By popular demand (*cough* Sean’s *cough*), I’ve undertaken (none too wisely, it seems) what is turning into a pretty huge task: collecting, sorting, synthesizing, and making manageable some basic information on the Crusades, Inquisitions, and the Great Witch Hunts of Europe. I’m running into such fascinating material along the way to the Crusades in the eleventh century, however, that it’s been really hard just boiling things down to the facts. So please forgive me if I skim over what otherwise would make entire posts in and of themselves on this journey through the youth of the Christian world…

The story thus far: Theo the Great’s death in 395 split the Roman Empire into the Eastern Roman (a.k.a. Byzantine) Empire, which would continue united for a few more centuries, and the Western Roman Empire, which would begin almost immediately to fragment under the pressure of complex forces, including Orthodox vs. Arian struggles, conversion movements, migrations, and fluid political, economic, and military patterns (see “Christian” Persecution).

Barely had the Middle Ages begun in Europe when a little phenomenon called the birth of Islam occurred way over in what is today modern Saudi Arabia.

A new monotheistic religion directly influenced by Christianity and Judaism, and founded by the Arab prophet Muhammad in the 600s, Islam spread like wildfire across the Middle East. The former Roman province of Palestine and its capital city of Jerusalem soon fell to the Muslims in their expansion in 638, but since the Islamic conquerors didn’t interrupt or interfere with Christian pilgrimage to and within the Holy Land, Western Europe paid little attention at first to these developments. The Byzantine Empire, however, watched the new religion’s rapid spread with well-founded concern.

As “People of the Book” (the Bible’s Old Testament, for Muhammad also considered Abraham the progenitor of the Arabic peoples), Jews and Christians experienced more tolerance under Islamic rule than followers of other religions did, but they still paid taxes as non-Muslims and couldn’t bear arms or testify in court at trials that involved Muslims. Although the new religion remained mostly tolerant toward non-Muslims, conversion to Islam was always attractive not only for strictly religious reasons but also for the obvious advantages of belonging to the ruling, often majority religion.

Inexorably, the Muslims annexed the Mediterranean coast of Africa until they stood poised to invade Europe via the Iberian Peninsula. Some experts claim that the heirs of Christian Visigothic King Wittiza actually invited them into Spain on April 30, 711 in hopes of winning the current civil war with the aid of such powerful allies. The Moors soon swept over and controlled most of Iberia and before long, aimed their formidable forces at today’s France - and the rest of Europe beyond.

(Note: Islamic civilization, especially under the Caliphate centered in Baghdad, is a whole field of study in and of itself. Muslim scholars made great advances in mathematics, science, and medicine, including giving the West our numeral system, and like Christian monks, translated and thus preserved many works of the ancient Greco-Roman world. Not to mention giving us A Thousand and One Nights - but don’t go by the children’s version; you need Burton’s original unexpurgated translation to get a taste of its rich and often erotic complexity. Digression over.)

What Western civilization would be like today had Islam overrun Europe back then we’ll never know, because on October 10, 732, Frankish leader Charles Martel (“the Hammer”) defeated the Moors at the Battle of Tours (or Poitiers), halting their northward expansion. He parlayed this victory into the establishment of his own Carolingian Empire, which his famous descendant Charlemagne turned into the Holy Roman Empire, often using such ruthless means as forcible conversion to Christianity of conquered peoples like the Saxons in the late eighth century.

(Another note: The Carolingian Empire is another example of too much information to be adequately covered in such a small space. Often referred to as the “Father of Europe,” Charlemagne made highly significant administrative reforms in money, education, writing, government, military, and religion, impacting European culture and society for years to come. He, along with his semi-legendary champion Roland, also inspired art and literature, most famously in stirring epic poems such as Ariosto’s “Orlando Furioso” [1516]. This digression also over.)

