Personally I feel that they system should be that you get 10 years of pension time. Use it for retirement or a year when you are 30 having a kid, which would leave you 9. Or some other issue like loosing your job.
But this off time should be roughly equal to you current pay. Retirement should be looked at a little differently because you are looking at a lifespan of work. But if you are 20 and want to go to school for 2 years and you quit your minimum wage job then you get subsidized 2 years at minimum wage.

You will look at entitlements a lot differently and also will look at how others squander theirs and run out early.

I don't care if you are 20 and suck 5years of minimum wage to buy dope, drink and other stupid stuff. When your 10 years are burned through then you are cut off.

Never underestimate the value of tough love.

Conversely, you would greatly consider when you retire. If I burned up 3 years of entitlements and only have 7 left then I'd better keep on working into the 70's.

Granted this is a grand pie in the sky idea but I do think it is some what workable.
And yes there should be a cap of say $100k.

To address you point about general Right leaning ideas:
Us on the Right don't hate poor people. We just don't want to continually hand out a free lunch. We do want all to have the same opportunity in life, a level playing field.

However corporations and government slice and dice the rules knowing that Americans have no clue of the intent of the Founders, or the Constitution. When the Right brings up the Constitution the Left points the finger and says that the Right wants to bring back slavery. No we don't. WE want all to have a level playing field. We don't hate Obama for being "black" we hate him for the policies and decisions that he puts forth. No more, no less.

Also the Right has no problems for a black man in a leadership role. But when we ( the Right) hold a man of color in high esteem ( Ben Carson) the Left cuts them down as an Uncle Tom and quickly dismiss any positive values that the man brings forth.

Finally there should be no sacred cows when it comes to cutting spending. Cut Military spending, Redo social security, entitlements. put everything on the table.
We are going broke point fingers at each other and not getting anything done.


Have a good day Newtboy

From http://banbossy.com/

When a little boy asserts himself, he's called a “leader.” Yet when a little girl does the same, she risks being branded “bossy.” Words like bossy send a message: don't raise your hand or speak up. By middle school, girls are less interested in leading than boys—a trend that continues into adulthood. Together we can encourage girls to lead.

The confidence
gap starts early.
Between elementary and high school, girls’
self–esteem drops 3.5 times more than boys’.

Bossy holds
girls back.
Girls are twice as likely as boys to worry that
leadership roles will make them seem “bossy.”

Girls get less
airtime in class.
They are called on less
and interrupted more.

Look People.

Quite frankly, that comment from dag with that fucked-up, 'where-in-the-fuck-from-as-far-left-field-as-possible-did-THAT-come-from tone, timbre, pitch, and timing????? IS, in all my infamy here, about as close as it gets to me never coming back here to play again and telling this place to fuck completely off.
Just so all you who know or care and could give a fuck.....RIGHT?!

Someone, ANYONE, tell me why I should even fucking bother?

Because, looky....I KNOW you motherfuckers, all of you that play here nice or otherwise, need people like me, like....ME-

NOW. Everyone say that last sentence above to yourselves aloud, replacing the words 'you' and 'me' with the words "me' or 'you', and you begin to see how fucking insane you are all to you.

Ok now, @SDGundamX (you glorious fucker)

Agreed. You now have the esteemed privilege and honor to hold the leash and take me out for my pee-pees and poo-poos.

I will make no pot-stirring promises as to the emotional viability or culpability of certain users here, especially not of that of my own-self, as I cherish both pot and the stirring of pots.

I kept thinking that if women who spend so much time on their appearance had more time, they'd probably just watch TV or mess with Facebook.

As for the wage disparity -- I think that might be other reasons why women who spend so much time on their appearance make less money. I suspect that they are just not that smart, rely on their looks to get by, and/or probably have pretty low self esteem which interferes with their ability to work to their highest potential. I suspect that confident, busy women don't obsess on their bodies like that.

I also don't understand why videos like this have to turn into a competition in the comment stream. Women have things they have to do to break free of their unconscious choices. That's just a human fact. Why bring up men's unconscious choices, @Trancecoach? I know you are joking (you checked the box!). However every time a vid like this shows up, SOMEBODY brings up how tough the world is on men.

