1. Richard Dawkins on Al Jazeera English

Comment #215600 by bitofinger on July 22, 2008 at 7:16 am

This interview is why I treasure men and women like Richard, Christopher Hitchens, Sue Blackmore, Barry Lynn, et al and try to support them and talk them up whenever I can. The sheer nerve of Richard to be patient and kind and observant and listen and not to be condescending (Hitch is out on this point, but he gets triple credit for knowledge and understanding of history and events) or irrational.

How much patience is required to deal with the incredible ignorance of so many believers? How many times must the stupefied babble of ancient prophets be dispelled for the obviously manufactured fraud it is? How difficult is it to answer the same mind-numbing and inane questions over and over and over ad nausea? How much determination does it take to repeatedly state the most obvious, most intelligible, strongest argument for human existence ever postulated when nothing else compares? I don't know how they do it.

My sincere hope is that we are on a learning curve, albeit a protracted one. Go back 100 years and countless fantastic discoveries in modern science disappear. I am in total agreement with Richard on this. Science is in fact necessarily the enemy of belief and does pose a great and fantastic threat to established religions. What a wonderful day to look forward to when human minds are free from the oppressive chains of fear and ignorance.

And if some people are afraid of what might happen in the meanwhile, that some great mushroom cloud will appear on the horizon before the pious will give up their power, then so be it. Maybe natural selection will get a second chance to continue what it started without arrogant meddling.

Thank you, again, Richard.

2. Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss

Comment #174164 by bitofinger on May 1, 2008 at 7:39 pm

ASMarques,

Your spinning has gotten out of control.

...the alleged gas chamber and epicenter of the "Holocaust" where at least hundreds of thousands are supposed to have been gassed non-stop -- are not there...

Followed by what you perceive as confirmation, a supposed admission, from a "Holocaust Scholar", Robert Van Pelt.

"Today, these four small holes that connected the wire-mesh columns and the chimneys cannot be observed in the ruined remains of the concrete slab. Yet does this mean they were never there? We know that after the cessation of the gassings in the fall of 1944 all the gassing equipment was removed, which implies both the wire-mesh columns and the chimneys. What would have remained would have been the four narrow holes and the slab. While there is no certainty in this particular matter, it would have been logical to attach at the location where the columns had been some formwork at the bottom of the gas chamber ceiling, and pour some concrete in the hole and thus restore the slab."

In no way does Van Pelt's statement support your argument. He simply uses language such as "which implies" and "what would have remained" and "no certainty in this matter." This is not even close to your purported admission. Thank you for posting this and aiding my argument.

...since the holes are not there and no refilling can be detected, what do you make of the eyewitness stories about the alleged gassings that require the holes in the ceiling for the introduction of the Zyklon B? Are they true or are they false?

No amount of triviality in the details of the death chambers will be able to distort the facts in your direction. The ilk of psychotic cultists who killed so many people will always twist and exaggerate and spin every possible angle to turn the table around.

Now, to flip the table right-side up (no pun intended) and ask a more general question, what do you make of the copious images of starving prisoners in the camps? Men women and children, bare-boned as skeletons. Do you suppose the pictures were falsified somehow? Perhaps these were not Jews, but Germans taken POW, or maybe Russians under Stalin's despotism? Or maybe you suppose these people were malnourished and some died of starvation, but not murdered outright. Immediately after the photographs and video were taken, they were fed and kept alive. Or maybe the Jews - masters in the art of deception, able to, in 2008, successfully fool 6.806 billion people (pardon me, 6,805,900,000 people, an arbitrary supposition of the number of people on your side) and the vast majority of people who have lived since the events in question - did this to themselves to achieve martyrdom? All of this makes perfect sense to any abnormal person.

That you are exceedingly intelligent and well-versed on the subject is one matter, that you might be a paranoid schizophrenic, another. That is to say, naturally, I would not debate His Holiness, the Pope, toe-to-toe on the details of his Christian faith. I would lose hands-down. The man is an ardent supporter of his hallucination, and has studied his entire life, is well-read and can argue every well-rehearsed angle, much like you. My sincere admiration to you on doing your homework.

