All of these will be responses in timeline order for the sake of completeness so that it does not give the illusion that I am ignoring you or avoiding your points.

[hider=On Faith]
[quote]Eternity is a long time, especially towards the end. 

Although the likelihood is we will wipe ourselves out before the heat death of the universe.

Hunger has also existed since prehistory. It dosent seem unreasonable that it could one day be conquered. There has been an enormous upsurge in atheistic sentiment in the past hundred years or so. With any luck it can continue. It might take millennia more, but I believe in us![/quote]

Humanity will have unquestionably been rendered extinct by itself or some greater force long before any semblance of "eternity" will ever be meted out. Anything that optimistic is hopelessly optimistic and cannot even be argued to; it is as "irrational" as the faith or religious systems you seem to hold aversion to. Mankind is a very, very new addition to the Earth, let alone the existence of the universe. Believing the human animal will somehow radically change will still being classifiable as human is unlikely.

With regard to hunger, I sincerely doubt that as well for any number of reasons. No less, I must admit I do not find myself readily concerned with it. Any sufficiently advanced ability to resolve that beyond reasonable failure has far more dangerous implications that would overshadow it. Namely that mankind has reached a point where there is no scarcity of resources, competition or internal conflict.

The atheistic upsurge is no different than any other faith. People traded their old gods for the new gods of "reason" and "logic", with the same willingness to blindly pursue them as they would anything else and or equally turn a blind eye to what does not fit their agenda. What I personally mean by this, is that religion or spirituality might falter in terms of raw numbers, but they are unlikely to ever become a factor of non-influence by being relegated to an irrelevant minority. I have stronger faith in the human desire to believe there's more to themselves than just assuming they appeared on this rock at absolute pure chance. Dealing with people, history suggests no less to me as well that people will turn to belief rather than fact when their realities falter, rather their perceptions or understandings of them.

[quote]Religion makes scientific claims. It always has. God created man, earth is the center of the universe and so on. In so much as religion makes false and baseless claims it IS the duty of science to disprove it. There are religions that have minimal supernaturalism which are less in conflict with a scientific world view but so long as religion makes claims about the nature of the universe it is advancing a hypothesis which can and should be tested in the realm of science.

I'll continue to hope that with enough time and education we can outgrow the training wheels of our species. [/quote]

Religion makes claims based on its belief system and calls them fact. [i]It is a factor of belief.[/i] If they did not believe that God created man, they would not exactly be adhering to their religious tenants. No less in such an argument, there's no victory to be had there. Science has to disprove god as much as believers have to prove god. This is no new problem either and it helps none that religious doctrine as of late has become so vast and varied that there is no way to account for all the different claims.

The "training wheels" of humanity is the foolish notion that it knows anything. Man should only know that it knows nothing and will be forever in pursuit of understanding it. It is the same train of logic that makes adolescents so loathed by adults. They are under the illusion they know anything and everything because they, somehow above all others, have all the answers; I've met more of those of faith who willingly admit they will never understand or think they know everything other than what they are taught to believe in their doctrine - I have met many others who believe in nothing but are convinced they somehow hold all the secrets to the universe.

To be blunt, I would rather take the religious "bible-thumping evangelist" than the "know-it-all pseudointellectual atheist", no matter how worthy of cringe either might be deserving of.[/hider]
[hider=My Quote]
[quote]I believe it to be a natural and needed reaction from Americans to restore order if law enforcement will not. At what point I find that to end, is when the police begin doing their job, albeit I still advocate the deployment of National Guard units to restore order and as a show of force regardless.[/quote]

[quote]We were talking at one point about how universities were lawless places that needed intervention. Also we use the word national alot in this thread![/quote]

Yes, that is exactly what I said and the context is still important. If a university is having students not only break facility code, but break the law, and the police are being forced to stand down, the only reasonable option is to order the National Guard to restore control. This is a lawful execution of reasonable non-lethal force and a strong signal that violent outbursts will not be tolerated. I have backed this statement before in this topic in a myriad of ways. Please do not attempt to use my quote to somehow add misguided emphasis to an unrelated point.

In short, if your reaction as a student, in many cases a legal adult, is to riot, commit arson and or assault, as well as sympathize or support those that do, you are subject to penalty and should be without mercy. I would not feel an ounce of remorse if the guardsmen beat people senseless with asps, batons or rifle stocks for disorderly conduct. The person breaking the law was aware of the consequences from the moment they failed to comply.

To emphasize the difference, dissent in a reasonable, non-violent forum is acceptable in a college or university - as it should be by design - but if this cannot be respected on either side of the fence, any involved should be subject to reprimand. 
[/hider]
Given the subject has changed again over the past few hours, I will throw my commentary on this in.

I am not obliged to entertain you or your specific desires or wants; there is no special treatment to be had here as you might already know of my ethos and code. There are two actual genders, sexes, or what have you in the context of human beings. Everything else is either a construct of a disorder or something artificially crafted. There's too much time wasted in going about acknowledging however many different identities people have. Until I know you, I have no personal or moral obligation to concede to your standards. No less, if you are even having any interaction with someone, just do what you need to do and get on with life. Unless you have somehow already endeared yourself to me or are something I cannot avoid, I am not going to expend time or resources making concessions. I hold myself to these same standards, in that I expect nothing from people and rather want nothing to do with people. I do not expect or want them to appeal to my personal issues or qualities, as nice as they might be, out of principal alone.

I will leave that to those I actually wish to spend time with, if any at all.

So that leaves only this.

[quote]Ah, such a lovely introduction to this forum. I absolutely love the smell of bigotry in the morning, I'm sure trans folks would feel absolutely welcomed on this forum![/quote]

Despite how much I might disdain a number of the opinions expressed and apparent desires of those in this forum, I will again say this has remained one of the most civil and relatively grounded topics I have ever seen on the internet involving any of these subjects, even among some locales that are notorious for their homogenous thinking. This is not to say it is perfect, but this is far from the dystopia that this comment venomously implies. No less, this is [i]the exact thing I loathe more than anything else when taking part in these discussions.[/i] It is nothing short of some sickly, ill fated, completely baseless remark coming from a place of assumed superiority.

This is the exact sort of thinking that causes fewer and fewer people to take non-traditionalism seriously now. The smug virtue signaling is not endearing or beneficial.