Right

Weston LOVES learning about the planets and outer space. As a result, we have read tons of books about the discovery of the planets and their orbits and scientific discoveries. Interestingly, a lot of the things that we think of as 17th and 18th century advances, such as Kepler's laws of planetary motion, were actually previously discovered by the Greeks and Romans. For example, the Antikythera Mechanism is accurate solar model and eclipse predictor, constructed in approximately 80 B.C. It contains differential gears that prior to its discovery were thought to have first been used in 18th century clocks. Similar advances in medicine, math, and other fields were also made. If progress had continued unabated after the 5th century, humans would be in Star Trek city right now, baby. Either that or we would have blown ourselves to smithereens already, whichever.

What happened? Oooh, I'm glad you asked. After the fall of Rome, early Christians went on the warpath against anything that they decided, in their infinite arrogance, was contrary to God's word. One of their targets was science that suggested that perhaps Earth was not the center of the universe. After all, they knew what God said, and they knew what God meant, and clearly, anyone who hypothesized otherwise was a heretic who deserved to die. Angry Christian mobs burned entire libraries of hard-won knowledge and murdered scientists, plunging much of the world into the dark ages. The world will never know what all was lost because of these early extremists who drove the western world into darkness, chaos and fear.

Today, these misguided and evil people are back with a vengeance. Extremists in any form are dangerous- a great example is Al Qaeda, but they're not alone. Christian extremists are just as scary, and maybe even more dangerous because many of us buy their self-righteous 'Army for God' crap. There is no difference between them and the Taliban or devil worshippers; they're just more familiar and so they seem innocuous. And, they can be hard to disagree with, because they try to make it seem like it you're not with them, you're against God. But the bottom line is, they're still a bunch of bullies that are killing doctors and trying to halt scientific progress, all because they think, in their infinite arrogance, that they know the mind of God. Now, I'm not too bright, but I'm thinking a God that created humans would know that their God-given curiosity would drive them to explore their surroundings. Perhaps that's even what he intended, hmmm? He knew what he was doing, right?

'The enemy of my enemy is my friend' has never been more true and 'their' evil, hate-filled bigots are no worse than 'our' evil, hate-filled bigots. Unfortunately they have a common target: all the rest of us. They should just set up training camps together to save money, since their targets are the same. Al Qaeda and similar groups are just a little more blatant about their intent, making similar 'Christian' groups even more insidious. They're doing it for your own good, after all; surely none of the rest of us can be trusted to make our own decisions or figure things out for ourselves. I don't claim to know for sure, but I bet neither Jesus nor Mohammed would so much as let any of these clowns be their friends on Facebook, and the rest of us should follow their good examples.