Me, I'm just a common peasant. I would never debate minor details with His Worship, someone like the Pope, but I would certainly tell him how absurd, parasitic and detrimental to civilization his cult has become.

But, I digress.

...burning to know whether I hate gays (?) or women (?), or whether I believe "in the ethical and responsible stewardship of the environment" (?) and hold "the whole of nature as equal and deserving, subject to checks and balances" (?)...

Well, as you align yourself with one of your champions, Alain Soral...

Here are the first words of an interesting new text by French intellectual Alain Soral -- yes, there are still a few survivors in Voltaire's country.

...apparently a Jew-Gay-Woman-hating raving despot...

"When with a Frenchman, a Zionist Jew, you start to say that maybe there are problems that come from you. Maybe you might have made a few mistakes. It's not systematically the other person's fault, totally, if no one can stand you everywhere you go. Because that's their general history, you see. For 2500 years, every time they've settled somewhere, within fifty years they get themselves beat up." (Broadcasted on the French television channel France 2 on September 20, 2004)

And from Wikipedia...

"Homosexuals have nothing to do with the Gay Pride ideology. An ideology which involves, to [Soral], promotion of the 'Gorgeous Guy' model, youth, parties, drag queens in order to obscure the reality of homosexuality, of aged or working-class homosexuals."

Alain Soral distinguish two sorts of feminism, those of the "flippées" (freaked-out) à la Simone de Beauvoir and those of the "pétasses" (sluts) à la Elisabeth Badinter."

Who will you trot out next to promote your fantasies? And to ally Soral, a closet Nazi, with Voltaire, a civil libertarian? Wow, I never saw that one coming.

Now I readily admit my knowledge of Soral is very limited. It was difficult to find much on the web about him in English. Maybe I am wrong.

Alas, no reply forthcoming from the excited posters...

I am sorry for taking more than the alloted 48 hours to respond. Please, let's discuss the rules next time before their enforcement. Many thanks.

The obsession with "main-stream ideas" is yours, not mine. I for one couldn't care less about main-stream ideas...

Well, maybe you should. Not to say that baying as a sheep and following some blind Sheppard is a good thing, but registering a few non-xenophobes, impartial scholars, or even - dear holy father of ours in heaven and earth forbid - a few Jews on your side might give you more credit. I suppose I must give the standard disclaimer that my last comment was purely in ridicule of the addlepated religioso, lest you find another broken prong in my argument. Oh dear, I'll have to clip that fingernail.

More incriminating than evidence of the heinous crimes itself, which as we know is subject to manipulation and interpretation on both sides, are the not-so-subtle underpinnings of the case. We know most Germans hated or grew to hate Jews, Poles and gypsies, and blamed them for many of Germany's social, political and financial ills. We know Germany was thirsting to return glory and respect to the motherland after the humiliating defeat of WWI. We know Hitler was a psychotic cult of personality bent on world domination, whose inflammatory ramblings were well-received in a once-proud country thrown into despair by the Treaty of Versailles. We know Hitler bred an army of fanatic loyalists subject to complete control by the upper echelon. We know the media machine pumped out a constant vitriol of anti-alien, pro-German propaganda. We know the final solution was at first a plan to simply deport the shunned elements of society, but later, as Germany became more bold, after having been given ground (both figuratively and literally), it turned into the ghastly argument before us now. The apparatus was there. The will was there. The motive was there. The hatred was there. The evidence you dispute, but the truth is painfully obvious.

And more spin...

"Every German, somewhere in his being, should set apart a zone of hate -- healthy, virile hate -- for what the Jew personifies and for what persists in the Jew. To do otherwise would be a betrayal of the dead."