Yes. The world is tough on men. Make a video about it. Educate your fellows so they can break the chains of societal expectations.

Why insist that women talk about your challenges when they are talking about their own challenges. I don't understand why that comes up very single time. It flummoxes me.

Although maybe you truly were joking? Maybe you don't think the world is tough on men? I sure do. Your shortened life span compared to women is proof of that, I should think. The pressures that you list, even jokingly.... dang. I can't imagine what it is like to face that on a daily basis. It seems horrendous to me.

You do see this trend across YouTube and also on TV.

There are plenty of women who are seeking attention, in whatever form it comes, and will post vlog's for the sake of those comments. It's not healthy or positive, but it happens.

I know it's strange to think, but many women have been raised to feel inferior to men and to be more "delicate". Plenty of studies show that older generations systematically trained females to feel helpless. For instance, if a male child falls, they tell him to suck it up, but if it's a female child, they coddle her, or worse, they refuse to let her also play because she might get hurt.

So when you have women who are already fighting these self-esteem issues, they are not going to throw themselves to the wolves to be hounded by comments. Also, this may be a shocker too, but some people actually get caught up on negative comments. Some people will read 10 comments about them, but only remember the one negative one.

So after spending all day be bombarded by sexualized ads, hyper-sexualized and unrealistic portrayals of women, and dealing with men who have also fallen prey to this, many are not willing to hoist themselves up for all to tear down.

Instead, she's encouraging them to do just that. To throw themselves out there and for the rest of us to help support them by telling sexist assholes to shut the fuck up and grow the fuck up or get the fuck out. *ahem* I mean, STFU or GTFO.

I still think that open comments on the Internet are essential. As horrible as some may be, its still better than to censor people, who are simply venting there instead of sucking it up and eventually exploding in something more horrible than a fucking few letters.
People need to get more tolerant and need to have more self esteem and also think more before bursting out into a pile of emotions. Not everyone has a nice life, not everyone can afford the things they want, not everyone had much luck in life with anything. In a fucked up society like ours, you cant fix everything, and some fixes will make it even worse.
Ignoring bad things will only make them worse. Its that simple.

If you were an employer interviewing people for a job, would you hire the man @0:05 or @2:01 ?

While not the cure for alcoholism, I think this boosted his self-esteem, and gave him just enough confidence to try to turn his life around. Hopefully AA will help him stop drinking.

Ain't that the truth? But in Japan, your 13-yr-old daughter gets groped on the train or subway and nobody, not even your daughter says anything nor do they esteem their women highly enough to simply kick some stranger's ass on principle!!

My ex GF slapped some Muslim cock-smoker in Jarkarta when he groped her on an asses-to-elbows bus ride....People cut a fucking swath around her as she told the asshole off. (That's Texas via Philadelphia for all you douchebag males out there.....)

@enoch, thanks for your comments. I thought it better to respond directly to your profile than on the video, about which we're no longer discussing directly. Sorry for the length of this reply, but for such a complex topic as this one, a thorough and plainly-stated response is needed.

You wrote: "the REAL question is "what is the purpose of a health care system"? NOT "which market system should we implement for health care"?"

The free market works best for any and all goods and services, regardless of their aim or purpose. Healthcare is no different from any other good or service in this respect.

(And besides, tell me why there's no money in preventative care? Do nutritionists, physical trainers/therapists, psychologists, herbalists, homeopaths, and any other manner of non-allopathic doctors not get paid and make profit in the marketplace? Would not a longer life not lead to a longer-term 'consumer' anyway? And would preventative medicine obliterate the need for all manner of medical treatment, or would there not still remain a need to diagnose, treat, and cure diseases, even in the presence of a robust preventative medical market?)

I realize that my argument is not the "popular" one (and there are certainly many reasons for this, up to and including a lot of disinformation about what constitutes a "free market" health care system). But the way to approach such things is not heuristically, but rationally, as one would approach any other economic issue.

You write "see where i am going with this? It's not so easy to answer and impose your model of the "free market" at the same time."

