Poached eggs and skeptics

On November 21, 2003, Luigi Cascioli delivered a collection of personal writings he had amassed over the years to a judge in the small town of Vitervo, Italy, in order to build a case against his childhood friend, the Rev. Enrico Righi. These exhibits were submitted as part of a criminal complaint Mr. Cascioli had filed the previous year.

Mr. Cascioli’s contention was that Rev. Righi had committed fraud and broken the law by deliberately deceiving others. The manner in which Mr. Righi had allegedly attempted to deceive people (including his own flock at the catholic church where he presided as priest) was by perpetuating a fable about a fictitious character named Jesus, presumably born to a couple by the names of Joseph and Mary about two thousand years ago.

The basis for Mr. Cascioli’s extraordinary lawsuit was an unwavering personal conviction that religion, particularly the Christian religion, works by the “moral subjugation of the dull-witted masses” and his steadfast commitment to the emancipation of these masses from emotional and spiritual bondage by the “destruction of the historical figure of Jesus”. A cursory look at his website demonstrates that he has been devoted to this end for quite some time.

I was there

In the interests of full disclosure, let me first say that on my way down to my PC I stubbed my big toe on the armoire in my bedroom.

Now that the press corps knows about my accident, and the promptness with which I divulged it, let me apologize for not having also followed suit by disclosing earlier the extraordinary events which took place on my hunting trip with Dick Cheney a few days ago. I was there, and I know how it all went down. And since it is weighing heavily on my conscience, I hope you will all indulge me and allow me to give you a recount of what really happened. Before I do, please accept my apologies for waiting so long to break my silence.

The sound of silence

You probably read about the editor of Iran’s largest selling newspaper who was holding an international cartoon contest about the Holocaust.  The newspaper’s plan is to challenge the selective tolerance by European papers that printed the recent cartoons about Muhammad which so offended that “one fifth of humanity”. This is Iran, the same country whose leader was commissioning a study in order to find out if the Holocaust really happened.

What you did not hear about is how droves of indignant Jews around the world set mosques and Muslim embassies on fire and staged violent protests in response to the publication of these insensitive cartoons. The reason you didn’t hear about these violent uprisings is because they did and will not happen even though the contest is still on. What did happen is that after a Danish newspaper published the caricatures of the prophet Muhammad, the Danish embassies in Lebanon and Syria were set ablaze, the paper’s cartoonist and editors were fired and have gone into hiding, and Denmark issued warning on travel to 14 Muslim countries. Apparently it doesn’t take much prodding for the A.P.U. ( Allah’s Pyromaniac Unit) to be swiftly called into action.

Of Monkeys and Type-writers

There are probably few well guarded secrets in scientific circles like the discredited status of the theory of evolution. Yet the average student today will leave college with the “acquired” knowledge that he owes his transient existence to a series of random mutations and natural selection processes that took place billions of years ago. As one Darwinist once quipped: “...a process which did not have (him or her) in mind”.

And if you were to speak to most people today and expressed doubt about the theory of evolution, you might as well be defending the premise that the earth is flat.

The problem is that evolution, as understood in mainstream scientific and academic circles, is not even a theory that can be mildly supported by science. Although science is supposed to be committed to the careful testing of all claims, (including the claim that life evolved by random mutation and natural selection), the creative prowess that is often attributed to the evolution theory has somehow escaped an unbiased scrutiny of all the alleged supporting evidence. Evolutionists have instead focused most of their efforts in fiercely guarding this fragile theory of origins against insolent attacks from those who have of late dared to disagree with them.