Hateful stuff? Right. But, of course, it's a false quote. The true one comes from Elie Wiesel the Talmudic Jew himself: just substitute Jew for German and German for Jew.

Minor detail omission: was it said before the Nazis began their campaign of eradication or after the genocide was over? Case in point. With all of your knowledge on the subject, it would be easy for you to manipulate a few seemingly insignificant facts to persuasively validate your version of events. And most of the sheep would never know.

Feel free to respond. I will most likely end the discussion here as it appears the old saying is true: you can lead a stone to water and beat it, but you can't get blood from a dead horse. Thanks for engaging and for the interesting conversation.

3. Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss

Comment #172607 by bitofinger on April 29, 2008 at 7:17 pm

Al-rawandi,

Thanks for the heads-up.

I checked out some of the sites and people that ASMarques bandies about like bad gossip as if they were actually part of main-stream ideas, and you were absolutely right. Turns out one of the people, Alain Soral, is not only anti-semitic, but appears to be anti-homosexual and anti-woman as well. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_Soral

Note in particular the passage in which it appears bad behavior was on both sides of the aisle. "The association Act Up rounded on his publisher, the éditions Blanche, whom they claimed, through books like those of Alain Soral or Éric Rémès spread negative prejudices towards homosexuals and even, hate. They asked the director of publication to stop publishing these two authors and they vandalized the bureaux of the publisher. The head of the editions Blanche claimed the members of Act Up physically assaulted his executive assistant and threatened to press charges. Act Up denied such accusations. And be it as it may, no legal action have been intended."

But of course this will be dismissed as another Jewish attempt to hijack reality. Then see for yourself at
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=http://www.alainsoral.com/&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=1&ct=result&prev=/search?q=alain soral&hl=en&rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS251US251

One of the sites referenced by Marques makes radical and inflammatory statements such as "May 6, 2007, France enslaved to the Israeli-American Empire" regarding the date Sarkozy was elected. This site in particular was full of alarmist propaganda such as a picture of Sarkozy with American and Israeli flags behind him and the words "The Axis of Hate" emblazoned across the bottom of the photo. As you can imagine, the pages were in no way lacking exclamation points.

I'm not saying it is impossible the Holocaust was a tremendous hoax. I'm saying the possibilities of it being a hoax are akin to a giant tea pot floating out in space somewhere between Mars and Jupiter. Yet I cannot disprove it. I have not, much to my discredit, circled the aforementioned area in my spaceship, tracing all possible orbits for said tea pot, therefore I cannot ethically with 100% certainty deny its existence. I have only listened to opinions of main-stream, reasonable scientists and formed opinions based on my estimations of probability.

And being that I have not, most likely to the disquietude of ASMarques, time-traveled back to Nazi Germany during WWII to see for myself that there were no gas chambers, no

"plan, no written orders at any level, no assigned method of mass murder or bureaucratic control, leaving it to the imagination of a whole bunch of telepathic improvisers who then came up with mass execution by steam, electrocution, non-toxic Diesel exhaust, Zyklon B insecticide, lime train car, pedal-driven brain-bashing machine (all attested to in the Nuremberg trials), and no remaining vestiges in any of the precisely located alleged murder sites"

that I myself cannot, in a reasonable argument, prove the Holocaust is a fact of history. Silly me for sounding like a "red-neck creationist". Way off the mark here, Marques, considering I'm from New York and an Atheist near approaching the 7th order on Richard Dawkins' belief scale of 1-7, seven being utterly convinced there is absolutely no god. Boy did "it" get that one wrong. (re: my comment #172221 on April 29, 2008 at 11:02 am)

I also find it comical that you incessantly moan and complain about how boring we peasants are. This is in stark contrast with how much time and energy you spend debating us. How boring then is your life? Or do you claim to be on a mission to save humanity from the Jewish-American-Sarkozy-Christian-Gay-Feminist agenda? Your grasp of psychology is somewhat unimpressive.

