1. In Google Earth, a Service for Scanning the Heavens

Comment #65781 by QP on August 26, 2007 at 1:53 pm

Rational_G:

So you have a direct fibre-optic link to the hubble telescope in your backyard? Thought not.

Looking for yourself is needlessly overrated, those photons are identical to the ones coming from the computer screen. Well, almost.

Why go oustside and look at the moon motionless in the sky, when you can fire up Google Earth | Sky and watch it's movement over the course of months compressed into a few seconds? The majesty of the universe is simply to large for a human to grasp without aid.

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

Comment #15303 by QP on December 30, 2006 at 8:54 am

Comment #15281 by Vadjong

"In order to avoid offending religious fundamentalists, our National Park Service is under orders to suspend its belief in geology,"

How about offending geologists ?
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How many geologists are willing to strap explosives to themselves to enhance their bargaining power?

3. Orr on Dawkins

Comment #15036 by QP on December 28, 2006 at 11:12 am

Okay, you're obviously looking at this from a much different angle than me. I thought it was about how the two people in the atheist/theist argument are both in a dangerous state of mind, whereas you see it as an example of "...the power of a fully human response in possession of a rational mind.".

4. Orr on Dawkins

Comment #15029 by QP on December 28, 2006 at 10:14 am

Jacob Bronowski, for his ground-breaking series 'The Ascent Of Man' said this:

"This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance, it was done by dogma, it was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods."

Some thirty years ago, I first heard this, and now it is memorised. Whenever I encounter the theist/atheist 'argument', I remember Bronowski's words, repeat them, and walk away.

I am not responding to the originator of this comment, as they have left. However, to anyone reading this, I'd like to point out how this only applies to the theist side of the argument. Only they profess to have absolute, unquestionable knowledge. Although this is not confined to religion, it is a feature of any dogmatic belief system. However it is inherent in the structure of religion, whereas science always leaves open the possibility of it's being wrong. How many were executed before we let go of Newton's clockwork universe? This may have been the point of the quoted comment, but it seemed suitably ambiguous to warrant clarification.