X-Message-Number: 27046
From: "Beth Bailey" <>
Subject: Re: Combatting Terrorism, to Flavonoid
Date: Thu, 15 Sep 2005 21:10:05 -0400

Flavonoid wrote:
<This reminded me of the historical stories of the Christian religion in the 
<Dark Ages, specifically, the "Inquisition."  Western civilization mostly 
<rid itself of that mindset, which is very similar to the Muslim minority 
<today, mentioned above.  Good historians should be able to answer the 
<question of "how did they get rid of the Dark Ages mentality?".  

There are various theories of how this happended including:
The Protestant Reformation 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_Reformation
And the subsequent Age of Enlightenment / Reason
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Enlightenment


Many pundits hope to see a similar movement emerge in the Middle East, where 
moderate Muslims will actively speak out against extremism, condemn violence, 
marginalize the terrorists, and support reason, science, human rights as well as
equality for women. The best resource for learning about what is happening in 
the Middle East is Robert Spencer's web site, 
http://www.jihadwatch.org/

You are right Flavonoid, this will take a very long time. 


The situation in the Middle East, notwithstanding , I hope the future holds 
bright promise for anyone who has the courage and perseverance to read / study 
math, science, computer technology, engineering, artificial intelligence, 
robotics or medicine. It's sad to see that America is losing ground in these 
important areas because politics and profit takes precedence over education. A 
disturbing trend is that the United States is currently facing organized 
political attacks against teaching evolution, conducting stem cell research, 
allowing family planning, and thereby eroding women's rights. 


In the U.S. there is a current backlash against the Enlightenment: Various state
school boards, including Kansas and Pennsylvania  are vigorously trying to 
legislate that biblical creationism is taught in science classes along with (or 
instead of) evolution. Please see http://www.venganza.org/  and
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/08/19/boing_boings_250000_.html


This will have serious repercussions on society. We need more science, not less,
and a public policy that recognizes the future is at stake, for everyone, not 
just cryonicists. Some good resources for this battle against the forces of 
stupidity include www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ ,  Bill Nye's http://www.eyesofnye.org/
, and Carl Sagan's book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the 
Dark 


So, let's get busy, keep fighting the good fight and maybe we will all live to 
see another day...

Kind regards,
Beth Bailey

 Content-Type: text/html;

[ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] 

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=27046