Other than a brief jihad by sea, during which Muslim ships harried Christian vessels, the Moors basically settled down to run the Iberian Peninsula – and to their credit, run it very well. Especially here, Jews and Christians enjoyed a relatively high social status, although many converted to Islam because of the greater advantages of belonging to the religion in power, which soon became the majority religion as well. Among other subjects, the philosophy, medicine, and science of the age flourished in Spain under Muslim rule, but internal conflicts began to disrupt the kingdom, and the unconquered Christian areas soon rallied themselves to begin pushing at their Moorish occupiers.

When in the late 800s the Carolingian Empire ended and the local European borders stabilized under continued Christianization, affairs in Spain attracted scores of soldier knights who now had few places to practice their military profession. The guerrilla warfare of the Christian princes of Galicia, Asturias, Navarre, and Basque country against the Moors gave these knights a chance to employ their battle skills – and reinforce their faith against a common infidel enemy in the struggle that came to be known as the “Reconquista” (”Reconquest”).

(Just one more note: The Reconquista lasted several centuries and ended in the eventual victory of the Christians against the Moors. Like the Carolingian Empire, it also fired the imaginations of poets and dramatists, especially in the historical figure of Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar “El Cid,” knight-prince extraordinaire of the Spanish Christian forces.)

This sense of Christian identity strengthened into a mostly unified zealous piety throughout Western Europe, but it really started to crystallize into equally powerful purpose with the 1009 sacking of the pilgrimage hospice and destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem by the Muslim Caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah. The thunderclouds of the Crusades had begun to gather on the horizon…

Next: Heresy and the Big Break-Up

Warped Worldview
“Two really devilish guys materialized in Toccoa, Ga., last month to harangue 600 true believers on the gospel of a thoroughly theocratic America. Along with lesser lights of the religious far right who spoke at American Vision’s “Worldview Super Conference 2006,” Herb Titus and Gary North called for nothing short of the overthrow of the United States of America.

Titus and North aren’t household names. But Titus, former dean of TV preacher Pat Robertson’s Regent University law school, has led the legal battle to plant the Ten Commandants in county courthouses across the nation. North, an apostle of the creed called Christian Reconstructionism, is one of the most influential elders of American fundamentalism.

“I don’t want to capture their (mainstream Americans’) system. I want to replace it,” fumed North to a cheering audience. North has called for the stoning of gays and nonbelievers (rocks are cheap and plentiful, he has observed). Both friends and foes label him “Scary Gary.”

Are we in danger of an American Taliban? Probably not today. But Alabama’s “Ten Commandments Judge” Roy Moore is aligned with this congregation, and one-third of Alabama Republicans who voted in the June primary supported him. When you see the South Dakota legislature outlaw abortions, the Reconstructionist agenda is at work. The movement’s greatest success is in Christian home schooling, where many, if not most, of the textbooks are Reconstructionist-authored tomes.

Moreover, the Reconstructionists are the folks behind attacks on science and public education. They’re allied with proselytizers who have tried to convert Air Force cadets – future pilots with fingers on nuclear triggers – into religious zealots. Like the communists of the 1930s, they exert tremendous stealth political gravity, drawing many sympathizers in their wake, and their friends now dominate the Republican Party in many states.”

snip
“A Harvard-bred lawyer whose most famous client is Alabama’s Judge Moore, Titus told the Toccoa gathering that the Second Amendment envisions the assassination of “tyrants;” that’s why we have guns. Tyranny, of course, is subjective to these folks. Their imposition of a theocratic state would not, by their standards, be tyranny. Public schools, on the other hand, to them are tyrannical.”

snip
“Hosting the “Creation to Revelation…Connecting the Dots” event was a Powder Springs, Ga., publishing house, American Vision, whose pontiff is Gary DeMar. The outfit touts the antebellum South as a righteous society and favors the reintroduction of some forms of slavery (it’s sanctioned in the Bible, Reconstructionists say) – which may explain the blindingly monochrome audience at the gathering.”

snip

‘“Evolution is as religious as Christianity,” (DeMar) said, a claim that certainly must amaze 99.99 percent of the scientific community. Science is irrelevant to these folks. Everything they need to know about the universe and the origin of man is in the first two chapters of Genesis. They know the answer before any question is asked.”

snip
“Titus told of Jesus making a personal appearance in the rafters of his Oregon home.”

