All claims are inherently probabilistic. Sometimes people are explicit about that
sometimes they aren’t. 1+1=2 is a probabilistic claim (there’s some tiny tiny chance that humans have repeatedly just screwed up their arithmetic). Whenever you make an arithmetic statement do you feel a need to preface it with a disclaimer about the lack of certainty?

Can you imagine what would happen if Krauss dared mock Mohammed or Allah, or the Islamic religion in some way?

He did. Allah & Jehovah are the same non-existant dude. ‘Allah’ is the Arabic word for God, used by Arabic-speaking Christians and Jews. Mocking the God of Abraham is an efficient way to knock all three major Western religions at once.

Re, Ham’s complaint that Krauss spent only 22 minutes in his Museum of Religious Brain-Damage: It’s just a particularly pathetic form of the Courtier’s Reply. Krauss can’t fairly criticize the Creation Asylum without viewing all 50+ videos? Carefully studying the text on every placard? I was there (even ran into Hemant somewhere around Noah’s Ark ), and the entry hall alone is enough to justify everything Krauss says about the place. Hell, even just reading a few random articles off the AiG website, and making the reasonable assumption that their “museum” will represent the same viewpoint, is enough.

This Fatwa Envy-phenomenon is truly ironic, don’t these Fundamentalist Christians understand that they’re equating their own religion with the most horrible human behavior in world history?

Isn’t this kinda like saying:

-What? You disagree with my political views? Well I’m sure you wouldn’t be as vigorous in defending your views if you were arguing with Hitler!

Well that’s the whole point you freaking idiot, I’m assuming here that I’m _not_ discussing with someone who represents a genocidal dictatorship, but rather with someone who’s actually prepared to _talk_ about our differences, because I actually believe that people have the _right_ to disagree with each other, as foreign as that might seem to a fundamentalist.

I do understand the impulse to react to every single unpleasant thought expressed by someone by amassing a mob and beating their skull in with the largest rock you can lift, since that approach has worked so well for the last 100,000 years at least, but I’ll take the risk of being called a “fundie leftist liberal” or whatever and say that I just don’t think this is the optimal way of settling differences in the 2010′s.

(Shouldn’t we be at least hover car jousting by now? Stupid disappointing science.. )

muggle, try reading my post carefully. I know there is no god. The quotes in my comment come from Hemant so that’s who you’re arguing with, not me.

By the way Muggle, if I wasn’t such a noob (and in a rush) I would’ve done a better job of using quotations and there wouldn’t be any confusion. The stuff you said is all stuff I agree with emphatically.

I’ll bet Lawrence Krauss doesn’t have to eat a whole egg to figure out that it’s rotten, either.

The more I find about this guy, the more I like him! He puts Jesus in the best context possible: human construct. We humans are nothing next to a star; our constructs less than nothing. Right there is true humility.

He wasn’t bringing his religious beliefs into the classroom, and he wasn’t doing anything improper. Ham just wants him fired because he said something Ham didn’t like.

No but he made comments that were inappropriate. Its like working in a foreign university and talking about the things you don’t like about living in that country, they will not renew your contract and would probably fire you.

Its just professional courtesy.

In what possible way were they inappropriate? Firing someone for making one critical statement (a joke no less), certainly doesn’t strike me as “professional courtesy”. Are you really saying that the appropriate reaction to, for example, an American professor working in England repeating a joke about English cooking is that he should be fired? (When he repeats this joke at a French cuisine lovers convention, no less?)

Think about the implications if it truly was inappropriate. It would effectively bar open atheists from holding teaching positions at universities.