Yes, as a matter of fact, it is. The purpose of the healthcare system is to provide the most advanced medical service and care possible in the most efficient and affordable way possible. Only a free competitive market can do this with the necessary economic calculations in place to support its progress. No matter how you slice it, a socialized approach to healthcare invariably distorts the market (with its IP fees, undue regulations, and a lack of any accurate metrics on both the supply-side and on the demand-side which helps to determine availability, efficacy, and cost).

"you cannot have "for-profit" and "health-care" work in conjunction with any REAL health care."

Sorry, but this is just absurd. What else can I say?

"but if we use your "free market" model against a more "socialized model".which model would better serve the public?"

The free market model.

"if we take your "free market" model,which would be under the auspices of capitalism."

Redundant: "free market under the auspices of free market."

"disease is where the money is at,THAT is where the profit lies,not in preventive medicine."

Only Krugman-style Keynesians would say that illness is more profitable than health (or war more profitable than peace, or that alien invasions and broken windows are good for the economy). They, like you, aren't taking into account the One Lesson in Economics: look at how it affects every group, not just one group; look at the long term effects, not just short term ones. You're just seeing that, in the short-run, health will be less profitable for medical practitioners (or some pharmaceuticals) that are currently working in the treatment of illness. But look at every group outside that small group and at the long run and you can see that health is more profitable than illness overall. The market that profits more from illness will have to adapt, in ways that only the market knows for sure.

Do you realize that the money you put into socialized medicine (Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, etc.) is money you deplete from prevention entrepreneurship?

(As an aside, I wonder, why do so many people assume that the socialized central planners have some kind of special knowledge or wisdom that entrepreneurs do not? And why is there the belief that unlike entrepreneurs, socialist central planners are not selfishly motivated but always act in the interest of the "common good?" Could this be part of the propagandized and indoctrinated fear that's implicit in living in a socialized environment? Why do serfs (and I'm sure that, at some level, people know that's what they are) love the socialist central planners more than they love themselves? Complex questions about self-esteem and captive minds.)

If fewer people get sick, the market will then demand more practitioners to move from treating illness into other areas like prevention, being a prevention doctor or whatever. You're actually making the argument for free market here, not against it. Socialized bureaucratically dictated medicine will not adapt to the changing needs as efficiently or rapidly as a free market can and would. If more people are getting sick, then we'll need more doctors to treat them. If fewer people are getting sick because preventive medicine takes off, then we'll have more of that type of service. If a socialized healthcare is mandated, then we will invariably have a glut of allopathic doctors, with little need for their services (and we then have the kinds of problems we see amongst doctors who are coerced -- by the threat of losing their license -- to take medicaid and then lie on their reports in order to recoup their costs, e.g., see the article linked here.)

Meanwhile, there has been and will remain huge profits to be made in prevention, as the vitamin, supplements, alternative medicine, naturopathy, exercise and many other industries attest to. What are you talking about, that there's no profit in preventing illness? (In a manner of speaking, that's actually my bread and butter!) If you have a way to prevent illness, you will have more than enough people buying from you, people who don't want to get sick. (And other services for the people who do.) Open a gym. Become a naturopath. Teach stress management, meditation, yoga, zumba, whatever! And there are always those who need treatment, who are sick, and the free market will then have an accurate measure of how to allocate the right resources and number of such practitioners. This is something that the central planners (under socialized services) simply cannot possibly do (except, of course, for the omniscient ones that socialists insist exist).

You wrote "cancer,anxiety,obesity,drug addiction.
all are huge profit generators and all could be dealt with so much more productively and successfully with preventive care,diet and exercise and early diagnosis."

