker, and everybody else I rely on for bits and pieces of everyday life, have no authority over me, even though I rely on them.

That said, I don't like other people having arbitrary or extensive control over me (though one puts up with it because total avoidance is not possible), and there is a large set of relationships (work, law enforcement, medicine, public health, etc.) where control and reliance are paired.

Free and open relationships are a fine thing if all the relevant parties agree that it is a fine thing; If they do not, then trouble will be the result.

Family (parents and children) demands a level of commitment that rules out the kind of freedom that open relationships imply. Raising children is best done when there are two adults committed to the child's best possible outcomes, who share the tasks of child rearing, and who both contribute to the emotional, intellectual, and material well being of the child. [Can one person successfully raise a child? It isn't optimal, but it has been done. Still, a responsible adult should not opt for single parenthood, however.

A choice has to be made here, either for the satisfactions of free and open relationships, OR for family. One can't have both at the same time.

Once you get there, you may filter what you see through the lens of preconceptions and misinformation.

I find all this faintly disgusting. — FreeEmotion

No! I just won't do it. Ever. I REFUSE to eat chicken Kyiv.

The Western European pronunciation of Kiev changed to Kyiv when a batch of media people showed up there and felt the ever-present media need to be cool, so they pronounced it the way they heard locals pronouncing it.

WWL, a high-tone New Or-le-ans 100 year old radio station pronounced it with 4 syllables. I suspect that there is a class variant: down one step, New Or-lee-ins, down two steps, Naw Lins; down three steps, the southern unintelligible mumble--nobody knows what they are saying.

rutilant — Olivier5

Congratulations! You are the first person to use "rutilant" on The Philosophy Forum. New to me, it means "glowing or glittering with red or golden light". Does Budapest have a proper red-light district?

In the present that is? — Agent Smith

Maybe the National Organization of Women? Catholic orders for women (nuns)? Women's colleges (a few of those are still in business)?

It doesn't matter. Matriarchal potentates are likely to be bitches.

As a white gay man, I have found that some of my most annoying dysfunctional bosses have been white gay men. Female supervisors are as likely as male supervisors to be pains in the ass; my two best all time supervisors were a man and a woman. A large proportion of the population, male and female, white, black, asian, native, are natural-born assholes. Matriarchy schmatriarchy. Fuck 'em all!

Maybe we could argue that if men and women are more similar than different, then aspirations would be more aligned -- such as having higher instances of matriarchy tribes and kingdoms. — L'éléphant

My view is that people are more alike than they are different, so men and women are more alike than different too.

We could argue that there should be both matriarchies and patriarchies, but that does not seem to have happened. That said, there are matriarchal systems. Jewishness, for instance, is inherited through the mother (this is a religious convention, not genetics). There are small, agriculturalist groups that I have heard were matriarchal. Mostly, though, the idea of great matriarchies ruling over splendid societies (avoiding the problems of patriarchies) is just wishful thinking on the part of some feminists,

I don't have sufficient knowledge to say, but academics who presumably do (men and women both) have asserted that matriarchies were few and far between, if they existed at all.

If you want to know whether a person/group is good/bad, all you have to do is give them power and see what happens post that. — Agent Smith

If I had that much power to bestow on others to see whether they would turn into tyrants or not, I wouldn't do it.

The figure you site may very well be true. But surely there are significant losses on the Ukrainian side, soldiers and civilians alike. A lot o material damage Is being inited by the Russians. Even if they flat out lose, leave with tails tucked between their legs, the damage Russia has inflicted on Ukraine's structures will have to be repaired. The damage done to Ukrainian society will, of course, be more difficult to repair.

A total breakdown of the Ukrainian forces could still happen I guess, but it's not happening... — Olivier5

The Ukrainians have the 'home court advantage' -- no small thing. There is more adrenaline to fight hard for one's own land than to ruin someone else's.

Having about 7% of the population displaced to other countries is also no small thing,

What is our propaganda — Baden

Propaganda: zealous speech to persuade. "Their propaganda is all lies, our propaganda is full of truth."

Also Madeleine Albright is dead and I would have preferred if she died violently and painfully but we can't always get what we want apparently. — StreetlightX

No, alas, and besides, you are too kind.

