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• https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawmdNHKbZTHm_KVxqU3-14fODzfFgQbP2-E commented on A working hypothesis
  In an effort to shortcut what could possibly become a long and off-topic discussion about the nature of morality and the meaning of universal, I'm willing to redefine the distinction between religious morality as being: Religious believers think that morality is defined by God and can be changed at his whim, whereas atheists believe that morality (relative or universal) is independent of any individual's opinion, and cannot be decided or changed by mere willpower, even the willpower of a someone who created the universe. That doesn't really head it off either. "Religious believers think that morality is defined by God...
• Charlie Stross commented on A working hypothesis
  Jocelin: Yellow card time. One more peep hinting at holocaust denial and your sorry ass is banned for good. (I know where you're coming from with the "communism's enormous body count ... not attributed to the Russians or the Chinese" shtick as well. Hint: veiled anti-semitism does not go down well in these parts.)...
• Charlie Stross commented on A working hypothesis
  Your very first paragraph is a red flag for far-right Kool Aid: "With regard to communism's enourmous body count how is it that these deaths are not attributed to the Russians or the Chinese? Why do these nations get a free pass while the genocide of American peoples is usually attributed to the USA, or Spain or Britian or Portugal or whoever?" Nobody is actually denying the existence of those body counts -- not since the early 1950s in the case of the USSR and the 1970s in the case of China -- but asserting that folks to the left...
• spudtater commented on A working hypothesis
  Jocelin: a more to-the-point lesson might be: mention of the holocaust is not something to be thrown around lightly....
• Charlie Stross commented on A working hypothesis
  I assume you're being irionic here? (Given that Hitler was an observant Catholic, and the pope of the day didn't exactly go out of his way to condemn nazism ...)...