At the heart of what was taught by a succession of speakers:

• Six-day, “young earth” creationism is the only acceptable doctrine for Christians. Even “intelligent design” or “old earth” creationism are compromises with evil secularism.

• Public education is satanic and must be destroyed.

• The First Amendment was intended to keep the federal government from imposing a national religion, but states should be free to foster a religious creed. (Several states did that during the colonial period and the nation’s early days, a model the Reconstructionists want to emulate.)

• The Founding Fathers intended to protect only the liberties of the established ultra-conservative denominations of that time. Expanding the list to include “liberal” Protestant denominations, much less Catholics, Jews and (gasp!) atheists, is a corruption of the Founders’ intent.

Education earned the most vitriol at the conference. Effusing that the Religious Right has captured politics and much of the media, North proclaimed: “The only thing they (secularists) have still got a grip on is the university system.” Academic doctorates, he contended, are a conspiracy fomented by the Rockefeller family. All academic programs (except, he said, engineering) are now dominated by secularists and Darwinists.

“Marxists in the English departments!” he ranted. “Close every public school in America!”

Among North’s most quoted writings was this ditty from 1982: “[W]e must use the doctrine of religious liberty to gain independence for Christian schools until we train up a generation…which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God.”

snip

“And what should the church be doing? According to these self-appointed arbiters of God’s will, running our lives. And stoning those who disagree.”

snip

“It would be easy to dismiss the Reconstructionists as the lunatic fringe, no more worrisome than the remnants of the Prohibition Party. But, in fact, they have rather extraordinary entrée and influence with top-tier Religious Right leaders and institutions.

James Dobson’s Focus on the Family is now selling DeMar’s book, America’s Christian Heritage. Dobson himself has a warm relationship with many in the movement, and he has admitted voting for Reconstructionist presidential candidate Howard Phillips in 1996.

TV preacher Robertson has mentioned reading North’s writings, and he has hired Reconstructionists as professors at Regent University. Jerry Falwell employs Reconstructionists to teach at Liberty University. Roger Schultz, the chair of Liberty’s History Department, writes regularly for Faith for all of Life, the leading Reconstructionist journal.

Southern Baptist Bruce N. Shortt is aggressively pushing his denomination to officially repudiate public education and call on Southern Baptists to withdraw their children from public schools. Shortt’s vicious book, The Harsh Truth about Public Schools, was published by the Reconstructionist Chalcedon Foundation.

There are big theological differences between the Religious Right’s generals and the Reconstructionists. Traditional Christian theology teaches that history will muddle along until Jesus’ Second Coming. That teaching is tough to turn into a political movement. Reconstructionists preach that the nation and the world must come under Christian “dominion” (as they define it) before Christ’s return – a wonderful theology to promote global conquest.”

In short, Dobson, Robertson, Falwell and the Southern Baptist Convention (the nation’s largest Protestant denomination) may not agree with everything the Reconstructionists advocate, but they sure don’t seem to mind hanging out with this openly theocratic, anti-democratic crowd.

It’s enough for Americans who believe in personal freedom and religious liberty to get worried about – before the first stones start flying.“

John Sugg is senior editor of CL Newspapers, which owns alternative newsweeklies in Atlanta, Charlotte, Tampa and Sarasota. He was the recipient of the 2005 Society of Professional Journalists “Green Eyeshade” award for serious commentary, and he has won more than 30 other significant awards.

Crikey! I don’t know about you but I’m gonna go put REM’s “Fables of the Reconstruction in the disc player, spark one up, and contemplate the 30.06 in the hall closet- the one with the scope.

For every schmuck who preaches to you about the “Judeo-Christian values” upon which the United States was supposedly founded…

Jefferson’s beliefs, Bible were all his own

09:08 AM CST on Thursday, March 16, 2006

By BRUCE TOMASO / The Dallas Morning News

Thomas Jefferson’s tombstone, which he designed, doesn’t mention that he was president of the United States. Or vice president, or secretary of state, or governor of Virginia.