Transcendentalism came several decades after the heat of the abolitionist movement — Shwah

When do you think the the transcendentalist movement began, and when do you think the abolitionist movement peaked? Seems to me they were both in business for a substantial period of time.

split between the north and south on mostly lockean and rousseauian lines — Shwah

Once it became a war it was deemed a part of secular state's history and the christian basis seems to be completely skipped over. — Shwah

In the United States (and not only here) religion and secular affairs are not necessarily as separate as one might think. Go back to mid 1800s and this is even more true.

Major social movements (prohibition, abolitionism, women's suffrage, etc. pick up secular and religious strands and braid them together. The 'braiding' is one of the ways the movements gain maximum effectiveness. Same goes for Martin Luther King, Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee, and numerous other groups in the broad civil rights movement.

Christianity isn't dead yet (though it's not the same potent force it was 100 years ago), so other resources are now pressed into service more often.

Sunday closure... you talking about blue laws?

Blue laws are peculiar. just for example, in a recent effort to change the liquor laws in Minneapolis, the small liquor stores were in favor of Sunday closing -- not because they were all in church all day, but because they stood to lose more than they would gain by Sunday opening. Large liquor stores could afford the lower returns on Sunday.

In the small Minnesota town I grew up in 65 years ago) everything in town was closed except 1 small grocery store and a couple of gas stations. There was no competitive issue because other towns around followed the same rules. Now most things are open in this small town -- bars, what few stores there are, etc.

You are probably correct in saying that the northern abolitionists were primarily Christian. Certainly, not every American was Christian (or a theist of some other faith) but Christianity was a dominant social influence. Naturally, many Christians--North and South--honored Christianity in the breach rather than in observance.

Transcendentalism: Transcendentalism became a coherent movement and a sacred organization with the founding of the Transcendental Club in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on September 12, 1836, by prominent New England intellectuals, including George Putnam (Unitarian minister), Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Frederic Henry Hedge.

As I recollect, most transcendentalists were abolitionist, but took several different approaches.

The Methodist Episcopal Church very actively supported the union cause, while the "Methodist Episcopal Church South" split away to follow the Confederacy out of the Union. 75 years after the Civil war (1939) the two parts reunited becoming "the Methodist Church". After the merger with the Evangelical United Brethren, they became "the United Methodist Church".

The United Methodist Church will probably split again over the issue of gay clergy and gay marriage, This split is a multinational issue where the fault line is in the US and in Africa.

"I see" said the blind carpenter as he picked up his hammer and saw. He lied, because he didn't see at all." An old idiom. My grandmother used to say this to me when I was a child (for no apparent reason). I'm 75.

"To see" is the infinitive form of the verb"see" which derives from ancient roots in the Indo-European language. "Old English sēon, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch zien and German sehen, perhaps from an Indo-European root shared by Latin sequi ‘follow’.

'Cat's pajamas' is a figure of speech.

Fact: GARTHER, n. Men invented this elastic band to keep women from jumping out of their stockings and desolating the country.

Ambrose Bierce understood why matriarchy ought always to be nipped in the bud.

Were they ethical or unethical? Were they moral, immoral or amoral? How do you understand the issue of ethical responsibility and moral responsibility associated with the spread of fake news? — Thinker10

Closer to unethical, closer to immoral. might be amoral. However, there are two sets of agents here: First, there are the content producers. Content is to the Internet what products are to the world economy--never enough good stuff. Second, there are the content consumers. One might well ask to what extent gorging on garbage in the gutters of the Internet is ethical, unethical, moral or immoral, or amoral.

I expect people who have an undamaged brain to exercise some critical judgement about what they find in the gutter. (The Internet isn't all gutter, of course. Much of the content is excellent--present company included.)

It might seem unfair to judge indiscriminate readers harshly. Maybe they can't help it that they are stupid. Is it their fault that it's hard to judge plain fact from obscure, exotic fiction? Strong objection to their slovenly intellectual behavior is not too harsh. How so?

Even idiots or imbeciles are selective. Most east coast liberals, midwestern conservatives, and whacky west coasters did not believe the piles of juvenile fake news. The people who did believe it very much wished to read it, believe it, and repeat it. In their own fake world, anything might be true. When these morons step out of their fake world, say to deal with their family medical issues or the rotting roof on their house they usually proceed rationally (usually, not always).

