The short answer kev is that man was given free will

Evolved free will, maybe!
Trying to have a sensible conversation with Christians makes me realise the frustration Galileo must have felt when he tried to convince the Roman Inquisition that the Earth wasn’t the centre of the Universe…

Maybe a US forum member can tell us what it’s like to be an athiest there? I suspect it’s probably a much different story than here in the UK, from what I’ve gleaned from US forums.
Back in the mid 1990s I had one hell of a job trying to convince the RAF I wanted ‘Athiest’ on my dog tags. “Can’t we put Agnostic instead?”, but I won eventually!
Another episode that sticks in my mind was back during Operation Provide Comfort at Incirlik AFB, Turkey. I was the only RAF officer amongst maybe 20 USAF, all doing much the same job as me. One day they got round to talking about their various religions, and most I’d never even heard of.
Eventually one asked “Hey Al – what religion are you?”, so I got out my dog tags, with ‘ATH’ clearly marked on them. “What does ‘ATH’ mean, Al?”, then their jaws dropped as realisation set in. They looked at me like I’d just been caught stuffing their children into a wicker man, and that was the end of the conversation…

Norway is a small country with a small economy and did have vast oil wealth, which far outweighed the demands of its economy.

Much the same as Scotland will be after independence!;)

There must be something fundamentally wrong with the UK government works, considering we are practically the last European country to come out of resession, yet we’ve had the luxury of North Sea oil revenues denied to most of the others.
The cash has been criminally squandered here, while Norway sensibly put it away to protect themselves economically for perpetuity…

When did we start directly electing Prime Ministers in the UK?
I don’t recall people making a fuss when Major succeeded Thatcher.

But people vote for a particular party knowing who the leader will be – I wonder how many would have voted Labour if they’d known Golden Brown was waiting in the wings for his big chance?

But getting back to the choice of who to vote for, the SNP is my only choice, given the things they have done for Scotland since they came to power here. Free care for the elderly, reducing prescription costs (to zero eventually), free tuition fees for students, scrapping the Forth bridge toll, etc. To me, voting for any other party would be like choosing an English party to look after my interests, and I simply can’t understand why a Scot would vote any other way.
Of course, everything must be paid for, but I’m sure scrapping Trident would just about cover it…

So much for democracy – we have a Prime Minister who nobody voted for….

Pretty sure ‘232 is still in service, my mate up at kinloss said that out of the aircraft for disposal, XV232 was the best of the lot? recently had a major or something like that

232 is one of several airframes still intact and parked at Kinloss…

Ouch! 😀
Here’s hoping all our crap politicians went south of the border…