The new design is quite strange, IMHO. Comments are difficult to access and seem to be "hidden" away.

OK looks like i could switch back to the old design. Wonder if it'll last...

So you are not actually a supporter of the MOVIE itself, but rather the idea of the Venus project? What a relief. I actually thought you believed in that nonsense for a while.

I owe my exposure and introduction to the reasonable case and evidence for Christianity to the New Atheists, however, so perhaps I shouldn't be so harsh on them :)

You also might want to read Hayek's "The Fatal Conceit." It is a must-read for economics.

And if you want to talk about empirical verification, it is quite easy to make a case for historical confirmation that market economies create a better allocation of resources than command economies.

@Anonymous247n That does not solve the calculation problem, but merely takes a step further.

Perhaps you meant to argue that, with technological advances, a central planner is able to monitor an economy more extensively. However, such a technological advancement makes the case for central planning worse, not better. With technological advancement comes an increase in the complexity and number of transactions being performed in an economy, which makes it a bigger problem for central planning to make good predictions and resource-allocating choices. Market economies create a better allocation of resources than command economies, as history as consistently shown. Central planning becomes less and less manageable as the number and complexity of transactions being performed increases, especially if the population is very large, leading to scarcity of resources in some economic sectors and excess in others.

It's all about applying the scientific method socially, my friend ;) And what we know about the scientific method - it works.

Unsurprisingly, they exhibit the same kind of pathological and irrational behavior they accuse religious people of possessing. It is quite unnerving and alarming to see the kind of comments about religious people posted around New Atheist circles. The New Atheism has become a mirror-image of the kind of ignorant, hate-filled radicalism it purported to eliminate, with its own brand of heresy, apostasy, evangelism, conversion, and zealotry. It is quite safe to say that it has become a parody of itself.

Seeing as we are now focusing on the Venus Project and not the Zeitgeist bunk itself, have you ever heard of the economic calculation problem?

@Anonymous247n I do not 'hate' atheists. There are plenty of atheists who do not hurl insults and mockery each time you have a discussion about the existence of God.

Then you have the so-called "New Atheists," who are really nothing more than a band of vitriolic, zealous loudmouths characterized by a strong herd mentality. They frequently employ obscene, pornographic language and spew hate-filled remarks against religious people, all in their holy crusade to exterminate religion from the planet. This forms the crux and center of their existence.