But they won't as long as you have centrally planned (socialized) medicine. The free market forces practitioners to respond to the market's demands. Socialized medicine does not. Entrepreneurs will (as they already have) exploit openings for profit in prevention (without the advantage of regulations which distort the markets) and take the business away from treatment doctors. If anything, doctors prevent preventative medicine from getting more widespread by using government regulations to limit what the preventive practitioners do. In fact, preventive medicine is so profitable that it has many in the medical profession lobbying to curtail it. They are losing much business to alternative/preventive practitioners. They lobby to, for example, prevent herb providers from stating the medical/preventive benefits of their herbs. They even prevent strawberry farmers to tout the health benefits of strawberries! It is the state that is slowing down preventive medicine, not the free market! In Puerto Rico, for example, once the Medical Association lost a bit to prohibit naturopathy, they effectively outlawed acupuncture by successfully getting a law passed that requires all acupuncturists to be medical doctors. Insanity.

If you think there is no profit in preventative care or exercise, think GNC and Richard Simmons, and Pilates, and bodywork, and my own practice of psychotherapy. Many of the successful corporations (I'm thinking of Google and Pixar and SalesForce and Oracle, etc.) see the profit and value in preventative care, which is why they have these "stay healthy" programs for their employees. There's more money in health than illness. No doubt.

Or how about the health food/nutrition business? Or organic farming, or whole foods! The free market could maybe call for fewer oncologists and for more Whole Foods or even better natural food stores. Of course, we don't know the specifics, but that's actually the point. Only the free market knows (and the omniscient socialist central planners) what needs to happen and how.

Imagination! We need to get people to use it more.

You wrote: "but when we consider that the 4th and 5th largest lobbyists are the health insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry is it any wonder that america has the most fucked up,backwards health care system on the planet."

You're actually making my point here. In a free market, pharmaceutical companies cannot monopolize what "drugs" people can or cannot take, sell or not sell, and cannot prevent natural alternatives from being promoted. Only with state intervention (by way of IP regulations, and so forth) can they do so.

Free market is not corporatism. Free market is not crony capitalism. (More disinformation that needs to be lifted.)

So you're not countering my free market position, you're countering the crony capitalist position. This is a straw man argument, even if in this case you might not have understood my position in the first place. You, like so many others, equate "capitalism" with cronyism or corporatism. Many cannot conceive of a free market that is free from regulation. So folks then argue against their own interests, either for or against "fascist" vs. "socialist" medicine. The free market is, in fact, outside these two positions.

You wrote: "IF we made medicare available to ALL american citizens we would see a shift from latter stage care to a more aggressive preventive care and early diagnosis. the savings in money (and lives) would be staggering."

I won't go into medicare right now (It is a disaster, and so is the current non-free-market insurance industry. See the article linked in my comment above.)

You wrote "this would create a huge paradigm shift here in america and we would see results almost instantly but more so in the coming decades."

I don't want to be a naysayer but, socialism is nothing new. It has been tried (and failed) many times before. The USSR had socialized medicine. So does Cuba (but then you may believe the Michael Moore fairytale about medicine in Cuba). It's probably better to go see in person how Cubans live and how they have no access to the places that Moore visited.

You wrote: "i feel very strongly that health should be a communal effort.a civilized society should take care of each other."

Really, then why try to force me (or anyone) into your idea of "good" medicine? The free market is a communal effort. In fact, it is nothing else (and nothing else is as communal as the free market). Central planning, socialized, top-down decision-making, is not. Never has been. Never will be.

Voluntary interactions is "taking care of each other." Coercion is not. Socialism is coercion. It cannot "work" any other way. A free market is voluntary cooperation.

Economic calculation is necessary to avoid chaos, whatever the purpose of a service. This is economic law. Unless the purpose is to create chaos, you need real prices and efficiency that only the free market can provide.

I hope this helps to clarify (and not confuse) what I wrote on @eric3579's profile.

Yeah the whole "he's subtly insulting our appearance... self-esteem down to 60%!"

If a woman's self-esteem were that easily shakable, she's probably not worth it in the first place.

Well, you may all have self-esteem problems, but I KNOW my balls are beautiful.

*quality *doublepromote

I love how such a narrow clip provokes such wide-ranging discussion here on the Sift. I think the clip itself raises two central questions:
1) Is Islam - in this point in history - more dangerous a religious ideology than the others, and
2) Is such a question/comparison even relevant? Or perhaps "promotes Islamic hatred" as the douchebag facing Maher seems to think?

