"Pete C." wrote in message
ster.com...

RogerN wrote:

"Pete C." wrote in message
er.com...

Tim Wescott wrote:

On 12/21/2010 03:47 PM, Pete C. wrote:

Tim Wescott wrote:

On 12/21/2010 02:58 PM, Pete C. wrote:

Tim Wescott wrote:

On 12/21/2010 09:38 AM, Chomp Noamsky wrote:
ABU DHABI (AFP) - A luxury hotel in Abu Dhabi which unveiled a
Christmas
tree decorated with jewels valued at 11 million dollars has
decided
to
put the record straight against criticism of having gone over
the
top.

The Emirates Palace hotel said it regretted "attempts to
overload
the
tradition followed by most hotels in the country," it said, in a
statement quoted in Gulf News on Sunday.

"Putting the Christmas tree... is a tradition meant to share in
celebrating occasions guests hold while they are away from their
home
countries and families," said the hotel in the United Arab
Emirates
capital.

Under a headline of "Trouble over 11 million dollar Christmas
tree,"
Gulf News said the hotel stressed this was "within the framework
of
the
UAE's policy which is based on the values of openness and
tolerance."

Emirates Palace stressed that the jewels were on loan from an
Abu
Dhabi
gallery which had paid all the costs of making and decorating
the
tree.
The jewels would be recovered by their owner at the end of the
festive
season.

"The hotel is just a venue for exhibiting the tree," it said.

The tree, inaugurated on Wednesday, holds a total of 181
diamonds,
pearls, emeralds, sapphires and other precious stones, said
Khalifa
Khouri, owner of Style Gallery which provided the jewellery.

Emirates Palace hotel general manager Hans Olbertz said the
tree,
which
he described as the "most expensive Christmas tree ever," will
probably
be an entry into the Guinness book of world records.

The 13-metre (40-foot) faux evergreen, located in the gold
leaf-bedecked
rotunda of the hotel, is not the first extravagant offering from
the
three-billion-dollar Emirates Palace.

The hotel in the oil-rich Gulf emirate where the local
population
is
Muslim, bills itself as a seven-star establishment and has a
package for
a week-long stay priced at one million dollars.

The package comes with a personal butler and a chauffeur-driven
Maybach
luxury car as well as a private jet available for trips to other
countries in the region.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20101219...ristmasoffbeat

As someone who considers the life of Jesus to be an inspiration
in
my
life, and who is appalled at the idea of celebrating his birth by
ostentatiously displaying exorbitant wealth in a world where
children
are dying of hunger, I have only one response to you
characterizing
such
objections as coming from atheists:

Shame.

Shame on you.

Shame on you, and every other person in the world, of any
religion,
who
tries to use the cloak of religion to gain political power.

Shame on you, and every other such person everywhere, who would
so
warp
religion for your own personal gain.

Shame.

Shame.

Shame.

Go jump in a hole, and don't come out until you understand what
Christ
was _really_ about.


As a life long devout atheist who was blessed to be born with the
insight to see religion for the age old control game it is and the
iron
will to never be coerced by anyone, I'll say to you that religion
is
a
cancer on civilization and will ultimately destroy the world
unless
people loose their ignorant superstitions and come to terms with
reality.

How ironic, then, that to be a devout atheist requires a strong
faith
in
an unproven assumption about how the universe is put together.

Sadly, those who cannot differentiate between fantasy and reality
also
cannot comprehend atheism.

Sadly, true atheists are religious fundamentalists who can't see
themselves in a mirror.

My _reality_ is that one can't know -- the God hypothesis is cleverly
constructed to be beyond proof. So I live my life consistent with the
assumption that God exists, that God doesn't exist, and that whatever
this "God" thing is would be beyond my comprehension anyway.

Fundamentalists, whether atheist, Christian, Moslem, Hindu, or any
other
stripe, can't stay sane without putting God in a box of their own
fantasizing, and shaped to their desires -- atheists are only
different
in that their box for God has no room inside.

As I said, those who cannot differentiate between fantasy and reality
also cannot comprehend atheism. You post clearly illustrates this.

Atheists do not recognize any concept of a "god" since there is not a
shred of supporting evidence for such a concept, so it has no place at
all in our lives. We live our lives in the real world believing in what
is testable and provable.

If there was a shred of credibility to the claims of the promoters of
the various mythologies, they would have found so shred of evidence to
support their claims in the thousands of years they've been trying.
These are the same people who deny evolution, despite the fact that
it's
been thoroughly proven in the years since it was first proposed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJrVR4zyusU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBRKY...eature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNkxpTIbCIw&feature=fvw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CO7u01eewDY

Many atheists have became believers, I suppose you consider yourself
smarter
than all of them?

RogerN

Clearly one who can differentiate fantasy from reality is more
intelligent than one who effectively thinks Mickey Mouse is real.

I guess that's why you send your children to our schools in an effort to
make them more intelligent. Thanks for clearing that up!