In keeping with Jefferson’s instructions, there are three achievements, and “not a word more,” listed on the grave marker at Monticello. It notes that he was the father of the University of Virginia; author of the Declaration of Independence; and author of “the statute of Virginia for religious freedom.”

That statute, enacted in 1786, states that no Virginian “shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever.” That Jefferson would count it as one of his most memorable achievements is a reflection not only of how much he prized individual liberty, but also how little he thought of organized religion.
Also Online

The Jefferson Bible

He was never the atheist that some political enemies accused him of being. Indeed, the Virginia statute begins with an assertion that “Almighty God hath created the mind free.”

But Jefferson regarded most clergymen as “soothsayers and necromancers,” and most of what they preached as a mockery of Jesus’ teachings.
Jefferson “believed that an authentic Christianity had long ago been hijacked by the Christian Church,” wrote Erik Reece in the December Harper’s.

It may have been this belief that led him one night to take scissors to his King James Bible and produce his own cut-and-paste version of the Gospels.

“Jefferson,” Mr. Reece wrote, “cut out the virgin birth, all the miracles – including the most important one, the Resurrection – then pasted together what was left and called it ‘The Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth.’ “ (Later, he added portions of the Bible as translated into Greek, Latin and French.)

Jefferson described his work as separating the “diamonds from the dunghill.” Out went all references to Jesus as divine, all accounts of healings, of walking on water, of making loaves and fish appear out of thin air.

What remains? His teachings about helping the needy, shunning earthly wealth and power, treating people as we would have them treat us – in Jefferson’s words, “the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man.”

Not all scholars are impressed.

Historian Garry Wills, a Catholic, writes that Jefferson’s Gospel, “cleansed of all the supernatural hocus-pocus, is the tale of a good man, a very good man, perhaps the best of good men.” But, he argues, the Jesus of Jefferson is boring, utterly without mystery, “shorn of his paradoxes and left with platitudes.” [Edit note: you mean his ego was subdued… Um… dude.]

A version of The Jefferson Bible is still in print, available from Beacon Press – perhaps fittingly, the publishing arm of the Unitarian Universalist Association.

Politicians, and so-called television journalists get themselves ripped a new one by Mr. Colbert. High-larity ensues.

One of the things I am completely SICK OF is the bashing of the word “liberalism.” It’s been going on for 20-odd years in the U.S.A. and is completely just fucking WRONG. Liberalism is actually quite a rational and legitimate worldview, no matter your politics or religion. Liberalism practically epitomizes the idea of freedom.

READ:

http://www.answers.com/topic/liberalism

The state or quality of being liberal.

1. A political theory founded on the natural goodness of humans and the autonomy of the individual and favoring civil and political liberties, government by law with the consent of the governed, and protection from arbitrary authority.

What legitimate American would have a problem with this worldview? Step up now and show your fascist colors.

This New York Times article gave me a real shot in the arm, hope-wise.
“MAPLEWOOD, Minn. — Like most pastors who lead thriving evangelical megachurches, the Rev. Gregory A. Boyd was asked frequently to give his blessing — and the church’s — to conservative political candidates and causes.

The requests came from church members and visitors alike: Would he please announce a rally against gay marriage during services? Would he introduce a politician from the pulpit? Could members set up a table in the lobby promoting their anti-abortion work? Would the church distribute “voters’ guides” that all but endorsed Republican candidates? And with the country at war, please couldn’t the church hang an American flag in the sanctuary?

After refusing each time, Mr. Boyd finally became fed up, he said. Before the last presidential election, he preached six sermons called “The Cross and the Sword” in which he said the church should steer clear of politics, give up moralizing on sexual issues, stop claiming the United States as a “Christian nation” and stop glorifying American military campaigns.

“When the church wins the culture wars, it inevitably loses,” Mr. Boyd preached. “When it conquers the world, it becomes the world. When you put your trust in the sword, you lose the cross.”

snip.

The response from his congregation at Woodland Hills Church here in suburban St. Paul — packed mostly with politically and theologically conservative, middle-class evangelicals — was passionate. Some members walked out of a sermon and never returned. By the time the dust had settled, Woodland Hills, which Mr. Boyd founded in 1992, had lost about 1,000 of its 5,000 members.

snip.

