I am a scientist, citizen, and polemicist engaged in an indirect dismembering of errors found in religious discourse. As Sam Harris points out in "The End of Faith," on September 11, 2001 our pious nation realized what kind of power and manifestations of violence religious certainty has on the health and well being of humans. Verily Ayaan Hirsi Ali lives a life of fear because of religious dogmatists engaged in the fulfillment of scripture. The idea of "confidence without reason" has the deleterious effect of suppressing intelligent discourse by placing stigma on its critics. Dennett claims this "effect" is not so much a passive artifact as it is the developed need for religion to survive, acquired through some hemi-evolutionary pathways. We realize today that religion without this speciation would not survive the torments of scientific revelations given how much we know today about disease, weather, and quantum physics. I am uneasy about suppression of conversation. Western morality is always improving simply by virtue of open speech. Children of the enlightenment found this one element so critical in government that they made it their first amendment.

An open discussion is necessary to better my understanding of the claims of atheists just mentioned and of their opposing theists like Baba, Shirley Phelps, Sir Ratzinger, or Hito. I don't intend to prevent discussion on any material of mine given the participant is willing to defend her position. In order to passively convince my viewers, I think my fellow students ought to "witness in truth" the words of apology or justification as they appear in these forums. It is my personal belief that given these circumstances any honest person seeking truth, holding it more valuable than social connection and even comfort, will join me and my friends who say: the extraordinary claims made by the pious are not supported by necessary extraordinary evidence.

To my Christian viewers: You perhaps claim that violence and barbarity are products of extremity while the norm is much more grounded on a tradition of morality and rationality. In deed you likely will claim, as Dinesh D'Souza, that most of history's rational thinkers were in deed Christian. I don't judge religions by their radical memberships. I don't have to. I do however, judge them on their foundational texts and the sayings of their leaders. Take the example of Hurricane Katrina. The pastor John Hagee, along with the Archbishop of Canterbury, has made claims that these events took place because of how consenting adults conduct themselves with their same-sex partners in that area. Linking meteorology to morality is bronze age and worth no attention whichever way. Can you imagine anyone nowadays arguing that to bring rain to crops or ward off demonic storm one must act morally? Aside from the absence of truth, a moral dilemma in its own right, avowals such as these represent two fundamental deficiencies. First the retardation of progress. Second the totalitarian mentality: setting regulations that are circular and binding. The obvious genetic component of homosexuality, attested by monozygotic twin studies, is sinful, as with other innumerable desires common to humanity. Oddly scripture is full of God's desire for man to overcome these "weaknesses" while telling him it will never happen without submission to a human sacrifice. A god that watches you day and night, that can convict you of "thought crime," as Hitchens terms it, and that is authorized to command you to conduct yourself under literally impossible regulations is a god that derives its doctrine from ideas dwelling, not on the edge but, well in the middle of totalitarianism. This is the Christian postulation.

As for Muslims, most of you claim that radicals have, in the words of President Bush, "hijacked a great religion." Muslim moderates assert that these parties are not licensed to issue fatwa and institute sharia. I would like to know on what religious grounds they make either assertion. The Koran is brimming with descriptions of the abhorrent status of the infidel in the eyes of Allah. In deed Allah not only hates his creation, "the unbeliever... the hypocrite... the friend of Satan," should man use his divinely instated free will to choose dissociation, but also he instructs man's death as "the inveterate enemy."

To all believers, Carl Sagan once said that "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." If there were ever a statement that challenges piety and charlatanry, this is it. How does evidence justify one's actions? It is my opinion that the rare evidence for miracles and truth in the religious domain amount to very little, in fact to pure random chance (consider the interesting mathematics of "official" miracles in Lourdes, France; # of miracles (2000 "unexplained cures"+66 declared miracles) / # of sick visitors seeking a miracle (80,000/yr x 150 years) = 2066/12,000,000 = .0001722 pure, random chance).

-Alecs