I read through your first post, NEWS, and I have to wonder why you have such a problem with that particular quote in #4? How is it unintelligent for someone to rely on their own hard work to get themselves ahead instead of waiting passively for god to hand them a break? Yes, the speaker could have worded the part about god being a 'figment' a bit more to your liking, but I personally find it, however blunt, to be pretty much spot on. The speaker, like myself, find that dressing up what you are saying to make sure that potential listeners don't become offended is a rather fruitless waste of time. I could reword all of this post to insure that you don't become offended or resentful towards me, but the post would be saying the same thing and be three or four times the length. And to be blunt, I just don't care enough about your opinion of me to put myself through that.
I agree with the other posters here. I don't feel that Starbucks would be so shortsighted as to try and push paganism in everyone's faces, considering that a majority of their customers in this country are still christians and to basically thumb their noses at such a large customer base would be economic suicide. You can read anything out of anything if you look deeply enough, so the fact that you can link fact to fact to fact to come to the conclusion that Starbucks is pagan or atheistic is neither surprising, not accurate. By the same logic, one could come to several conclusions of religious note. For example, Jesus was born of the virgin Mary. Mary was visited by an angel telling her she would have this child. Lucifer is not a cloven hooved demon, but, in fact, an angel. A fallen angel, but an angel none the less, and well capable of lying about his own name. Lucifer does not want widespread destruction, chaos, and the downfall of all mankind. He was cast down from heaven because he wished to be worshipped as a god, or at the very least, as something better than human. The bible tells us that Jesus was the son of god, but the bible is also written by man, not god, and as such, is subject to being fooled in the same way that a person being lied to by an angel might be. The King James version of the bible is, in fact, a compilation of 13 different versions of the bible to be a standardized, accepted form of the bible. So by that string of logic, one could come to some fairly blasphemous conclusions about our current beliefs.
I don't personally believe the conclusion I just now implied to be even remotely true, but it does illustrate my point very well that you can take a bunch of facts that might not even be related and come to a conclusion that is so far off base that you aren't even in the same stadium anymore. It also implies some of the damage, physical and spiritual, that blind faith can lead to. If you say that someone questioning a particular faith is wrong, evil, stupid, or otherwise bad, then you are saying that god gave that man too much ability to question, and as such, you are saying that you could have made this person better than god. That is what it means to not judge, lest ye be judged. Realize that the very same thing you are saying in your posts, NEWS, that you are better than a pagan or an atheist, is the exact same thing that caused Lucifer to be cast into ****. And if God is willing to do that to Lucifer, what do you think your chances are?
By the way, just FYI, I am not religious by any means. I more consider myself atheistic with a strong academic interest in theology. :)