To 1), I've argued above that yes, it is. as for 2), raised mostly by the commenters here, I would have to say "no, but" to both. Religious (and non-religious) ideologies should be strongly and non-violently denounced whenever/wherever they do harm. In the US, for example, Christianity does way more harm (to women's/gay's/atheist's rights, to education, etc.) than Islam does, but neither excuses/diminishes the evil done by the other. The "but" would be for when people get accused of discrimination and "islamophobia" when calling out the evils of Islam.
The necessity of the second "but" is illustrated by @shinyblurry's comment: there is always the danger of right-wing and/or Christian fundamentalists taking criticism of Islam to be a defense/validation of their own strain of wrong/dangerous BS and/or racisms (to be fair, sb only exhibits the former). This is inevitable, and should not stop people from criticising/denouncing unethical ideologies, nor should it prompt amalgamation of "criticising Islam" with "hating the for'ners/ragheads/Muslims".

Beyond the subject of the video itself, the correlation between poor socio-politico-economico-etc. status and the adherence to extremes, a point well-made by @Babymech, @Yogi and others is an important factor in the higher numbers of "Islamist evil" worldwide, one that I am well aware of. There is no better way of turning whole populations to fundamentalist extremes (or at least worse ones than they had before; let's not fall into the "noble savage" fallacy) than by meddling with their politics and then bombing the hell out of them. The danger is to go to the extreme of excluding the very nature of those fundamentals from the picture, which is just as simplistic and false as is blaming them exclusively.

Moreover, I always shudder at the left-wing strain of argumentation which puts ALL the blame on the Western invaders, (edit: 19-20th c.) colonisation and co. This view relies heavily on the "noble savage" form of racism, which assumes that only "White people/Westerners/Judeo-Christians" can wreak political/social havoc in the lands of those poor, innocent "Brown people/Muslims" (those two often being conflated). Having lived in Africa for 5 years I have a knee-jerk reaction to this kind of self-centered guilt-tripping, which deprives the "Brown/Black people" of one aspect of human nature: the ability to be evil, to fuck themselves up without any help from the "West". They can, and they do.

This tangent may seem irrelevant here, but the reason I bring it up is because that it is this sentiment that is behind much of this "Islamophobe" name-calling in the US and Europe, and behind the difficulty many "Westerners" have in bare-facedly criticising Islam, when they often have no such difficulty with their "home"-religion, Christianity.

@aaronfr raises the problem of how to go about denouncing an unethical set of beliefs, and gives several good examples of how not to (it is noteworthy that the only example of violent action is one taken by other religious people; I have yet to hear of atheists using anything other than words and pictures to make their point). Hitchens’ endorsement of the Iraq war lowered my esteem for him greatly (somewhat saved by the fact that his stance on this was of no influence to anyone, contrary to his huge effort against the evils of religion), but it is noteworthy that he and Harris are the most criticised (and the least influential) when they hold such positions.
On the side of the religious, however, it is often the crazy fundies who are the loudest and, in certain areas (with the aid of socio-etc factors of course) the most influential. And they have, especially in the Quran and the life of M., a reliable and divine source of hate/violence-mongering.

As you say, peace and prosperity are some of the best deterrents to religious extremism and unethical behaviour (but not solely; cf: the US, Saudi Arabia and co.) This does not render unnecessary denouncing the unethical nature of Islam, Christianity, etc. As noted above, the negative effects of religion are still felt in relatively peaceful and prosperous nations today (in France, for example, homophobes of Christian, Muslim and possibly Jewish faiths are causing a significant rise in homophobic violence ever since the gay-marriage hearings).

So long as the distinction between "Islam(/religious ideology)" and "Muslim(/person)" remains clear, we should be free to criticise and denounce the former to our hearts content. (Note how "Islamophobia" shits all over that distinction; one of the many reasons that term should never be uttered unironically).

_{My apologies for the dissertation-length comment}

Oh man, what if your own description looks better than the person describing you? I asked myself a series of questions about my own features and began describing attributes of comely aspects rather than faults-Self-Esteem intact, check!

