[ariniaxia]

It's Turkey, who the **** cares about Turkey? Well, Maybe the US, but otehr than that?

[gogoleanylinkfo]

I dont think we should take an englishman's word on what is funny or not....

[DoctorAlexandro]

Yeah, Ataturk FTW.

Well, I bet Dawkins loves it, because this is the case of bad press being good for you.

[Usogwdkb]

And for the record, while I'm a science guy, I think I'm an actual scientists... I mean heck, I am, by the very definition... Dawkins is still an obnoxious *******. He's just the guy you want to punch in the face. He comes to your face and starts with his rambling, and then you say OK, fair enough, I'd like you to leave me alone now and he'll come with a "no", because somehow it is exactly the reason why he has to be in your face and that it is your own fault.

Obnoxious person, I don't like him at all. If he means to fix things between the realtionship of science and religion, well... he's not the one for the job. He is kind of militant. And then he blames militants on the religious side. Kind of ironic.

[quottrethew]

Right. And he acts like a douche. There's no excuses acting like a douche. He is quite irritating, very self righteous and militant. I wouldn't want to have a beer with him.

[Xlkl9SFd]

No, it's what's wrong with the human race. It's just that religion's had most of the power throughout human history so people tend to confuse things. If you ever succeed in driving superstitions like mine out of existence without resorting to vast atrocities, the newly enlightened human race will go on to persecute...oh, I don't know. Communists, maybe, or capitalists, depending who's in charge. People who object to modifying the human genome, or people who don't. People who earn too little, people who earn too much, people who look funny, people from the wrong country. It's hard to tell with the future, but I can say that mass graves are in the cards no matter which way we go.

Actually, that'll happen even if you do resort to vast atrocities, and the vast atrocities scenario strikes me as far more likely. I'm just saying you're hosed in any case.

[AK47rulz]

Isn't a little odd that Europe is getting uppity over people banning books and websites given the activities of Germany, France, and others?

[JesikaFlpk]

Originally posted by David Floyd
You're right, but the Church did. He contradicted Aristotle and Ptolemy because they were WRONG. Instead of listening to him and being open to science, the Church persecuted him. Largely because he was an idiot and mocked the Pope in writing, but I guess that's beside the point. Not many people were open to science in those days. The church was the authority figure at the time, but do you believe that if for some reason the late medieval/renaissance world were run by secular academics who believed in heliocentrism, worshiped the ground the ancient thinkers walked on (as most of Western Europe did in those days), and had power comparable to the Pope's, things would have gone totally differently? I don't.

Yeah, but it will solve the current problems with Iran. Are you saying that we should never confront aggressive regimes, ever, because it won't matter in the long run? Actually, I doubt it would in Iran's specific case. Whatever regime replaced it would no doubt be just as radical, anti-Western and anti-Israel, and in the meantime you'd have lots of nuclear material unaccounted for in the chaos. But that too is beside the point, it's just a result of the Middle East being FUBAR. I'm certainly not suggesting that we should knuckle under to any aggression. I'm saying that blaming religion is the easy way out and more often than not doesn't reflect reality. Reality is a bit more complicated.