1. Executing Saddam Hussein was an Act of Vandalism

Comment #15830 by christopher.bloise on January 3, 2007 at 8:45 am

There are many arguments about why or why not Saddam should've been executed.

Dr. Dawkins makes a compelling argument about the wealth of knowledge we can extract from a imprisoned yet alive Saddam Hussein.

What about the fact that killing if not in the religious sense, then the moral sense, is wrong, or at least morally reprehensible. For myself as an atheist I find any kind of killing, even the hanging of a horrible and malicious dictator to be repulsive. Just because the decision was enabled by people who've been wronged by the person in question, and the judicial process, doesn't make it ok.

We live in a world increasingly desensitized to suffering and violence, too often do I hear people say with no remorse that someone deserved to die (i.e. Saddam, child molester, whoever). I think that everyone should be forced to watch a live execution just to see how horrible it really is.

2. How the Great Atheist got polite society standing

Comment #15385 by christopher.bloise on December 30, 2006 at 9:31 pm

So the point of tis article was to sneer at Professor Dawkins?

I think the observations were ok, but what does the author have against RD? He's anything but the cultivator of a personality cult.

*scratches head* hmmmmm...

3. Ghosts in the Machine

Comment #15384 by christopher.bloise on December 30, 2006 at 9:17 pm

Ghosts = not real

Prior to his untimely death in 1926, Houdini made a secret pact with Bess, his wife of thirty-two years. They made a ten word code which only each of them knew. Each would try their best to communicate with the other once they passed over. The correct code would act as proof that it was really them coming through from the other side. For ten (10) years Mrs. Houdini offered a $10,000 reward for anyone, psychic or layman, who could communicate with Harry. She visited psychics from around the world in an attempt to communicate with him. Not a single psychic could produce the secret code, although almost all of them claimed to have communicated with Houdini himself on the other side. In her last séance in 1936, she tried one final time to reach Harry. After this final failure, Bess made this little speech, "I do not think that Harry will come back to me, or anyone. I think the dead don't speak. I now regretfully turn out the light. This is the end, Harry, good night!" She then blew out the candle that she had lit after his death and that had been buring for him for ten years. In 1937, Mrs. Houdini, sent out a final letter to the media, the general public and to those psychics who participated saying, "Since the failure of the ten year test, it is my opinion that all concerned have struck a mighty worldwide blow at superstition."

This is just a story, but for real, ghosts aren't real.

4. How Old is the Grand Canyon? Park Service Won't Say

Comment #15381 by christopher.bloise on December 30, 2006 at 9:07 pm

If I think about this for a minute it makes my brain hurt. The fact that anything but scientificly accepted facts are being presented to the public at a national park is mind boggling to me.

Maybe its cause I live in a blue state, but I think even religious people that I know would find fault with presenting a creationist view and stifiling a scientific fact at a national park.