And I must take issue with at least (for now) one more prong in your argument: your attempt to show an apparently unreasonable premise in Germany's actions:

...the vast German conspiracy to secretly exterminate an entire race in the hope future historians would be at a loss to determine what had happened to them,

This statement in no way approaches reality. Germany, at least in the later war years, had no reason to strive for and no intention of keeping such heinous crimes a secret. Their philosophical, political and religious ambitions were nothing short of world domination. What use had they for concealing atrocities, especially those which many believed were socially beneficial and a necessary evil? And to have to explain themselves to people they considered inferior? Absurd. It does seem that you have at least some traits of which the Nazis would be proud.

If I am so wrong, why don't you come out publicly and deny it? Speak the words. Make the same statements I now make and that most every decent human would affirm:

1) I believe in the rights and dignity of all human beings, regardless of ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, language, disability, country of birth, culture or religion.
2) I believe all humans have a responsibility to work toward the progress of society as a whole.
3) I believe in the ethical and responsible stewardship of the environment.
4) I believe all humans should regard the whole of nature as equal and deserving, subject to checks and balances.
5) I believe humans should exercise great liberty in the pursuit of happiness.

If you do, and if you are a closet Nazi, you will not be able to hold your head up in circles where you gather with your cohorts, unless you are a bold-faced liar. I could be wrong about your prejudices and authoritarian leanings, but I don't think I am.

4. Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss

Comment #172221 by bitofinger on April 29, 2008 at 11:02 am

. Comment #170347 by ASMarques on April 27, 2008 at 4:46 pm

My point is not ambiguous at all, it's as straightforward as you can possibly imagine. It's simply this (count the words): the alleged "Holocaust" of the Jews by the Germans (extermination, homicidal gas chambers, approximately 6 million murdered Jews) never happened.

A bit of revisionist history, Marques? The comment here was not part of your original posting. The ambiguity and superiority complex charges stand.

It may be the impression you get from the fact that I consciously avoid replying to insulting or vulgar comments from childish adversaries in like fashion.

Your reference to the comment which you may find insulting was only in my repost, again, after-the-fact. I'm sensing a pattern, here.

Why the constant need to address the man or woman (or thing, as one of our friends on this forum suggested by using "it" in addition to your own "he" or "she") instead of the arguments?

Constant? As if we have spoken on the subject repeatedly? I will explain further why I spoke more of you than of the argument itself in a moment. In the meantime, if you insist on being referred to as "it" in the third person, very well, but I think it will lead to confusion.

Your comparison looks to me like an easy way out of the frustration...

I'm not frustrated at all. I'm simply stating my opinion.

...of not being able to argue some matter you attribute great importance to.

It's always fascinating to me when Holocaust deniers denigrate one of the greatest lessons we humans will ever learn about ourselves: that our vile, brutal and animalistic past is nowhere near over.

As far as arguing with you about "some matter", I suppose you believe hundreds if not thousands of people conspired to cover up JFK's assassination, or that the United States never landed a man on the moon, or perhaps you still attend Flat Earth Society meetings. It would then be natural to conclude that you think millions of Jews faked their own deaths and had millions of other people cover it up, and in doing so achieved deceit at such a clandestine level that only a select few know the real truth, a truth which has only recently begun to come out, sixty some-odd years later.

The KKK reference was simply a continuation along these lines. I wonder if you believe evolution is a theory or fact. Not that I would spend the time reading through your prolific postings to find out. Taking 10 seconds to paste your writings into a word document and do a word count is one thing. Researching every link you post in order to determine its source and validity when history has already rehashed this subject to death is another.

This is why there is no point arguing the facts with someone like you. I can only imagine what farcical misadventure haunts the mind of someone who (count the words) posts one essay on this blog 5,693 words long, and another nearly 4,000 words long, about dismally barren facts and evidence of the most massive conspiracy ever.

I wonder what might that be. Some peculiar bit of religious humbug, perhaps?...