“Sermons like Mr. Boyd’s are hardly typical in today’s evangelical churches. But the upheaval at Woodland Hills is an example of the internal debates now going on in some evangelical colleges, magazines and churches. A common concern is that the Christian message is being compromised by the tendency to tie evangelical Christianity to the Republican Party and American nationalism, especially through the war in Iraq.

At least six books on this theme have been published recently, some by Christian publishing houses. Randall Balmer, a religion professor at Barnard College and an evangelical, has written “Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America — an Evangelical’s Lament.”

And Mr. Boyd has a new book out, “The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power Is Destroying the Church,” which is based on his sermons.

“There is a lot of discontent brewing,” said Brian D. McLaren, the founding pastor at Cedar Ridge Community Church in Gaithersburg, Md., and a leader in the evangelical movement known as the “emerging church,” which is at the forefront of challenging the more politicized evangelical establishment.

“More and more people are saying this has gone too far — the dominance of the evangelical identity by the religious right,” Mr. McLaren said. “You cannot say the word ‘Jesus’ in 2006 without having an awful lot of baggage going along with it. You can’t say the word ‘Christian,’ and you certainly can’t say the word ‘evangelical’ without it now raising connotations and a certain cringe factor in people.

“Because people think, ‘Oh no, what is going to come next is homosexual bashing, or pro-war rhetoric, or complaining about ‘activist judges.’ ”

snip

“In his six sermons, Mr. Boyd laid out a broad argument that the role of Christians was not to seek “power over” others — by controlling governments, passing legislation or fighting wars. Christians should instead seek to have “power under” others — “winning people’s hearts” by sacrificing for those in need, as Jesus did, Mr. Boyd said.

“America wasn’t founded as a theocracy,” he said. “America was founded by people trying to escape theocracies. Never in history have we had a Christian theocracy where it wasn’t bloody and barbaric. That’s why our Constitution wisely put in a separation of church and state.

“I am sorry to tell you,” he continued, “that America is not the light of the world and the hope of the world. The light of the world and the hope of the world is Jesus Christ.”

Mr. Boyd lambasted the “hypocrisy and pettiness” of Christians who focus on “sexual issues” like homosexuality, abortion or Janet Jackson’s breast-revealing performance at the Super Bowl halftime show. He said Christians these days were constantly outraged about sex and perceived violations of their rights to display their faith in public.

“Those are the two buttons to push if you want to get Christians to act,” he said. “And those are the two buttons Jesus never pushed.”

This guy came forward right in the middle of a fundraising campaign- costing himself and his church roughly 3 million. I think that takes a good bit of courage and conviction. At a Q&A session to do some ’splainin’ to the remaining congregants;

“One woman asked: “So why NOT us? If we contain the wisdom and grace and love and creativity of Jesus, why shouldn’t we be the ones involved in politics and setting laws?”

Mr. Boyd responded: “I don’t think there’s a particular angle we have on society that others lack. All good, decent people want good and order and justice. Just don’t slap the label ‘Christian’ on it.”

Well said, Pastor Boyd.

Reader Steve sends this in with these comments:

Hey,

I thought you would get a kick out of this:

Girl’s pyjamas catch fire after lightning strikes

If this happened in the US I’m sure there would have been a quote from the parents thanking God for saving their daughter’s life, even though we all know that lightning bolts are Gods modus operandi.

Steve

We’re getting almost BoingBoing-like around here (wishful thinking!). We may need to set up a submission form. I can hardly keep up!

The renowned biologist talks about intelligent design, dishonest Christians, and why God is no better than an imaginary friend.

British biologist Richard Dawkins has made a name for himself defending evolution and fighting what he sees as religiously motivated attacks on science. Dr. Dawkins sat down with Beliefnet at the World Congress of Secular Humanism, where his keynote address focused on intelligent design.

“You’re concerned about the state of education, especially science education. If you were able to teach every person, what would you want people to believe?

