[Waarnemer]

Originally Posted by Plethon

From the viewpoint of theism, all of these are irrelevant (discoveries in biology, cosmology and genetics). They explain the exterior-material world, how it funcions and say nothing about either the question of the first mover, of the purpose of life and everything etc.

What got undermined, was the world view of pseudo-religious fundamentalists who want to explain the origin of the world on the ground of the literalistic interpretation of the Bible. I have no time to spend with them. In fact, these fundamentalists and militant atheists are spiritual brothers. Let them argue with each other all the time, if they wish to, I have better things to do.

Its easy to broaden faith in such a way that it could mean anything, but philosophical approaches like this tend to end in contradiction. For one, if Genesis is not a correct display of events that directly undermines Christianity, the need of Jesus crucifixion and the idea of original sin.

But you are right, moral conclusions are not to be drawn from empirical data, sure. Still it limits speculations on the purpose of life and it narrows down the first cause and even more it delivers an idea of the mentality of the possible creator in that the Human spieces at this point is about 130 000 years old, and it seems heaven waited and watched 128 000 years of a harsh and meaningless waste of human lives until it decided to interfere with ideas of sin, hell and immaterial human liberation.

Religion was a manner of explaining and justifying events in the material world which still is the only reality we know of. Speculations on immaterial realities and entities hold no grounds, they don't mean anything since they don't exist, to exist is to be observed, that is the only real standard in a logic world.

Originally Posted by Plethon

But it is their countries and their rules and laws, what can we do about that? Or what should we do? I personally don't care either for the fate of Dawkins' book in Turkey (or its fate in general) or for the laws in vigour in Turkey. It is their matter and I don't see how it could interest too much European nationalists.

It concerns us, Islam is a religion on the rise on our grounds and this event provides us a good idea of religious censorship in even secular models.