Again, wholly unclear. If you are saying that I am a religious nut-job in disguise, nothing could be farther from the truth. There are not many people on earth to my left. Not sure where that leaves us, but I may think of more to say later or edit this post.

5. Is religion a threat to rationality and science?

Comment #168900 by bitofinger on April 25, 2008 at 12:45 pm

Winston of Dennett:

The problem with his interesting views of the possible evolutionary basis of religious belief is that he seems unable to treat the beliefs and feelings of believers seriously. Might not God disapprove of this much more?

That's an excellent point, right up until you give it a moment's thought - shamelessly plagiarized from TGD. What if the real God is Satan and good deeds add up against us in the end? Might not God then disapprove of this thing we call morality? The possibilities against this argument are as infinite as the number of Gods people have ever imagined.

Religion is built into human consciousness and there is plentiful evidence of it being a cohesive force. Apart from the survival of our prehistoric ancestors, in recent times there are powerful examples of how a notion of the transcendental has spurred humans on in desperate situations. Viktor Frankl, in the midst of the extreme deprivation, dehumanisation and despair of Auschwitz observes how, in his assessment, only those with some spirituality - not necessarily a belief in God - survived the depravity of the camp.

This is the tired and well-thrashed "There are no atheists in foxholes" fallacy. It seems to me lying in a ditch with dead and wounded soldiers desperately fighting for your lives with shells exploding all around you in a hail of machine gun fire is a rather unsuitable time to decide whether you believe in a supreme being. Doesn't that sound just a little self-serving and convenient?

Somehow I think you'd pray to the God of Anti-aliasing Screen Savers if you thought He might be able to save you. And if indeed your life were somehow spared, would you then become an ASS worshiper?

An intensely stressful life-or-death situation is no time or place to resolve deeply personal questions like this. Yet there are some who would consider prayer under such circumstances spiritual affirmation.

Like many of my brilliant scientific colleagues, he conveys the notion that science is about a kind of certainty.

I'm not as well-versed on Dennett, but most people I've seen in debating this point on the side of science agree that it is not a certainty, but an uncertainty that drives them. In fact, one of religion's worst qualities, among many, is its preconception, which of course leads to faulty logic.

The problem is that scientists now too frequently believe we have the answers to these questions, and hence the mysteries of life.

No reasonable, ethical scientist would seriously claim to know answers for which there is no empirical evidence, which has not been peer-reviewed, and which is not widely accepted by researchers in their field.

But, oddly, the more we use science to explore nature, the more we find things we do not understand and cannot explain.

Being at the pharyngula stage of understanding as we are, of course it should be expected that the more we observe, the more we see how much understanding we yet lack.

In reality, both religion and science are expressions of man's uncertainty. Perhaps the paradox is that certainty, whether it be in science or religion, is dangerous. The danger of Dennett's relatively gentle brand of certainty is that it increases polarisation in our society. With inflexible positions on both sides, certainty surely is the biggest threat to rationality, and to science.

No doubt, the dangers of preconceived certainty are one of the greatest dangers religion poses to humanity. This arbitrary and absurd system of belief in nothingness is beyond compare the most serious threat to civilization, and perhaps humanity itself.

6. Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss

Comment #166347 by bitofinger on April 23, 2008 at 7:21 am

Comment #161853 by DasSquid on April 15, 2008 at 7:39 pm
Is it just me, or did ASMarques post make absolutely no fucking sense at all?

Comment #162265 by 7Fred7 on April 16, 2008 at 1:18 pm
No, it's not just you.

Agreed, Fred and DasSquid. ASMarques' deliberate ambiguity about his/her point seems like an attempt to sound lofty and intellectual, but comes off far more elitist and snobbish. Marques talks as if he or she is well above us commoners, and is unabashed in flaunting this disposition.

As for the stunningly and embarrassingly distorted view that the Holocaust is a religion based on (do I read too much into this?) the falsified deaths of millions of people in order to promote a religious world-view, or perhaps bring the world economy out of recession, there is really no good that can come out of arguing with someone like ASMarques.