I seriously dig the unusual aspects of a person's face rather than the mundane or golden mean perfection of one-Funky noses and succulent, over-sized lips, and maybe some freckles and forehead wrinkles....crooked smiles are always good

Someone describe the perfect buttocks now...

I forget, what was it these esteemed gentlemen did anyhow?

Jesus loves you and I love you. This is an extremely long post and I apologize. I am writing for anyone who is interested in critically examining the arguments Sam Harris makes and contrasting it to the actual truth as presented by the scripture. Sam has distorted this truth and the entire video is basically one long strawman argument.. I think that is you are going to utterly condemn something you should at least make a cursory effort to understand it. That's just me. I invite you guys to learn more about the scripture so that you can know the truth for yourself:

http://www.amazon.com/How-Read-Bible-All-Worth/dp/0310246040/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1360718403&sr=1-2&keywords=how+to+understand+the+bible

I'll answer some points..

Sam: The point of Christianity is to safeguard the eternal well being of eternal souls

You could perhaps categorize this as the main point, but there are many points to Christianity. I don't want to split hairs here; I am agreeing with Sam essentially but I just want to expand on it a bit. The main point of Christianity is to declare the gospel of Jesus Christ. That's what Jesus said when He began His ministry: "repent and believe the gospel". The gospel is that Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, came to Earth to live as one of us. Though He did not sin, He took all of our sins upon Himself on the cross so that we could be forgiven and have eternal life. The point of Christianity is Jesus, and having a personal relationship with Him. Everyone who comes to know Jesus will be born again and become a new person. There are many other points to this but I will stop here.

Sam: 9 million children die every year

Yes, this is true but most of these children, if not all of them, will be going to Heaven. Not one of them have been forgotten by God or will suffer an unjust fate. There is an age of accountability for every person, and it is different for every person. It all depends on the revelation God has given each particular person and their response to it. It is fairly certain though that most if not all children under the age of 12 will make it to Heaven automatically.

Sam in discussing the dying children brings up the problem of evil..which has been sufficiently answered by Plantigas free will defense:

http://videosift.com/video/Since-Evil-Suffering-Exist-A-Loving-God-Cannot

Sam mentions the grief of the parents and that their unanswered prayers are part of Gods plan..

First of all, God answers every prayer, He just doesn't always answer yes. An example of a prayer God answered no to was when Jesus was in the garden of gethsemane and was asking the Father to let Him bypass the cross. Though it surely grieved His heart, He answered no to that prayer. He answered no because He was esteeming us more than Himself, which is what sacrificial love looks like. A key part of the prayer of Jesus was "never the less, not my will, but your will".

Christians do not pray to the exclusion of Gods will. we don't necessarily know what is best for us, but we trust God that He knows, and so we always pray that His will be done, even above what may seem needful for me at that time.

--------------------------------------
--------------------------------------

I will also address the grief. The fact of the matter is, the scripture makes it very clear that Christians will suffer grief and loss on a constant basis:

Matthew 24:9

Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me.

1 Peter 4:12 Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened to you:

1 Peter 4:16 Yet if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God on this behalf.

--------------------------------------
--------------------------------------

Look at Pauls testimony:

1 Corinthians 11:24-28

Are they servants of Christ? (I am out of my mind to talk like this.) I am more. I have worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely, and been exposed to death again and again.

Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one.

Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea,

I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my own countrymen, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false brothers.

I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked.

Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches.

If you read Foxes Book of the Martyrs (http://www.ccel.org/f/foxe/martyrs/home.html) you will see that Christians are no strangers to suffering and grief. It is clearly taught in His word it will happen, which makes this argument have no weight at all and is simply a strawman.

Sam said that any God who would allow pain either can do nothing or doesnt care to so He is either impotent or evil

This is simply a false dichotomy. God may allow pain for a good reason, which is for the greater good. I'll give you an example:

This is Nick Vujicic, a man with no arms and no legs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXlCeKBWfaA

He is a motivational speaker and he has traveled around the world and inspired millions. Pretty much anyone who has a problem can relate to this man because Nick has overcome his extreme adversity with grace and he finds joy in his daily life. If God had answered Nicks prayer to be healed, then millions of people would have been robbed of the fruit that overcoming his adversity bore in his life. This is an example of how God can use pain for a greater good.