I would want them to believe whatever evidence leads them to; I would want them to look at the evidence, judge it on its merits, not accept things because of internal revelation or faith, but purely on the basis of evidence. Not everybody can evaluate all evidence; we can’t evaluate the evidence for quantum physics. So it does have to be a certain amount of taking things on trust. I have to take what physicists say on trust, for example, because I’m a biologist. But science [has] a system of appraisal, of peer review, so that I trust the physics community to get their act together in a way that I know from the inside. I wish people would put their trust in evidence, not in faith, revelation, tradition, or authority.

What do you wish people knew about evolution?

Dawkins on Design Listen to clips from Dawkins’ recent speech:• The Flaws in the Argument from Design • There Is an Alternative to Chance • The Faulty Logic of ‘Irreducible Complexity’ • Creationists Adore Gaps in the Fossil Record • Evolution and Theism Are IncompatibleAudio provided courtesy of the World Congress of Secular Humanism

They need to understand what evolution is about. Many of them don’t. I was truly shocked to be told by two separate religious leaders in this country [the U.S.] a few weeks ago–they both said something to the effect that, “I’ll believe in evolution when I see a tailed monkey give birth to a human.”

That is staggering ignorance of what evolutionary science is about; if they think that’s what evolutionists believe, no wonder they’re skeptical of it. How can a civilized country have adult people in positions of leadership who know so stunningly little about the leading biological concept?

You said in a recent speech that design was not the only alternative to chance. A lot of people think that evolution is all about random chance.

That’s ludicrous. That’s ridiculous. Mutation is random in the sense that it’s not anticipatory of what’s needed. Natural selection is anything but random. Natural selection is a guided process, guided not by any higher power, but simply by which genes survive and which genes don’t survive. That’s a non-random process. The animals that are best at whatever they do—hunting, flying, fishing, swimming, digging—whatever the species does, the individuals that are best at it are the ones that pass on the genes. It’s because of this non-random process that lions are so good at hunting, antelopes so good at running away from lions, and fish are so good at swimming.

There are intelligent people who have been taught good science and evolution, and who may choose to believe in something religious that may seem to fly in the face of science. What do you make of that?

It’s certainly hard to know what to make of it. I think it’s a betrayal of science. I think they have a religious agenda which, for reasons best known to themselves, they elevate above science.

What are your thoughts about the despair some people feel when they ponder natural selection and random mutation? The idea of evolution and natural selection makes some people feel that everything is meaningless–people’s individual lives and life in general.

If it’s true that it causes people to feel despair, that’s tough. It’s still the truth. The universe doesn’t owe us condolence or consolation; it doesn’t owe us a nice warm feeling inside. If it’s true, it’s true, and you’d better live with it. However, I don’t think it should make one feel depressed. I don’t feel depressed. I feel elated. My book, “Unweaving the Rainbow,” is an attempt to elevate science to the level of poetry and to show how one can be—in a funny sort of way—rather spiritual about science. Not in a supernatural sense, but there are uplifting mysteries to be solved. The contemplation of the size and scale of the universe, of the depth of geological time, of the complexity of life–these all, to me, have an inspirational quality. It makes my life worthwhile to study them.

You criticize intelligent design, saying that “the theistic answer”–pointing to God as designer–”is deeply unsatisfying”–presumably you mean on a logical, scientific level.

Yes, because it doesn’t explain where the designer comes from. If they’re going to emphasize the statistical improbability of biological organs—”these are so complicated, how could they have evolved?”–well, if they’re so complicated, how could they possibly have been designed? Because the designer would have to be even more complicated.

Obviously, a lot of people find the theistic answer satisfying on another level. What do you see as the problem with that level?

What other level?

At whatever level where people say the idea of God is very satisfying.

Well, of course it is. Wouldn’t it be lovely to believe in an imaginary friend who listens to your thoughts, listens to your prayers, comforts you, consoles you, gives you life after death, can give you advice? Of course it’s satisfying, if you can believe it. But who wants to believe a lie?

Is atheism the logical extension of believing in evolution?

