steveblock.com

bq. The advances of science have not been accepted gracefully. They have been denounced by the church and resisted by the populace. The leaders of scientific discovery have been vilified, harassed, persecuted, tortured, imprisoned and executed. But the weight of evidence and practical results piled up by science is invincible — something that many of today’s fundamentalists still haven’t learned.

— C. W. Dalton, “The Right Brain and Religion”

bq. The theory of evolution by cumulative natural selection is the only theory we know of that is in principle capable of explaining the existence of organized complexity.

— Richard Dawkins, _The Blind Watchmaker_

bq.. Telegraph: “For God to create the universe he would have to be hyper-intelligent. But intelligence only evolves over time. Is that about the strength of it?”

Dawkins: “It’s worse than that, the argument for God starts by assuming what it is attempting to explain — intelligence, complexity, it comes to the same thing — and so it explains nothing. God is a non-explanation. Whereas evolution by natural selection _is_ an explanation. It really does start simply and become complex.”

p. — Sunday Telegraph (UK) interview with Richard Dawkins, Sept. 26, 1999

bq. The National Government will regard it as its first and foremost duty to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and cooperation. It will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built. It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national life.

— Adolf Hitler, Berlin, February 1, 1933

bq. The so-called religious right of the Republican Party — the Christian right, they call themselves, although in my view they are neither Christian nor right — is after a totalitarian state.

— Edward Albee, interview in Progressive August 1996 issue

bq. However, on religious issues there can be little or no compromise. There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. But like any powerful weapon, the use of God’s name on one’s behalf should be used sparingly. The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both. I’m frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in “A,” “B,” “C,” and “D.” Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of “conservatism.”

— Barry Goldwater

In a long discussion that eventually turned to Michael Moore (he sucks, confirm/deny) and politics I and others as well witnessed a strange thing. Kyle Poorman—local pacifist and all around good guy—exploded into a huge rant, something far out of character for him. At the same time I was not even remotely angry; fairly out of character for me as well.