Believing bullshit, whether it is your own bullshit or somebody else's is always a moral hazard.

This being a philosophy forum and not a mechanics or agriculture forum, intellectual developments take center stage. However, the Middle Ages were not "Dark" Ages. Material culture developed during the Middle Ages, without which the high renaissance would have had a meagre existence.

This isn't to claim that the people of the Middle Ages were prosperous literate yeomen. Far from it; there was plague, for instance; crop failures which led to starvation; there were numerous upheavals unsettling everybody. Still, there was material progress.

Without a reasonably robust material foundation (for which intellectuals are generally not responsible) there would be no renaissance.

does that mean that you are still a wanker? — Sir2u

Isn't everybody?

If one is an absolute pacifist, then no war can be just.

The Roman Catholic Church's definition of a just war is:

• the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
• all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
• there must be serious prospects of success;
• the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated .

Presumably Catholic teaching should conform to the teachings of Jesus. I don't recollect Jesus saying that there must be serious prospects of success.

Would you kindly rank a few wars. Here are several wars; which of these were just/unjust?

American Revolutionary War
Mexican American War
American Civil War
WWI
WWII
Vietnam
Iraq
Afghanistan

Of these, I would rank the American Civil War and WWII as more or less "just". The Revolutionary War was probably not necessary. The Mexican American War was an expansionary war. WWI was far too bloody and too vague to be counted as just. Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan were unjust wars, according to the principles of Catholic Just War doctrine.

The justness of the civil war to first preserve the union and secondly to end slavery is somewhat ambiguous. Maybe in the long run the Northern Union would have been better off without the Southern Confederacy--or maybe not. Slavery should not have occurred in the first place, but it did. How else to eliminate it?

WWII seems unambiguously to have been just (from the allied perspective). The two main Axis states--Germany and Japan--were intent on something between continental and world dominance. Other nations, like Britain, had achieved world domination. Was the British Empire a) better than b) worse than c) about the same as the intended Axis Empire?

WWII brought an end to the Japanese, German, and British empires. The US took its place as the dominant national power, a role we reluctantly shared with the USSR.

So: war can be just; it usually isn't.

Of course God has preferences. God likes me more than he likes you, for instance. I can't help it. It's not my fault. I'm not in charge of God's preferences.

God likes Jews more than Gentiles. I'm an exception, not being Jewish but still one of God's faves. Gentiles outnumber Jews 533 to 1, so are far more likely to do things that God, who's kind of fussy, doesn't like. God, who numbers the hairs on our heads, clearly uses a very robust statistical package to keep track of the billions of sins committed every 15 minutes.

you haven't sinned very much, so rumor has it. I've sinned quite a bit--fact. But God still likes me better than you. God likes guys with enough balls to commit sins boldly more than namby pamby pussy-footers' pusillanimous half-assed sins.

God doesn't like wishy-washy wankers. I've always avoided being wishy-washy. God likes that.

Go and do likewise and God will like you too -- but still not as much as he likes me.

If you think that's bad, you'll be shocked to learn the US government "stockpiles" dangerous pathogens all over the United States, including the last surviving smallpox viruses outside Russia. Not only that, but it partners with the Canadian government to do so in Canada. The UK, Germany, and France all do this to, as does Russia. — Count Timothy von Icarus

There is a big difference between "stockpiling" 1 small sample of an organism in a very cold freezer and "stockpiling" a few hundred pounds of the organism. There has been a debate in medical/scientific circles about whether the last surviving samples of the Variola virus (small pox) should be destroyed or saved--ever since the disease was eradicated in 1980.

There are some samples of the 1918 influenza virus (which was much worse than Covid-19) which were recovered from a frozen body in Alaska. It might be the case that some thawing human body mighty contain the smallpox virus. In that event, it would be good to have a sample for comparison purposes.

I'm not in favor of keeping a leading killer in the cooler. Eventually, mistakes will be made. The same goes for Poliomyelitis, a disease which (like smallpox) has no non-human animal reservoirs) has been all-but eradicated. Once it's gone, we would have little need for the actual virus.