They clearly can’t be irrevocably linked because a very large number of theologians believe in evolution. In fact, any respectable theologian of the Catholic or Anglican or any other sensible church believes in evolution. Similarly, a very large number of evolutionary scientists are also religious. My personal feeling is that understanding evolution led me to atheism.

How would you respond to people who say the most interesting or worthwhile aspect of human beings is behavior that natural selection would not promote? I’m thinking of behavior like adopting children who aren’t family members, voluntary celibacy, or people deciding to spend their whole life praying.

Adopting children that are not your own or a close relative’s is an interesting question. Why do not just humans, but other species, do what on the face of it is the wrong thing to do from a selfish gene point of view? Cuckoos play upon this and actually engineer it so that other species raise [baby cuckoos]. This is a mistake on the part of the foster parents, which have been “forced” to adopt the cuckoos.

So that’s sort of a wild analogy to adopting children, in this case ones who are not your own species.

By the way, I would hate this to be taken as any sort of suggestion that adoptive parents don’t love their adopted children; of course they do. But you could think of it as a kind of genetic mistake, in that human adults have strong parental instincts which make them long for a child. If they can’t have a child of their own, they can then satisfy those parental instincts by adopting a child.

In the same way, we have sexual instincts; we long for sex and it doesn’t matter that we use contraception. That’s, as it were, separating the natural function of sex, which is reproduction. But we still enjoy sex in the same way that we enjoy being a parent even if it is not our own child that we’re looking after.

You’ve said, “don’t name our present ignorance God”–which you said is what intelligent design proponents are doing. They’re taking an area where we’re ignorant and naming that God. Do you think science will eventually explain everything we wonder about now?

I don’t know the answer. I’m equally excited by both in a way. I rather like the idea of understanding everything and I also quite like the idea of science being a never-ending, open-ended quest.

If you had to name top sources for optimism and hope in a naturalistic or materialistic worldview, what would they be?

I think there is something glorious in the universe, in contemplating the Milky Way galaxy, in contemplating the fact that this is only one in billions of galaxies, contemplating the fact that at the beginning of the 21st century, humanity really has gone a very long way toward understanding the universe in which we live and the life form of which we are a part. I find that a truly inspirational thought. Obviously, there are other things having nothing to do with science—music, poetry, sex, love. These are all things that make life, to me, extremely worth living. Then there’s the added fact that it is the only life we’re ever going to get. Don’t kid yourself that you’re going to live again after you’re dead; you’re not. Make the most of the one life you’ve got. Live it to the full.

You’ve criticized the idea of the afterlife. What do you see as the problem with a terminally ill cancer patient believing in an afterlife?

Oh, no problem at all. I would never wish to disabuse or disillusion somebody who believed that. I care about what’s true for myself, but I don’t want to go around telling people who are afraid of dying that their hopes are unreal.

If I could have a word with a would-be suicide bomber or plane hijacker who thinks he’s going to paradise, I would like to disabuse him. I wouldn’t say to him, “Don’t you see what you’re doing is wrong?” I would say, “Don’t imagine for one second you’re going to paradise. You’re not. You’re going to rot in the ground.”

How would you feel if your daughter became religious in the future?

Well, that would be her decision and obviously she’s her own person, she’s free to do whatever she likes. I think she’s much too intelligent to do that, but that’s her decision.

You talk about how your words have been twisted by religious people in the past. Which words of yours have been twisted?

Whenever I begin an argument by saying something that sounds as though it’s creationist, something like “the Cambrian Explosion is a sudden explosion of fossils almost as though they had no history,” I’m obviously saying that as a prelude to explaining why.

But these people quote selectively. It’s a demonstration of their fundamental dishonesty. They’re not actually interested in truth, they’re interested in propaganda.

Are there one or two phrases you’ve heard repeatedly quoted out of context that you’d like to set the record straight about?

Well, that’s one of them, about the Cambrian Explosion. Another one is Darwin’s famous phrase, to suppose that “the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances”—he goes on about the complications of the eye—”could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.” He then goes on to explain it, and they never quote that. They just stop there. Dishonest.