You may as well try to convince the head of the Ku Klux Klan that humans share a common ancestor with apes. And we all know how ridiculous that would be.

7. Richard Dawkins and Bill Maher

Comment #165201 by bitofinger on April 21, 2008 at 7:51 am

This was really a non-interview and very poorly conducted. I'm usually a big fan of Maher. This piece, with its canned audience responses and nervous, contrived laughter from Maher, looked more like a promo for the book - which I am fully enjoying - but there was nothing substantive here except a scientist and a comedian discussing another scientist's opinion of the validity of a talking reptile, of which neither were sure.

8. The simple falsehood at the heart of Expelled

Comment #159073 by bitofinger on April 11, 2008 at 12:10 pm

Comment #158996 by iBELIEVEinJESUS on April 11, 2008 at 10:03 am

I'd like some feedback on this... I truly believe that religion is going to bring about the demise of humanity (maybe civilization is a better word). What is the atheist/evolutionist's proposed solution to what I believe will be the primary cause for the destruction of mankind on a massive level?

Is it limited to an aggressive educational campaign?

Well it's nice to see a rational argument from a religionist every once in a while. Yours is truly a scarce demeanor. I am usually reserved of the opinion that religion and rationality are mutually exclusive. :)

All niceties aside, I think your premise of a solution is flawed. It seems incompatible with the realities of society and the way our cultures have developed over time. As much as I'd love to say "Here is the proof. What are you waiting for?", I don't think forcing our views on others in a sudden burst of massive education - regardless of the evidence - will have any effect on the vast majority of people.

Letting nature take its course has been a great axiom for life over the past 4.3 billion years. It may be that the only way for people to see the light (pun intended) is slowly over generations.

And if it means the destruction of the human race or civilization as we know it, then it is possible - no, inevitable - that something smarter will come along. Wouldn't it be great if one day there were a creature that could play the piano a hundred times better than us? Or an animal that could can swim underwater for months at a time? How about a super-intelligent being who could override the selfish gene and strive in ways we never thought possible to achieve perfect balance in nature?

9. The simple falsehood at the heart of Expelled

Comment #158937 by bitofinger on April 11, 2008 at 7:44 am

. Posted by: EvidenceOnly on April 10, 2008 at 10:12 am

Religions claim patent rights to morality and truth but make stuff up and spit out an endless stream of blatant lies.

It' not ignorance. It's much worse: massive organized deceit.

Not so sure the deceit part is organized, but it is collective and wide-spread. I happen to agree with the Christian philosophy that people are basically sheep who need to be lead by the nose. It's a very sad affair.

But I'm not big on out-and-out conspiracy theories. I think only a very small minority of religiazzi are hysterical fanatics who conspire to dominate the world with their twisted ideology.

Having said that, there is an equal if not more dangerous threat in the less frenzied and ubiquitous believer, from the casual, passive, seemingly benign sort of every-day believer who attends church occasionally, to the avid religion enthusiast who prays incessantly, goes to church at least once a day and listens only to religious music but maintains a semi-normal existence as a law-abiding member of society.

From these two groups and everything in between comes the real challenge to human progress. These are the ones who contribute more overall - mostly indirectly - to the weight of the thumb atop the head of science.

Collective delusion easily snowballs into hysterics. Reason is the cure.

10. Get out of here, atheists!

Comment #156693 by bitofinger on April 8, 2008 at 6:41 am

. Comment #156346 by RainDear on April 7, 2008 at 11:16 am

Once again, trying not to offend our American friends but ---

How is it possible for these idiots to get elected? What the hell is wrong with your country?

