#religion

"Yes, Dr. McGrath, you're right, there is something about us as a species that is problematic, it isn't just explained by religion. Something about us that tempts us to do wrong. It's pretty easily explained, I think. We are primates, high primates, but primates. We're half a chromosome away from chimpanzees and it shows. It especially shows in the number of religions we invent to console ourselves or to give us things to quarrel with other primates about. If anything demonstrates that God is man-made, not man God-made, surely it is the religions erected by this quasi-chimpanzee species and the harm that they're willing to inflict on that basis."

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“It's no criticism of Chomsky to say that his analysis is inconsistent with that of other individuals and factions who essentially think that 9/11 was a hoax. However, it is remarkable that he should write as if the mass of evidence against Bin Laden has never been presented or could not have been brought before a court. This form of 9/11 denial doesn't trouble to conceal an unstated but self-evident premise, which is that the United States richly deserved the assault on its citizens and its civil society. After all, as Chomsky phrases it so tellingly, our habit of "naming our murder weapons after victims of our crimes: Apache, Tomahawk … as if the Luftwaffe were to call its fighter planes 'Jew' and 'Gypsy.' "...In short, we do not know who organized the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, or any other related assaults, though it would be a credulous fool who swallowed the word of Osama Bin Laden that his group was the one responsible. An attempt to kidnap or murder an ex-president of the United States would be as legally justified as the hit on Abbottabad. And America is an incarnation of the Third Reich that doesn't even conceal its genocidal methods and aspirations. This is the sum total of what has been learned, by the guru of the left, in the last decade.”

“Peace through Strength," surely history's most exploded nostrum.”

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“I, for one, will not have insulted by any comparison to the forces of Zarqawi, the Fedayeen Saddam, and the criminal underworld now arrayed against us. These depraved elements are the Iraqi Khmer Rouge.”

“The idea that God speaks to some illiterate merchant warlord in Arabia, and he’s able to write this down perfectly and it contains the answers to all — don’t waste my time with that bulls**t. Also, the archangel Gabriel speaks only Arabic, it seems? Crap.”

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