Sam asks what about all those who are praying to the wrong God, through no fault of their own..that they missed the revelation

This is just simply false..Sam seems to think that there are no reasonable answer to these questions when the real problem is his ignorance of Christian theology.

Romans 1:18-21

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.

The word of God states that every man coming into the world is given light, and that God makes it clear to them one way or the other that He exists. Every man, woman and child dying after the age of accountability and heading towards hell had received a personal revelation from God as to His existence. How they responded to that light determined what Gods next move was. If they had responded in the affirmitive, He could have then opened the door for them to know Jesus and be saved. Since they responded in the negative, they did not receive any further revelation and died in their sins.

So again Sam creates a strawman argument when he says that they missed the revelation through no fault of their own. The truth is that they received the revelation and rejected it. He also made it sound like people are just randomly born into the world when what the scripture says is that God appoints the times and places for every human being. There are no accidents about where you are born; it is simply that God is not limited by time and space. He is omnipresent and not limited to any particular locality.

Sam accused God creating the cultural isolation of the hindus - of orchaestrating their ignorance

The truth is that in the beginning all men knew God and that over time as men formed nations they moved farther and farther away from the truth about God and invented their own gods to worship. The hindus isolated themselves, though again this is not a limitation on God. He has reached out to every hindu who has ever lived and the ones who ended up in hell are the ones who rejected Him. You have to push past the love, grace and mercy of God to get to hell.

Sam mentions how a serial killer could get saved while an innocent perishes elsewhere:

What the bible says is this:

Romans 3:23

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

There aren't any innocents over the age of accountability. The man who has cheated on his wife is equally guilty in Gods eyes as the man who murdered his wife. What God calls good is not a relative standard like human beings use, as we compare ourselves to eachother and think we are good people because we haven't done the big two (rape, murder). What God calls good is moral perfection and what He calls evil is everything that falls short of that, even one sin. He also says that if you hate someone you have murdered them in your heart and you are a murderer at heart. Sam does not appear to understand what the bible says Gods standards actually are.

Sam said that there is absolutely nothing in Christianity to do with moral accountability

Again, this is false. What the bible says is that we're morally accountable to God for every sin we've ever committed, and your conscience will tell you that. It is not other people we have offended, it is God Almighty. What Sam seems to have a problem with is Gods absolute standard for moral accountability versus his relative standard (which conveniently excuses his sins against God)

Sam said there is a conflict between God being intrinsically good and what he describes as the "visitation of cruel unjust suffering on innocent people"

I've already answered this by point out there are no innocent people over the age of accountability. I would also like to add that God created a perfect world, and the reason there is sin in this world is because of mankind. The reason the world is the way it is today is exclusively because of the daily crimes of humanity (can you even begin to imagine the amount of evil that transpires on planet earth in one day?) and not because God wanted it that way.

Sam says it is a cop out to say God is mysterious and then use merely human understanding to establish goodness

Actually, what Sam has done here is create a distorted image of God by twisting or ignoring what the scripture says about Him, and the fate of human beings. Then he points to this grotesque image to condemn the true and living God who is in fact perfectly good. The truth is that His goodness is upheld entirely when you are looking at the true God through a sound understanding of scripture and not the distorted image Sam has created of Him.

Sam says its a cop out to be told God is mysterious to justify untold suffering

He is right here, it is a cop-out..and anyone making such an argument has a weak understanding of the bible. Gods will for us is actually no mystery; God makes it crystal clear what He expects from His creation, and kinds of things we will face. He is even gracious enough to tell us what will happen in the future, thousands of years in advance:

http://www.christadelphianals.org/bible_prophecy.htm

Sam says it is utter hubris and even reprehensible to think you're special because "God loves me don't you know"

Yet even little children understand that no one is worthy to be pardoned for their sins and no one can make it into Heaven on their own. There is absolutely no difference between me and anyone else except for one thing; I said yes to God, and some others say no. I am not worthy, in fact I am decidedly unworthy and I deserve the exact same punishment as everyone else does; the difference is that I accept the free gift of grace that Jesus offers upon the cross. God proved His love for all people on the cross, and He died for every single person, not just me. Jesus loves you more than you can understand.