Judge us not too harshly,
Dear womyn and kind men,
The blind leading the sighted,
Who call them brethren

We Bright upstanding citizens,
Long to disqualify religion,
Two-thousand years of failure,
Left us in no better position

When the current era is done,
And the sermons all preached,
Before ascension from the bottom,
The bottom must be reached

So take heed and take heart,
Dear womyn and kind gents,
Not all who call this land home,
Wax a godly lament

11. Happy Birthday, Richard Dawkins!

Comment #150362 by bitofinger on March 26, 2008 at 7:10 pm

Bappy Hirthday Richard!

With any luck at all, one day you will be discovered as a transitional fossil!

12. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #149213 by bitofinger on March 25, 2008 at 9:12 am

Richard,

Thank you for your effort to confront this film and a hundred times over for your continuous efforts to bring science and reason to a new Age of Enlightenment.

Although I'm sure of your description of the factual errancies in the film and of the dishonest, manipulative nature of its producer, I think you should have left film critiquing to the film critics.

Your frustration and impatience are apparent in your review, and you may well be giving people like Mathis the precious oxygen for which they so desperately starve by describing the film as "whiny, paranoid -- pathetic really." These are not adjectives a serious or really even a casual film audience would regard when considering whether to see it or not - though I did love the Lord Privy Seal reference.

I trust you trust in me to trust in you that yours is the highest, most noble of pursuits (couldn't resist a little obfuscation).

All tolled, it was a genuine article. ;)

13. Two More Fleas

Comment #146842 by bitofinger on March 19, 2008 at 1:32 pm

Has anyone provided a proof of God's inexistence?
Not even close.

Please explain how it is possible to disprove the existence of that which does not exist.

Has quantum cosmology explained the emergence of the universe or why it is here?
Not even close.

As RD has often said, and as logic dictates, the universe owes us no explanation. The most intellectual of us can, in my humble opinion, only somewhat understand the enormity and complexity of what we so far know; what is yet to be learned will surely explain more with scientific progress.

Have the sciences explained why our universe seems to be fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life?
Not even close.

The universe is not even close to being 'fine-tuned' for the existence of life. If it were, our own galaxy, if not even our solar system, would likely be teeming with its abundance.

Are physicists and biologists willing to believe in anything so long as it is not religious thought?
Close enough.

Base the religious thought on empirical laws and this statement is readily debunked.

Has rationalism in moral thought provided us with an understanding of what is good, what is right, and what is moral?
Not close enough.

The Christian rationale for morality - like the majority of religions - is based on the laws of a supreme being, which repeatedly and incessantly come to man through prophets as 'absolute truth'. If man corrupts and defiles divine truth, which he does via his fallibility as messenger, then there is no absolution.

Has secularism in the terrible twentieth century been a force for good?
Not even close to being close.

The twentieth century has been no less kind or gentle to humanity than any other. And secularism, thank god (inverse sarcasm intended), is just beginning to find its footing and grow teeth. With another great leap of enlightenment and a great deal of luck, we may just be rid of most superstition before the ticking time bomb of religion explodes.

Is there a narrow and oppressive orthodoxy of thought and opinion within the sciences?
Close enough.

The tools of ignorance and oppression are so well understood by none as those who repeatedly employ their use.

Does anything in the sciences or in their philosophy justify the claim that religious belief is irrational?
Not even ballpark.

Claiming religion to be based on rationality is an insult to human intelligence to which I take great offense. And unlike a caller to the recent Alan Colmes interview with RD, I will stand by your constitutional right to offend me. You are welcome.

Is scientific atheism a frivolous exercise in intellectual contempt?
Dead on.

Scientific atheists, humanists, freethinkers, secularists, call us what you will, but curing the world of this debilitating disease and destroying the crippling crutch of religion is not, Mr. Berlinsky, an exercise in futility. It is the greatest, most noble and most worthy challenge we face today, and in fact one that should be given higher priority than many other societal ills, as many of the problems we face would be much easier to solve without the wholly divisive claim of absolute righteousness.

Just ask, 'Who is right about the truth?' and clearly you can see Pandora's box begin to open. You may very well get near 7 billion different answers.