Well, the claim is that emerging new biological threats, such as tuberculosis that is extremely resistant to antibiotics, need to be collected and safely stores. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Tuberculosis (TB) is hardly an emerging disease. Over the centuries it has been one of the leading causes of death in the world, and still kills about a million people a year. True enough, multi-drug-resistant strains of TB have arisen, along with multi-drug-resistant strains of Gonorrhea and various other disease-causing bacteria.

Anthrax is another disease that has appeared in long-frozen bodies, this time animal corpses. Anthrax Bacteria are very dangerous, though the disease can be treated in many cases.

I don't know which disease would be the ideal candidate for a biological weapon. Besides, nukes are so good at killing people, why invent a biological weapon that once set loose would be impossible to put back into the box. And if we decided that germs were too dangerous, there are always effective gases and high explosives.

Propaganda is just spin or lies designed to influence an audience - it might be for politics or for a religion. It need not involve nationalism. It's closely related to marketing. We can't stop people lying on behalf of a cause or product. Society is built on this fact. But perhaps we can try to make people more discerning. — Tom Storm

Correct.

Amazing how Putin managed to do all that without anybody noticing.

I think an additional reason for the invasion is to wreck the economy of Ukraine, and control it so that it will not seek, and will not get, membership in either the EU or NATO. Whether that strategy will pay off for Putin remains to be seen. Putin would not want either organization to have an even larger presence on Russia's borders than they already have,

it is much more difficult to get one's place in the history books (and/or elevate your country to "super power status) without invading other countries that are unlikely able to stop your own armies. — dclements

My guess is that the size of their entry in Who's Who or a history book is probably not their main motivation, but ego is certainly a factor.

The main thing is power and its attendant benefits -- cash, land, population, control, etc. How does this apply to Putin's case? He already has tons of cash, land, population, control, etc., so it isn't clear to me how wrecking Ukraine would benefit him and his various apparatchiks. Has he been taking steroids? Is he suffering from raging hormones? Is he mentally unstable? Is there some sort of obscure economic motive here? Ukraine is a major grain producer; so is Russia. Maybe Putin wants an even bigger share of food commodity markets? (I'm grasping at straws here)

:100: Perfecto.

With satellite and drone coverage, there shouldn't be any doubt in anyone's mind about the whereabouts of the 40-mile convoy. The contents might be doubtful, but its location should not be.

Good, solid, verifiable, reliable information can be hard to find in many situations, but in the middle of conflict, it's out of reach at times in several ways. There is deliberate misinformation (propaganda); error-based misinformation (failure to fact-check); perception-based misinformation (looked like a duck, sounded like VP); missing information (things get lost). Bonafide information (aka the truth) may be disbelieved or rejected out of hand.

How many people in several categories have been killed so far? How many people have been injured, and how badly? There are always good reasons to inflate or deflate totals, and where an accurate count is desired all round, it may just be impossible to obtain.

There are no unbiased news sources, as a general rule. So, be aware of the bias and then calculate how much to discount.

I wish I could access different channels — Manuel

Don't we all! There are a few news channels available on the Internet beside Fox, BBC, and CNN. Deutsche Welle, for instance. Various radio stations in countries stream their service on the Internet -- so you could listen to National Public Radio (US) too.

Ask Google for English (or other language) radio services in Europe or Mars... wherever.

Here's a suggestion to consider:

Separate the question of whether God exists from the question of whether there is an afterlife. God may or may not exist. If God does exist, it isn't necessary for Heaven and/or Hell to exist. If God doesn't exist, then there is probably no heaven and hell (as Christians suppose there is).

God is not a Christian; neither is Jesus (he was a Jew). Christianity does not, and can not, be an accurate representation of who or what God is, Neither can any other religion. Religions contain a set of believe presented as the truth, but hey -- they are guessing. Atheists can't be certain that God does not exist--they are also guessing.

Unless you believe that God is the model of man, and possesses the same screwy quirks that we do--we don't know what God is like (if God exists).

A belief in God doesn't require the existence of heaven and hell (in my opinion), so again -- you can separate the two.

Neither the fall of man (Adam and Eve) nor the redemption of man (Jesus) is necessary. These are theological concepts cooked up a very long time ago.