Sam says it is morally reprehensible for Christians to drudge up some trivial circumstance God took care of while completely ignoring the suffering of other human beings

Sam is right about this and it is a complete shame to Christians everywhere that the western church is so materialistic and base in their feelings. Jesus called us to live a life of total sacrifice and to give up everything we have. I can tell you that God is even more appalled than Sam is about this issue.

Sam asserted that the bible supports slavery

This is false; the bible does not support slavery. Slavery as we understand it today is not the same as it was in the time this was written. In those times it was more of a profession and people would sell themselves into slavery so they could have food and shelter. The bible regulated these activities, but it also said that there was no difference between master and slave and that we are all equal in Christ Jesus. I will also point out that modern slavery was ended by Christians.

Sam says that the bible admonishes us to kill people for witchcraft

No, it does not admonish Christians to kill witches, or anyone else. There is no commandment for any Christians to murder anyone. It is true, however, that in the time of the Old Covenant, God set up laws for Israel which were very strictly enforced with the punishment of death. This was not anything that He ever imposed on the world, or any other people except the Jews. He also did not impose it on them: the Jews made a covenant with God to obey all of His laws, so that He would be their God, and they would be His people.

Sam says that there is absolutely nothing anyone can say against Muslims if they prayed to the right God

The God of the bible is not morally inconsistant, whereas the god of the muslims is.

Sam said Christianity is what only lunatics could believe on their own

The bible says this:

1 Corinthians 1:18

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

The scripture itself says that unsaved people will find the message of the cross foolish. This is the evidence that you are perishing. The things of the Spirit of God are foolish to the natural man, neither can he understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.

Sam made a little quip about catholicism

While I am sure there are saved catholics, the church itself departed from the true teachings of Jesus a long time ago.. There is also no teaching in the scripture regarding the Eucharist.

Sam said its very strange salvation depends bad evidence

God gives everyone good evidence that He exists but they suppress the truth. God reveals Himself through personal revelation. You cannot know God otherwise.

Sam says Christianity is a cult of human sacrifice

Jesus wasn't sacrificed against His will:

John 10:18

No one can take my life from me. I sacrifice it voluntarily. For I have the authority to lay it down when I want to and also to take it up again. For this is what my Father has commanded."

He gave His life just as firemen have given their lives trying to save people from a burning building. Jesus didn't have to go to the cross but He did it out of love for us:

John 15:13

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

Sam says the bible doesnt repudiate human sacrifice, that it celebrates it

Actually, it does repudiate it in many locations. The practice of sacrificing humans was utterly condemned in scripture. Jesus voluntarily giving Himself for the sins of the world does not resemble what Sam is implying even superficially.

Sam states that people used to bury children under the foundation of buildings and then says "these are the sorts of people who wrote the bible"

The kind of people who wrote the bible were eye witnesses to the life death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. They did not bury children under foundations; they followed the true and living God.

Sam said that if there is a less moral moral framework he hadn't heard of it

As he has presented it, most certainly, but the problem is that he largely invented it from his misunderstanding of Christian theology and personal prejudices.

The true question is this: are you an honest or dishonest skeptic? If you're an honest skeptic you will investigate, but a dishonest skeptic doesn't want to know. You will have to admit that you do not know whether God answers prayer or not, so here is a possible clue to knowledge:

Pray this: God, I don't know if you're there or not, and I don't know if the bible is your word or not. I am asking you to reveal the truth to me, and if you do, I promise to follow it where ever it leads. If it leads to Jesus, I will give my life to Him and follow Him.

After praying this, read the gospel of John. Read it slowly, a little at a time, each time beforehand praying that God will give you revelation concerning what you're reading. If you do this, by the time you reach the end of the gospel your skepticism will have grown wings and flown away.

God bless.